The team have safely managed to arrive in Las Vegas but the trip was certainly not without incident. Flying from Malaga, Spain to New York and then onto Las Vegas, the journey sounded straightforward enough. After the million and 1 questions from security at Malaga, I found out that I would be sat apart from my 3 colleagues travelling with me – Mario, Naomi and Andreas.
Whilst they enjoyed the extra legroom that comes from sitting in the emergency row of seats, I was literally wedged up against a window seat next to a couple going on their honeymoon. They obviously thought they had already reached their hotel judging by the amount of XXX rated action (that I usually have to supply a credit card number for) that was going on. I wanted to say “Get a room” but they spent the entire 8 hour flight to New York behaving like they were already in one.
We arrived late in New York and with only an hour to get off the plane, go through immigration, pick up our cases, dump them again and go through security again I knew we would be lucky if we made it. The queue at immigration seemed like it stretched all the way back to Malaga so we had some fighting to do to get to the front. Naomi was excellent and badgered every official there to let us go to the front and at her 4th attempt found someone willing to do so.
We all sailed through with the exception of Andreas who was nowhere to be seen. The remaining three of us still had bag dumping and security to get through and our flight to Las Vegas was leaving in 10 minutes – we would never make it. I arrived at the gate with Mario and Naomi having sprinted all the way there to see the guy closing the plane door. We could see the plane from the window but did not know if we would be catching it.
After some bargaining he let us on but would not wait for Andreas despite our pleading. As we took our seats on the plane and wondered aloud what time the next flight was, we saw a hot and flustered Andreas walking up the aisle to a huge cheer from all of us. Someone behind me asked why we were cheering and I told them it was because Andreas was a famous Swedish poker celebrity. They believed me.
So we all made the plane but what about our bags? Did they make the flight? Well, yes and no. Upon arrival in Las Vegas Andreas realised his case was still sat in New York and would be put on the next flight.
But it didn’t matter because we were finally in Las Vegas.
