The Vegas Files

5.30AM British time and the blinding neon light is sending me into a mad rage "What the f*ck are they doing putting these lights on at 5 in the morning? People are trying to sleep and they put these f*cking lights on full blast" Karl chuckled to himself in agreement and then hid his head in his hands.

No, we had not landed in Vegas, but were on the 3.30AM Transpennine Express to Manchester Airport. I had only had 2 hours sleep between 12 and 2, and the previous night only had 6 hours sleep after an impromtu trip to the Gallery nightclub. I had banked on getting some sleep on the train, but it soon transpired this would be an impossibility.

Our flight to Vegas was with KLM, and this meant we had to fly to Amsterdam airport to catch our transatlantic flight. With the airlines prohibiting passengers from carrying liquid in their hand luggage, I had not set aside any contact lens fluid for the flight. However, when we reached the check in desk, it became clear that a small amount of fluid was allowed. I measured out a few ml while Karl fired off an early contender for quote of the trip "What? You are not allowed liquid on the plane? Am I allowed to take my sausage roll on?"

After confirmation that Al Queda are no longer using baked savouries as detonation devices, we stocked up on caffeine and made our way to the plane. We were closely flanked by a group of Man U casuals who were connecting at Amsterdam on their way to Copenhagen, but although boisterous they seemed to be in good spirits and no carnage was caused on the flight.

Amsterdam saw a dykish looking member of security personnel interrogating us as to the purpose of our trip to the States, and then came a moment of abject fear as I checked my hand luggage and found my Gucci aftershave in there. It had somehow not been clocked on the X-ray machine, and I calculated the best thing to do was keep quiet, as alerting security would mean surrendering the expensive liquid.

The transatlantic journey was uneventful other than Karl's addiction to a computer game on the inflight entertainment system. 'Bejeweled' was a tetris-esque puzzler, and smashing Karl's high score led to an even heightened psychotic concentration from the shaven headed one. Karl would not put down the controller for 2 hours, despite calls for the system to be switched off when we were about to land.

We landed in Memphis, and immigration control saw several Eastern Europeans push past us in an attempt to gain quick entry to the States. I politely told one of them there was a queue, which had little effect, so after immigration we went to the bar for a couple of beers to calm down. As soon as we were settled on the cross-states flight, I fell asleep and was awoken by the sound of Beyonce and the neon lights of Vegas (Beyonce was on my I-Pod, not sitting next to me).

We arrived at our hotel to find that we had been allocated us a smoking, rather than non-smoking, room. This was soon the least of our troubles as we discovered a hyperdermic needle near the side of the bed. I asked Karl what could be worse than arriving at a smoke-filled drug hovel after a trans-atlantic flight, only to be reminded that this was actually better than the Hans-Brinker budget hotel. We went to the casino, tired. I put $50 on red. It came up black. Our luck was clearly out so we returned to the room and passed out on our smoke-stained beds. End of day 1.