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TR - Feb 11-14, 1995

 
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mjames1229



Joined: 23 Dec 2009
Posts: 406

PostPosted: Apr Mon 02, 2012 7:45 pm    Post subject: TR - Feb 11-14, 1995 Reply with quote

JSR's TR from October (and Dave's comment about 20 year old trip reports) challenges me to see how much I can remember from my first ever trip to Reno in 1995.

Before I start, I do have an amazing memory for stuff like this, but that is as much due to being able to remember date-specific stuff. For example, in 1995 was the opening of the National Bowling Stadium, it was a guy's only trip in which two of the five of us were dinguses, and it was the only one in which we didn't rent a car. What that means is that I can place where I was with the dinguses, and the cab rides, etc.

There are two absolute, rock-solid, forever-memorable things that happened.

Other details are filled in with the magic of the internet.
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February 4, 1995
- The day starts with four guys piling into a New Yorker in below zero weather and driving from Milwaukee to Chicago before dawn for our direct flight on Reno Air.

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OK, that'll hold you over until I can post more! (Kinda JD-like).......


Last edited by mjames1229 on Apr Tue 03, 2012 8:36 pm; edited 1 time in total
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mjames1229



Joined: 23 Dec 2009
Posts: 406

PostPosted: Apr Tue 03, 2012 10:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

(PS, this is harder than it looks. Remembering this stuff isn't too bad, its trying to decide if I am going down memory lane or if I am trying to act as if it just happened yesterday.)

Saturday, February 4, 1995 (Continued) - We arrived and checked into the Circus Circus and had a room that faced the Sundowner and had some neat sunset views.

Our first trip was to the sportsbook, before heading to the Circus Circus buffet for lunch (keeping in mind that there was no internet to learn how colossally bad the buffet was in advance). My buddy The Scalper had graduated from UW-Milwaukee, and their basketball team had a good season a couple of years earlier, but they had since crashed down to earth. Easy money would say that they were overmatched this day, so I had wanted to get a bet down. We got to the sportsbook a little after the game started, so The Scalper made the bet with me. Within two hours I was $10 up.

As a 27-year old on his second-ever trip to Nevada (and since casinos didn't exist outside of Nevada and New Jersey) I wasn't up on strategy, games with least house advantage, etc., so I didn't gamble too much. It didn't help that I was unemployed and actually had to borrow money to take along.

That afternoon, Tattoo found us (one of the two dinguses, he hadn't flown with us)... and he was broke. He had gone to Vegas the week before, only had $100 with him, and he had pretty much lost it before we got to Reno. The Scalper was tired of him watching us play $3 blackjack that he gave Tattoo a $100 chip and said "get lost, but this is your last handout".

In the evening, Tattoo, Breeder and I (great, I was with the two dinguses) walked to the National Bowling Stadium of the Opening Ceremonies of the tournament. Until a couple months earlier I had been employed by the ABC, and though I had been let go, as a bowler this was a big deal. The dinguses came along because they didn't know what else to do. I tried to get The Scalper and Grap (the same Grap that is currently battling cancer and is mentioned in this and this trip report) to come along, but they both decided they didn't want to leave the Caribbean Stud Poker table.

While there, I checked-in our team for the squad the next day, and picked up our team's tournament program. The program had a coupon insert with five coupons (one per team member) for a Free Ham and Egg Breakfast at the Cal Neva. Since Tattoo was out of money, he took all five coupons, then also found other programs "sitting around" and took those coupons, too. For the duration of the trip, other than Sunday night, every time he was hungry, he would run to the Cal Neva for a free breakfast (and water).

The building was great, the Opening Ceremonies were a bunch of old men yammering on and on, and when finished, we went back to Circus Circus and went to bed.

Sunday, February 5, 1995 - This gambling thing was quite a thrill, so I woke up really, really early and decided to scratch that itch. We were in Circus Circus' Sky tower, and I didn't feel like taking the tram so I just went to their little, second floor casino in that tower. I then learned the down side of gambling and went back to bed.

Marquette's basketball team was just starting to get good again (the previous year they had made the NCAA Sweet 16) and on this day were playing their Great Midwest Conference rival Cincinnati on ESPN. This was a big deal for all of us, and we had planned on watching the game as a group in the sportsbook. But in what would be a running theme, The Scalper and Grap couldn't be moved from those exact same seats at the Caribbean Stud table. The dinguses didn't seem to care, so I watched Marquette upset Cincinnati - alone - from the hotel room.

Our squad was scheduled to bowl the tournament at 7:00 PM, and when we got there, we were informed that there were some glitches with the computers and we wouldn't start until around 10:00 PM... but they warned us not to leave the building, because if we weren't there when the squad started, we would get zero pins for each frame missed. That didn't phase The Scalper and Grap, as they flew out of the Stadium and back to Circus Circus.

At about 10:15 - 10:30 PM (I don't remember the time, but I do remember that it was past 10:00), the tournament staff said that we were ready, but those two (which set were really the dinguses?) hadn't come back yet. We proceed all the way down to the starting lanes and were just to start practice when they come flying in. They didn't get any practice, but were ready to start when the bell rang. The Scalper said that he was in the middle of a mighty run at Harrah's craps table, and said he'd buy dinner when we got done bowling.


Last edited by mjames1229 on Apr Wed 04, 2012 7:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
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JD



Joined: 18 Dec 2005
Posts: 956

PostPosted: Apr Tue 03, 2012 12:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Please sir, may I have some MORE?"

I like the style.

But I can't remember yesterday, let alone 1995.

We seem to have a rush of "better late than never " posts recently.

I have a few from the before times. And no one left that can contradict them !
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mjames1229



Joined: 23 Dec 2009
Posts: 406

PostPosted: Apr Tue 03, 2012 8:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Monday, February 6, 1995 - We get done bowling in the middle of the night and take The Scalper up on his offer to buy dinner... ending up at some cafe at the Eldorado. I don't remember very much, other than I think there were trees and a waterfall, and five mid-20s guys ate like we'd never seen food before... then went to bed stuffed to the gills and forgetting that we had to START bowling again in about 6 hours.

After what was effectively a nap, we headed down to the Stadium to bowl the singles and doubles events. Noteworthy is that we'd later find that there was a news camera down there, and all of us were on that evening's news broadcast.

As the trip was winding down and evening settled in, our group decided to jump in a cab for a ride. Again, without an internet we had no real knowledge of Reno, other than the fact that from the Circus Circus, it looks like Virginia Street goes on forever, so it must be full of casinos (a la Las Vegas Boulevard). So we tell the driver to take us to the last casino downtown... which was the Virginian. I do remember that the cab driver barely had a chance to tell us that he'd drive us all to the Mustang Ranch and wait for us.

Not having a solid plan, we kind of wandered into the (empty) Virginian and found a $5 blackjack table. Other than The Scalper who seemed to have bankrolls in each pocket, and the other four of us were a little light so we took it easy. I do distinctly remember one hand... I was dealt 88 with a dealer bust card. I split and had another 8. Split again and had another 8. Four hands at $5 each (hey, that was a lot for me) and with one of them I get a card to double down. You can see where this is going, can't you? A dealer backdoor 21, a $25 loss for me, and The Scalper almost falling off his chair in laughter.

Along the way back, it had occurred to me that I had my camera along but hadn't taken any pictures (and just now it has occurred to me that the pictures that I ended up snapping are on my other laptop. Remind be to upload them tomorrow). Before it got too late, we were back at the Circus Circus, and mostly out of money. I watched Grap go back to that same seat at that same Caribbean Stud table and lose his last $100, then we made a small sports bet and decided to watch that game in the bar until bedtime.

Grap and I are by ourselves, reflecting on a fun trip, though mourning that nobody had enough money to do that one last gamble before our morning flight. As we are talking, we hear a whole lot of screaming from the casino floor. Lo and behold some old fart - sitting the exact same seat that Grap had occupied all weekend - and no lie, wearing an oxygen tank, hit a Royal Flush and won the $176,000 progressive jackpot.

Somehow that became my fault. Because I didn't FORCE Grap to stay at the bowling stadium on Saturday night, or because I didn't FORCE him to watch the Marquette game on Sunday, he ran out of money before he could get that hand dealt to him.

Good thing we've made up since then... except the times I remind him about that!


Last edited by mjames1229 on Apr Wed 04, 2012 7:26 pm; edited 3 times in total
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mjames1229



Joined: 23 Dec 2009
Posts: 406

PostPosted: Apr Wed 04, 2012 9:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote





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BC Dave
Site Admin


Joined: 18 Dec 2005
Posts: 1592

PostPosted: Apr Wed 04, 2012 7:07 pm    Post subject: Wow! Reply with quote

Thanks MJames. Good memory work! And those pictures sure got my memory going!
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mjames1229



Joined: 23 Dec 2009
Posts: 406

PostPosted: Apr Wed 04, 2012 7:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I also made trips to Reno in 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007 and never wrote TRs on them.

I only remember a few anecdotes about '98 (best one - me and my now-ex-wife left our one month old daughter with my brother and his girlfriend, and when she wouldn't sleep they gave her a little Benadryl. When my now-ex- found out about it, she almost jumped through the window of the Flamingo Hilton) and '01 (best remembered as the beginning of the end... the same daughter [now three] broke out with Chicken Pox the day before I left, and my now-ex-wife - who did not go with me - contracted Chicken Pox [which is quite nasty in adults] while I was gone.)

But '04 and '07 might be easy to recreate. I might give it a go.

Or if you can wait 14 months, I can write a much more current one.
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CaSwede



Joined: 28 Feb 2006
Posts: 866

PostPosted: Apr Fri 06, 2012 9:23 am    Post subject: how long ago? Reply with quote

Well I am certainly impressed that you can remember all of that stuff from back in 1995. You are probably one of those guys that remembers the names of everyone when you went to high school.

Love the old pictures....thanks.
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LilyJDragonfly



Joined: 03 Mar 2009
Posts: 425

PostPosted: Apr Sun 08, 2012 5:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the old school trip report! And I simply adore the names of all your traveling partners....
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mjames1229



Joined: 23 Dec 2009
Posts: 406

PostPosted: Apr Sun 08, 2012 6:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Grap - My buddy since we've been kids, still battling cancer.

The Scalper - with Grap, the three of us were inseparable from early-adulthood. The Scalper likes to think that he and I are the reason the cities of Green Bay and Ashwabenon tightened up their ticket resale laws for Packers games. We didn't do anything wrong, but we were just very, very good at it. A few years ago he went into hiding. Guess he got in over his head.

Tattoo - A guy we bowled league with for a couple years, then fell off the planet. Had a big, involved tattoo of bowling pins all the way around his bicep.

The Breeder - The type of guy nobody really likes, and every person (well, men at least) knows of one. One where you have just enough in common that bonds you (in this case, bowling) but he is pretty much an embarrassing a-hole the rest of the time... But not enough where you tell him to go away and leave you alone. He now has 8 kids with three women and has also gone away.
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Mammothgambler



Joined: 25 Dec 2005
Posts: 619

PostPosted: Apr Wed 11, 2012 4:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the the trip report mjames - I couldn't remember any details like that from that long ago to save my life!

Mammothgambler
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