In the beginning with these conference tournaments, there’s more basketball than you can handle (4 to 5 games from noon to midnight). But as the tournament goes deeper the number of games shrink, and that leaves you with the ultimate question, “what does one do with his/her time while in Vegas”?
Well, there are the obvious answers: Gambling at one of MANY casinos, taking in a “Vegas Show” or stand up comedian, you can take a bus/car/helicopter ride to the Hoover Dam or the Grand Canyon, or you can just walk the strip. But the Sportsblahg digs deeper. We try not to be tourists when we’re in a city (especially since The Nate visits it so frequently) and thus went out in search of fun activities to do before Friday night’s Men’s Semi-Final games. These are some of the fun things we found:
10:30am - Visited the Shelby Automotive plant, that is just North of the city (actually right next to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway for those of you that are racing fans). Every weekday @ 10:30am they have one tour that goes around the plant and talks about what it is to be a Shelby mustang or cobra (it’s a lot different than the base model FORD will sell you). It was really cool because someone was there to pick up a car they had Shelby customized for him. The car was amazing, and the gentleman was driving it back to Arizona (and then apparently on to Orlando, Florida) with his wife, bad ass. If you want to see cars that you can’t afford (especially working at the Sportsblahg), this was certainly a cool place.
1:00pm - After lunch at the west Coast chain “Del Taco” we stopped in at the Las Vegas Gun Range & Firearm Center. This was probably the coolest stop on the The Nate’s day, and not because it was the manliest thing I did (ok it really was). The cool thing (and equally scary) was that all I had to do was fill out a one-sheet and pay $80 to fire off an MP5 Semi-Automatic machine gun and a .44 caliber Desert Eagle Pistol. There were three questions on the survey, and while I can not remember them exactly, I can paraphrase (with comments in parenthesis):
- Are you clinically insane or psychotic? (Can we trust you not to spas out when we give you this gun?)
- Are you depressed or suicidal? (Will you shoot yourself if I give you this gun?)
- Have you ever been convicted of a crime? (Will you shoot us with that gun?)
You also need to check out their celebrity page for the people that have stopped by to shoot. We have emailed them in hopes they may add The Nate to those ranks, but somehow we feel that will not happen. The best part was that they let me purchase a t-shirt and then use it as the target for my pistol shooting. Needless to say this is what my brother will be getting as a belated birthday present.- 3:30pm - What else besides cars and guns could The Nate possibly do in Las Vegas? Find a Cigar shop owned and operated by a Cuban defector.
I couldn’t tell you much more about the place (and I doubt the owner would want me to), but it was awesome. Big leather couches and a 50″ plasma to watch European football and spring training on. The guy was easily the Cuban version of Alfred Hitchcock, 5′7 about 325lbs and bald. Around the time we went, he had already apparently smoked “nine” cigars since he came in (around 11am). The Nate sampled one and found it to be quite fantastic.
Granted the Sportsblahg is not Zagat or Orbitz, but the next time you’re in Las Vegas and need to do something “different”, well, we hoped we helped you find that.
Leave a Reply