at the Stratosphere. The last time I was there must be 8 or 9 years ago when Christoph Haller treated Carmen Bates, her daughters, and me to dinner there. It looked the same. The food was great. I ate too much, or ordered to much and ate most of it, however that works. I was there courtesy of Johnph77’s generosity. We met through these pages about four years ago. John made it to one of our Poker Clan meets for breakfast at the Sun Coast when he was in town for a Pinochle Tournament back in 2003 – I think.

John was in town for another Pinochle Tournament and had promised he owed me a dinner for – oh God knows how many years. I didn’t feel he owed me anything but his generosity and friendship is warmly accepted.

On the way up to the tower, I met a little lady who was the elevator call person. She’s tiny, as old as me if not older, nice bubbly personality, can’t weigh more than 80 pounds if she weighs that. Once I was in the elevator, ascending to the clouds or somewhere with ear popping velocity, the elevator usher (hell…I don’t know, what do you call them?) asked me if I remembered the little lady out front. “Sure!”

“How many times do you think she’s ridden the Big Shot?”

He was waiting for an answer. I took a stab at it, “30?”

“Over 7,000 times. She’s featured on the Discovery Channel.”

Well…OK…she’s done something over 7,000 times that I am never going to do even once. If I’d known she was 7K Big Shot rider famous, I’d have taken her picture before jumping on the elevator. When I came down from dining, she was in another section I couldn’t get to since you have to go through a metal detector and have your belongings checked over before you are allowed to enter the elevator. The Big Shot is a platform type of apparatus that stands at the very top of the Stratosphere and goes straight up, without suspending your body out over an edge. Yes, the needle at the top of the tower.

The picture on the left is the Furniture Outlet Mall that seemed to appear magically over a six month time period. It’s huge, just off the freeway and Charleston by downtown.

The tower rotates, very slowly, and takes about an hour and twenty minutes to complete a revolution. The outer ring of the floor – inside the restaurant – which is about 3 feet wide, rotates independently of the dining floor and Billy lost her purse to the rotation. An employee must circle the area frequently because she brought two bags back to us, asking if they were ours…one was Billy’s. These are my fellow diners, Chris (married to Billy but Chris is not a Pinochle player), John, Peggy, and Billy – the last three are the Pinochle players. What a nice group of people. John was the only one that I had met previous to this outing. Chris and Billy live in Las Vegas, John lives in CA, Peggy lives ??

The Main Street Station – which is right downtown, just off the freeway, is the big patch of noise in this picture. The opening of this casino is one that always sticks a note on promotions and how expensive they can be. I can’t quote the figures but the casino operation was out somewhere like 70K in glassware the first 24 hours they were open. They had a special cut glass design and served all the drinks in it, people just took them all home for souvenirs. They also had cocktails servers on roller skates in one part of the casino.

I particularly like these two photos. I changed the settings on my camera more than once – was seated by the window – and we still had some degree of motion even though we were rotating very slowly. This is a light gathering setting, in which the subject and the camera must remain absolutely still. Damn…ain’t they kewl?

In the two pictures below, the Las Vegas Strip is to the right of the first one (facing South) – that’s the Sahara Hotel and Casino at the bottom of the picture. The second picture, that is the Strip right in the middle and Treasure Island sets back of the dark, empty space on the right, The Mirage is right behind TI. The line of lights down the middle is traffic on the Strip. The third picture is Palace Station – heading West on Sahara Street/Blvd. about a mile away from the Strip.

I had lobster and steak, it was excellent, the coffee was gooder than good – and I had a hot chocolate before my meal…yummy! Nice time, nice people, great food, lots of photos, and out the door into the cold night air in time to go home and tango in a PokerStars tournament in my Chasing Chris Ferguson project.

Thanks again, John. Safe trip home to all.