Pun City Cruises Death Valley and the Prize Table

March 12th, 6th day of the trip. This blog is omitting March 11th, since it can be summed up in the following paragraph.

Drove to Los Angeles, met Pun City's friend Josh for lunch, drove to Pepperdine's graduate campus and Long Beach State's campus, got average to below average Mexican food for dinner w/ Josh, crushed Josh in tennis, then crashed at Josh's anticipating a very early morning.

Ahhh...back to March 12th. The Los Angeles to Las Vegas drive got off to a rocky start when this blog couldn't follow Mapquest's directions via nowhere, but a gas station clerk pointed Pun City in the right direction.

Driving through Death Valley is a little weird. It's not as unpopulated as this blog was led to believe. This blog is convinced that there aren't any points through the whole span where it would be tough to walk to the next exit for gas. Also, there are a number of "mini towns" spread through the whole stretch that make it pretty normal. Plus there's this (relatively) large town called Barstow that is the centerpiece of the drive.

The traffic problems led to this blog getting to Las Vegas a little late. The opening Men's 8-9 game between Wyoming and Colorado State was almost to halftime. Approaching Las Vegas was pretty cool, a lot of huge skyscraping hotels coming out of a flat desert area.

Within Vegas, this blog found it somewhat tough to navigate the Strip at anything over a snail's pace, but this was to be expected. The Mountain West or the Thomas & Mack Center had a few good ideas this blog is going to cover now, but keep in mind that these applied throughout the stay in Vegas, for future blog reference.

One cool idea was general admission tickets for everyone for sessions that were not expected to be well-attended. This included all women's games except for the championship, and the men's 8-9 game. So, for the 8-9 game, Pun City was in the front row (behind the hoop), which was a nice spot.

Another idea that worked out cool for Pun City was the tickets you got when you paid for parking. On this day, this blog got a red ticket to throw in the dash. The parking voucher was good all day, so you can come and go as you please, as long as you have a red ticket. Keep that in mind for the next post.

Colorado State, winless in the regular season, broke out some new shoes for the tournament and won over Wyoming in an upset.

Colorado State's new shoes did the trick.

This leads to the final cool idea from the Mountain West. They made All-Session pass buyers get seats for the women's games along with the men's tickets, so Pun City had tickets to 4 women's games if it wanted to go to those for the rest of the day. As it turned out, this blog only wanted to go to about 1 and a half, but it was a cheap option for killing time around Las Vegas.

The first move this blog made after the Men's game was to the State Farm Insurance table, where they had a spin-to-always-win table giving out branded merchandise. Pun City was going to do that, but first tried the Pop-A-Shot rig they had set up. The record was 42, and this blog was a little concerned it would fall well short. The woman working the stand taunted Pun City by saying a girl had set the record and that this blog wasn't going to beat it. But, this blog got 50, and for setting the record, they let me choose any of the available prizes, and this blog ended up with a wristband and a water bottle. Then Pun City spun the wheel and got some free flip-flops.

Given that this post is getting pretty long, Pun City is going to hold it right here. Next post should have updates on checking into a hotel (that was missing a little something), going to the casinos, and fast food dining.