Lucky Day

Back from Vegas! And with a few stories to dole out over the next few days or so. (Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.) But we'll cut right to the chase for some of you who will surely ask -- did I win money?

Short answer: no. I lost about $90. But there's a longer answer.

Through Friday and Saturday, my trip was a pretty typical Vegas experience for me. I was doing really well at poker overall, but was foolishly giving into enough urges to play blackjack and craps with friends to put me only slightly ahead for the trip.

Then came Sunday night, when I burned up every bit of luck I had left for the trip. And I didn't make a dime. And I didn't mind at all.

A group of us had decided to head down to Fremont Street after the wedding on Sunday. Two of the group had never seen old downtown Las Vegas, and so it's just a thing you sort of have to do. And it's pretty lame, and you can see everything there is to see there in an hour or less, and then you're ready to go. But you still have to see it for yourself to know that, and I was willing to tag along.

Then we hopped in a cab and the driver got on I-15 to take us back to where we were staying on the South Strip. We're driving along at a normal pace in the center lane, when up ahead, we see brake lights coming on in the right two lanes about 1000 feet ahead, and people slowing down for something.

At almost the same moment, an SUV comes whipping by us on the right like an F-1 driver, starting to change lanes and cut in front of us barely before he's crept by. Our driver coolly gives the guy a wide berth.

But SUV is already cutting back into the right lane, having cut in front of another driver in that lane. And it's immediately and abundantly clear to both our driver and the other cut-offee in the right lane that Mr. SUV does not see the braking just barely up ahead of him.

What followed was the most violent accident I've ever personally witnessed. SUV slams on his brakes with maybe 200 feet to go, and you can see him start to whip the wheel to get off onto the shoulder. Then you see him almost give up that maneuver, because the top-heavy beast was wobbling, sure to roll over if he'd stayed the course.

Instead, he full-on rear-ended a mini-van going at least 40 miles an hour. I didn't get a clear view of the rest of the physics involved, but two more vehicles (one another mini-van) were brought into it all, one practically T-boned on the passenger side after being whipped around by the impact.

The next part played out even slower in my mind than watching the wreck itself, as our driver calmly moved over to the far left lane and drove by slowly. I was in the front passenger seat, and my window was cracked, and I could hear kids crying from car seats in the backs of both mini-vans. Parents were already scrambling to climb back from their front seats in one. I couldn't see any other movement in the second, but drivers from other cards were already running there. The back end of the third vehicle wasn't even recognizable as having been a car.

It only took a few seconds to get by, but it felt like minutes in my mind as I'm thinking, well, should we stop? What could we possibly do if we did? Look at all these people running to help already. Not to mention the cab driver was already calling it in as we were safely through the snare.

We made it safely to our destination. And the cab driver got a fairly crazy tip from us. (Much later, though, I must confess to the morbid curiosity of whether taxi drivers routinely get large tips for avoiding accidents, and if the misfortune of others is therefore a small boon for them.)

In any case, this burned up every bit of luck I had left for the trip. I played some more poker late last night, and today before flying home, but caught cold cards the entire time. It turned my "slightly ahead overall" into a losing trip to Vegas. But I'll take avoiding a massive accident over winning a few bucks at a low-limit table without complaint.

As a footnote, I just searched some web sites for local Las Vegas news stations, and found no mention of the accident. As I did find a story on a recent unrelated accident that yielded a fatality, I'm going to assume that fortunately, everyone involved in the crash we witnessed survived.

So a happy ending to the story? I suppose. Not a story I would have wanted to be telling, though. Extra glad to be home!