Travel is nothing new for the TD consultant. First-class upgrades, cross-continental day-trips and last-minute full-fare flights; it’s all in a day’s work. But there are some TD travel stories that are so incredible that they simply need to be told. Hence, we give you the first in what we hope will be a long series of stories on this topic, appropriately titled “Balls-to-the-wall Travel”.
Our friend (let’s call him Justin for now) decided to do some of the requisite flex-fly (or as some of you know it, “alternative travel”) with his hefty travel budget. So on this particular weekend, he decided to meet a few friends who were on the West coast. Not wanting to plan too far in advance, he buys a one-way ticket out to LA.
It all started out innocently enough: last-minute tickets to a celebrity-filled studio taping, dinner out on the town, but here’s where our story gets interesting. Not to be outdone by Justin’s one-way ticket (a bold move worthy in itself of rockstar status), his friends grab the first available rental car ({ahem}, correction, luxurious gas-guzzler) and hit the road for a trip to Vegas. For how long? At this point, who knows.
Five hours and many coffees later, it’s Vegas, baby. Along the way, our friend Justin (who is now on the cusp of rockstar status) sees a sign for a gentleman’s club of unquestionable taste and luxury. What a dilemma: gamble now, or gamble later?
Two hours and several drinks later, our characters emerge fully satiated and ready to gamble away the 4 hours left before sunrise. Our friend Justin starts with $80 in his hand, half-expecting to lose it all on his first bet on roulette, a dangerous game even if you are not playing with Muscovites. But Lady Luck has her way with Justin and at the end of the night (11AM still counts as ‘night’ if one hasn’t slept, right?), our friend Justin (now a full-fledged rockstar) is swimming in benjamins…one thousand dollars’ worth, to be exact. The details are unclear, but somehow our rockstar friend Justin turned $80 into $1,000 in just a few hours of gambling. Satisfied that they have pushed their luck to the limit, our friends face a dilemma. “What’s next?”, they asked. San Diego, of course.
After hitting the gaslamp district, TJ, closing out some crazy $500 bar-tabs, and other undisclosed adventures, our friends finally crash for the first decent night’s sleep in almost 40 hours.