After packing about 10 Amsterdam Derby Dames tank tops (with of course my name and number on the back!), 15 pairs of socks and a whole bunch of other stuff, my uncle took me to the airport this morning.
Going through security has never been this fun! My carry contained my skates and the TSA guy checking all the bags said "wow, nice skates, do you play Roller Derby?".
Now this might not seem strange to anybody in the US. But being from Europe, nobody knows what Roller Derby is, definitely not a guy working at airport security. But here they knew, not just him, but a whole conversation got started on me playing roller derby. Especially because my bag had to be checked. I thought my skates were going to be the problem, but I forgot about a bottle of water that was in the merch bag I stuffed in there last night. :)
So they guy took it out and all was fine. Before I left, he asked me one more question: "so you're a blocker right? I bet those skinny girls fly right off of you!".
And that was the start of my trip.
On the flight (only 2,5 hours) I was able to read up on my derby, in five on five magazine!
But derby couldn't keep my eye in the magazine once we started flying over the dessert and some of the most amazing sights were right there outside my little plane window
We were supposed to be able to see the grand canyon, but it was a little to cloudy. Maybe on the way back. Still the view from the plane was amazing.
Once at the airport in Vegas, it was so funny, I felt like a little kid in a candy store looking around at all those buildings I've seen in so many movies. The MGM, the Bellagio, the Luxor, pretty wild stuff!
But the very first thing I saw coming out of the airport was this
That just cracked me up!! The first thing I see in Las Vegas is a reference to something DUTCH! :)
When I got to the hotel Riviera there where some problems with checking in, but the lady behind the counter was super sweet and hooked us up with a really nice clean non smoking room. The first we had was smoking...and was just disgusting! Crazy thing about Vegas, you need to pay extra for non-smoking!! But as I said the lady hooked us up, so we didn't have to pay that much extra for a cleaner nicer room!
In the meanwhile the riviera is filling up with derby girls and boys. I have all ready met a few different people from the US and from Australia.
It funny when you look around the hotel lobby, you see all these different derby shirts and derby names printed on peoples shirts.
I have never been around as many derby people as I will be this week. And I've got a feeling this will be amazing and overwhelming!! :)
- Furrrocious