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Published: August 29th 2009
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We were up and out of the Golden Gate by 5am as the bus for our Grand Canyon flight was picking us up from the hotel lobby at 5.20 - or so we thought! By 5.40 Jo was on the phone to Scenic Flights and was told that the bus was there and looking for us. Clearly it wasn’t so we had to catch a cab to North Las Vegas airport. We got there too late but found a pretty helpful bloke who suggested we wait until 9.00am. If there were and no-shows we could get on a tour that landed on the western rim for a while as opposed to the flyover that we were booked on. By 8.30 it was pretty obvious from the queues that this was unlikely so we rebooked on the 16.00 flight for the afternoon and got a bus back from the airport to the Golden Gate.
I was keen to enter the No Limit Hold’em tournament at Binions and we made it there with a few minutes to spare. Buy-in was $60 for 1000 chips with a $10 add-on for another 500 immediately. A $40 add-on was available within the first hour too
Binions Final Table
...been there - done that! and 21 players entered. After ½ an hour a couple of players were out and about ½ the field had added on so my 1100 or so chips were a little small compared to the added on players. I took the add-on and played on. Two hours later I was seated at the final table at Binions - the home of poker! The table was complete with pocket cameras and an overhead camera and there were 4 or 5 spectators at any given time. By 14.30 I was heads up with a bloke from New York with near 50% of the chips each. We decided to split the 1st and 2nd prize money and he let me take the “I won a Texas Hold’em Tournament at Binions” t-shirt. I walked out with $671 and a t-shirt that money can’t buy!
The bus picked us up at 15.00 for a short trip back to North Las Vegas Airport. The flight was a little late and we finally took off at 16.30. We couldn’t have timed the tour any better! We flew over Las Vegas for a while (and caught a glimpse of Las Vegas Motor Speedway) before heading towards Hoover
UNLV Basketball
Thomas & Mack Center Dam. I visited there about 12 years ago and remember marveling at its magnitude. From a few thousand feet up its grandeur was diminished although it was still quite a sight. We flew east over the Mojave Desert to the western rim of the Grand Canyon - Wow, what a view! Unlike the Hoover Dam, the Canyon seemed even bigger and deeper than I remember it being from the ground. The pilot took us very low across the rim of the canyon and did a few circles to ensure everyone on the plane got a good view. It is impossible to put the Grand Canyon into words. We arrived in daylight and circled during sunset so we got to see all the changing colours as the shadows descended across the rocks. We flew back just north of the Las Vegas Strip after nightfall and got some fantastic views of the lights.
On landing our bus driver kindly offered to drop us at the Thomas & Mack Centre and we were seated in Tier Z just in time to see the tip off of the UNLV vs. Utah NCAA game. The stadium was only 20% full at the most but
the noise from the UNLV band seated courtside along with the frequent cheering and booing made for a good atmosphere. Despite being down in the first half, an early second half rally by UNLV saw them win by 7 or 8.
We got a cab back to the Golden Gate and managed to get to bed by 2200. It had been a hell of a day!!
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