Bright Lights City.

For those of you playing along, yes, I did backdate this post. And yes, Sarah, I can do that. It's my blog and you're not the boss of me.

Anyway.

Chris and I managed to endure our entire 5 hour flight to Vegas without actually speaking to one another thanks to our arsenal of books, iPods, and video games. I think somehow we both knew damn well that the flight there would be the last part of the trip to go quietly. And we were right, of course. Our cohorts Tori and Lindsay were waiting for us at the airport when we landed and there was much rejoicing. After our obnoxious reunion, the four of us headed out to the parking garage to Tori's car. We couldn't find it. Tori and Lindsay forgot where they parked. After dragging our luggage on and off the elevator, across the lot and back, and up and down the stairs a few times, Chris and I finally sat down and told Tori to come pick us up when she found the car. Then we made her take us to In-N-Out burger, which was awesome.

The next day we met up with the rest of our crew out in Boulder City to set up for Interbike's Outdoor Demo (our reason for being in Vegas in the first place). It was a long, hot day and the sandy desert wind was brutal, but it was fun to get to see all of our industry pals again. Then we spent the next two days busting our asses to get as many people on bikes for test rides as we could. Of course, we did make some time for shenanigans, including a repeat of last year's Monday night ride that ended under the moon and a drunk sushi waitress who danced a lot and called us motherfuckers.

Wednesday morning we headed over to the Vegas strip to join in the festivities surrounding Interbike. Chris decided to be a loser this year and flew out of Vegas on Wednesday afternoon, so Tori and I drove over together to check in at Treasure Island. I'm kind of a big deal, so when I checked into my room, I got upgraded to a suite with a jacuzzi. The lady who was checking Tori in told her that free upgrades were done randomly, but I'm pretty sure she was only saying that to make Tori feel better about her inferior room. We parted ways at that point but then met up later with some other friends to go watch CrossVegas, which turned out to be pretty cool. Nick and I ended up calling it an early night, but word on the street is that Tori and Troy had a hell of a time. I was a little sad to miss that, but then again, I'm not the one who stayed in bed all day Thursday. Besides, I knew I'd have plenty of time with Tori and Troy the following week.

I actually did a little bit of work on Thursday. By "did a little bit of work," I mean, "I stood around drinking and talking to people." My boss and I were supposed to go to the crit races together that evening, but she bailed, which was alright because then Nick and I got to use the VIP passes she had to eat free dinner and sit around drinking free beer while not actually paying any attention to the races. We had an extra VIP pass, so I found my friend Lisa to come join us. She actually wanted to see the race, but we were sitting down, so she yelled at this random guy in a suit to get out of the way, at which point, he took our picture:

I know. Random.

Friday was departure day for Tori and me, but Nick didn't have to work, so the three of us went to lunch at Hofbrauhaus, which turned out to be a very good call. It was relatively quiet since it was lunchtime, but I have a feeling that place is super fun at night. All the tables are those long picnic table ones and if the restaurant is full, you sit with groups of strangers and drink beer and there's a dude in lederhosen playing German music and doing tricks and stuff. He also drinks beer. If anyone wants to go, call me, cause I wanna go back and have more of these really huge beers:

So with our bellies full of beer and delicious German food, Tori and I bid the City of Lights adieu and started east toward Utah for a long and eagerly awaited retreat with some of the bike industry's most brilliantly shining stars (in our minds, anyway). But we stopped at In-N-Out burger first.

I promise there will be more pictures of that adventure. Believe it or not, the two pictures in this post are the only ones I have of my time in Vegas, and I didn't even take them.