Bingo was his name-o

Ben and I went on a wonderful vacation last week. The next series of posts will be about said vacation. We broke it up in parts driving from LA to Park City with various stops in between.

Our first stop was Mesquite, Nevada... now I don't know how many of y'all have been to this little gem of a gambling town but most people drive right on by or don't make it past Vegas and for those that have been there, let's face, typically don't admit it... but I am not ashamed. We got a room for $40 (that allowed pets) at the Virgin River, that had a swamp cooler in the window, penny slots, a pool, a shooting range and Bingo (of course).

We arrived at about 3:00PM and decided to go right to the pool. I was really in the mood for some poolside cocktails and some mean desert sun but to my chagrin, only got the sun. The only cocktails to be had were the BYO kind, but we still managed to have a really pleasant afternoon, roasting in shade of a tree with the scent of chlorine in the background. It was oddly pleasant, no commerce, no lines, no noise.... just us the sun and a cement puddle... Marlboro Miles can't buy that type of bliss.

We then went into the casino where I decided to put some money down on the Roulette table. I choose our anniversary numbers (6 & 30) and wouldn't ya know it the dam thing landed on 6... shazam! One hundred and seventy five large ones... free of charge, no strings attached... which was then quickly lost at the blackjack table with just enough money left over to play a 7:00PM session of BINGO.

So now to the crux of the story.... BINGO is not an easy game. Before we even attempted to play with the big dogs ( or silver seniors or old people - whatever you want to call them) we had to get a 10 minute tutorial from the cashier. There are a bunch of buy ins and options and different colored cards and sheets and different games for each card. The whole process is exhausting and worthy of some sort of diploma upon completion. At any rate, we choose the card that had 9 games simultaneously, as it looked easy enough. The veteran players where sitting at there regular spots, some had various different daubber in varying shades of purple & pink (we even overheard one lady giving the heritage of here dauber line-up - "yeah I got this one in 67 for Valetines Day in Laughlin and this one here in was from Father's Day in 87 at Harrah's"). Some people adopted the electronic cards... called Travelers, I think they may give these away for free with the purchase of a land yacht, but they were the gamblers version of an animated etch-a-sketch, except easier and smoker friendly.

As we sat down... we had such high hopes, we really thought that this would be a relaxing way to spend an hour or so... but boy were we wrong. Holy Crap! I don't know how these seniors do it. The woman was calling out numbers so fast, we could barely check off one sheet before she was calling out another number. Ben and I were breaking a sweat, running our dobber over the sheets, trying to check our work... we barely had enough time to sip our beer or chat about the funny hairdo's in the room. By round 6 (I think there are 10) Ben looked at me and said... "This is not fun... make her stop". I told him "shhh, what number did she just say, B5?"

In the end, we didn't win anything... but this may have been attributed to human error, as we ended up missing a lot of numbers. However, we did gain a deep appreciation of those senior's ability to find and hunt down numbers and that is one thing that cannot be gambled away.