Trippy

Last week I made my annual trip to Chicago. It’s always a good time, but this trip was slightly different. Normally I go up there, meet my buddy Red and we stay at our friend Bum’s place with he and his wife. They have this badass pad, which is the perfect place to crash at. Lately, we’ve been scheduling the trip around the Mets-Cubs series, and this year was no different. Although we didn’t actually get to Wrigley to catch any of the games, it still played a significant role in the scheduling.

This year was different because Red now lives in Chicago, and he couldn’t be there for most of the festivities. The biggest difference was the newest attendee, and the fact that it was our first trip together. I won’t downplay this, it’s a pretty big deal in the world-o-Hirp. As expected, we had a great time. But the best part might be the fact that it’s directly opened the door to our next trip. See, our flight out Friday was delayed. First it was 30 minutes, than an hour. Right before the second delay was announced, they informed us the flight was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats.

We gave it some thought, being that we didn’t want to get into Chicago at some God awful time. But in the end we took the deal. In return for taking the next flight, we were given a voucher for $100 plus the cost of our ticket to Chicago. And the next flight was just an hour later. A phenomenal win for us. Almost immediately we began discussing our next trip, being that we now had free or nearly free airfare to just about anywhere worth going to.

Las Vegas, New York, Phoenix, LA, maybe Seattle or Austin. The possibilities seemed endless. In a perfect world, I’d have a bank account that could support regular trips to exciting locations. As we all know, it’s far from a perfect world. We talked about the pros and cons of each city, debated if we wanted to invite friends or go just ourselves. Did we want to go visit friends or family or bypass all that? I started emailing some of our friends who just so happen to have their own vouchers that are itching to be used, to gauge their interest in going someplace with us. Then it hit me, the perfect place for the next trip.

If it is good enough for Michael Corelone to relocate the family to Lake Tahoe, it’s good enough for me. Tahoe has it all. There’s gambling, site seeing, exploring a new area, and peace and quiet and it’s very affordable. I looked online for some hotels, and came across a place called MontBleu. It looks amazing, and being that it used to be Caesars, I’m pretty confident that it is. From what I’ve seen during my research, Tahoe and Reno seem to be more like the old Vegas. Just writing this makes me giddy.