Atlantic City

Hoo boy. Not really sure where to start. The drive in was gorgeous - a turnpike lined with brightly changing trees, only flattening out at the very end, when the road literally spilled us right into the parking garage of Caesar's on the boardwalk. Wandered through the skyway to eventually find the front desk, in an absurdly large chamber with a 20 foot statue of Caesar Augustus, overshadowed only by the comically large frying pan on a fake fire (advertising some Emeril-endorsed venture) that a 5 year old kid kept leaping at, hoping to clamber up on the handle.

I was given a key to "Suite 2536", and I was struck with two thoughts: 1) Wow, high room!, and 2) the building didn't look that tall from the street. Sure enough, I got into the elevator and saw the floors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 25, 26.... Yep. My scenic vista is of the airconditioning units. Also, the floodlights that illuminate the building are a mere 4 feet from my window. Fortunately blackout shade technology is pretty advanced, and I did have a dark room to sleep in.

After a few hours of work, I met up with Mike in the lobby. Mike was my boss at the last job and helped engineer a soft landing into my current happy place. We have a tradition of having fun in big cities, and when he got a call to do a sales trip to Atlantic City, he called me up and asked if I'd join him - dinner on him. With AC being just 50 miles from Philly, plus hotels very hard to find this week in Philly anyway, I said sure!

We found a row of restaurants - all "brand extensions" of more famous restaurants - Phillip's Seafood, Continental, Buddacon, and heartbreakingly, Sonsie. Sonsie is a beautiful place in the Boston BackBay and has a lot of memories for me (and for Mike, actually). It's where Pamela and I shared breakfast on the morning we learned of Lady Diana's death, for one. Mike saw Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith at Sonsie one time, too. And now it's a "Brand". Sigh. We couldn't bring ourselves to eat there, so we enjoyed the asian-fusion flava of Buddacon, which was pretty ok. They had Talisker at the bar, and I was astonished to see how much they were pouring for $14. Easily a double, if not a triple. One would have been enough, but I had two.

Then it was off to the Casino. Happily they have smoke-free areas.

I'll leave the details out, but I'd just like to have it out there that I went in with $60, and left with $60. My numbers went up and down... but never really did anything. Mike went in with $100, and left with $1,400. That's Mike for you. He walked up to a quarter slots machine, put in a $5 bill, and won $125. He hit 3 of a kind AND a straight at the 3-card poker table. Blackjack was more of a controlled bleeding - up then down then up then down... but you do blackjack for fun, not profit.

At the end, we accidentally ventured into the smoking part of the Casino, and Mike lost $300 in rapid fire at a 3-card poker table run by a sinister man with shiny rings on his fingers... We took that as our cue to escape, and I was asleep before midnight.

This morning, I got up not feeling bad (which if you know anything about evenings out with Mike, you know they usually end with a headache), but desperate for coffee. The Starbucks I had spotted the night before in the Pier mall was blocked by a burly security guard - the mall's not open until 11. What sort of cruel world is it when there's a starbucks that is NOT OPEN at 7:30am for a guy who needs an espresso? I hit the internet and found another one, out in the "real world".

That meant I needed to find a way OUT of the Caesar's complex first. Several false starts kept me going through skyways to other Trump properties - and no signs for "Exit to Street Level". Finally I found a sign for "Bus Lobby" - I figured Busses are on the ground. And yes, it was an exit. I just had to weave through a throng of bleary eyed gamblers who were headed "home". The Starbucks wound up being 3 blocks away, in the middle of an outdoor shopping plaza, and I enjoyed a quad espresso with the entire Atlantic City police force.

It's back to Philly this morning, then straight out to Allentown. I guess some sports team in Philly did a good thing last night - so I expect a bit of mayhem.