Wait... It's REAL?

After a sleepless Saturday night, with everything packed, typed up, printed out and organized, we left for the airport. It wasn’t until we got to Portland that we realized we forgot the charger to one of our cameras. Hopefully, that would be the worst of our problems, and so far, it has been.

Our plane was delayed for take-off, one of the runways got shut down because a plane skidded off the edge and took out all the lights. That is NOT something you want to hear from your pilot. Neither is (once you’re in the air) “sorry for the delay, we had to wait to make sure everything was alright to take off from the shorter runway, and man was it short.”

Two cheers for professionalism.

The delay caused us to be late for our flight out of Philly, and in turn, we didn’t get in to Vegas until 11pm (Vegas time).

All I can say is “WOW.”

If you get a chance to go to Vegas, you should do so, if only for the view from above. It was fantastic. Diamonds don’t have the sparkle or the definition. We had to come around Vegas to land, and luckily it was right outside our window the whole way around. It was like a lake of light in the middle of the desert. A fantastic pool of colors with a razor sharp shore surrounded by... nothing.

As a testament to how this place works, when I stepped off the plane, ten paces in front of me and about six to either side, I was surrounded by slot machines. The airport ITSELF reminded me of Foxwoods. We are currently staying at the Aladdin Casino and Resort, the new home of the Pageant. It is nice being in the middle of it all.

“Enough about the trip in, Mike! What about Miss America?”

Miss America? Well. I haven’t left the Aladdin yet, so I can’t say for the rest of the city, but you can’t go anywhere without hitting a poster or (quite literally) billboard. This is a BIG deal here. The monitors have advertisements on rotation. Our room keys are “special edition” MAO cards, even the elevators are wallpapered Deidre Downs. It was a little overwhelming at first.

Last night the contestants put on a fashion show at a local mall (yes, Las Vegas has a mall, it's actually a city. It even has a McDonald’s, which I half expected to have a giant neon sign).

Today is a simple day. No meetings for the press yet, our first meeting is tomorrow, so I am probably going to go walk the strip, or see what 25cent blackjack holds in store for me. Feel free to leave comments, and keep checking back, I will have an update this evening about the day around midnight (Vegas time).