Well, we are here! The airline portion of the trip was very uneventful. I think we must have picked the perfect day to fly. We were there at the airport in plenty of time and there was no line at all. The flight out of Roanoke wasn’t even near full. Everything was on time and there was no rushing around.

We picked up our convertible at the car rental. It’s a brand new car with only 158 miles on it. A Chrysler Sebring. We couldn’t believe our luck since the last time we came here we rented a Jeep with only 6 miles on it.

Then we hit The Strip traffic. We sat for 2 hours trying to get to the Venetian. Very aggravating. We didn’t get there until midnight. That’s when our luck started turning sour.

We are not rich people and I very carefully had planned and budgeted out everything on this trip and allowed for some unexpected expenses. I have been buying tickets, making reservations, and planning since the summer. That way everything was paid for well in advance of even thinking about leaving home.

Well, the Venetian has a policy of $150/day required as a hold on your credit card. Ouch! I hadn’t prepared for that sort of unexpected expense. I figured a few hundred dollars for the entire stay.

Then there was just one problem after another relating to registration and payment. It was so late and we were so tired (it was really after 3:00 AM according to our EST bodies) that I was just ready to go sleep in the car. They finally allowed us to just check in for the night and said the rest could be straightened out tomorrow when their office opened. Good night!

Saturday I wrongly assumed that we could complete our check-in process and be on the way to the places on our itinerary. Instead, we spend all day fighting with the Venetian until 2:00 PM that afternoon. By 10:00 AM I decided that we would just check out and come back and check in on Monday. They wouldn’t let us check out or we would lose all the reservation for AU. I attempted to get them some information that they needed from the Internet, but they would not allow me an Internet code to do so. I ended up carrying my laptop downstairs to a free WiFi area to get info out of my email.

Because it was a weekend everything was really multiplied in difficulty and I was greatly unimpressed with the way the Venetian handled it. Besides that, we were still tired and realized that we hadn’t eaten since breakfast on Friday at home.

I was finally able to call someone at home from my office and get them involved. We didn’t even stay around to see it through and simply trusted that it would all work itself out. We paid for our personal nights and the incidentals and got out of there as fast as we could for some breakfast off the strip at a great local place.

So, we missed our Lake Mead cruise which I had paid for in advance. We attempted to go to the Hoover Dam anyhow even though it was late in the day, but by the time we got there we saw miles and miles and miles of traffic waiting to get there. So those pre-paid tickets went to waste as well. So much for planning.

We had planned on seeing the dam and lake and then traveling along Rt. 66 to stay for a free night Saturday night and then seeing more sights on Sunday before returning to Vegas for the Beatles LOVE show. It was so late there wasn’t any point in heading out from the dam and we wouldn’t have been along Rt. 66 until dark. It was too late to cancel our reservation for our free night so we lost that too.

We returned to the Venetian and collapsed. We went to bed early and slept 12 hours. What a stressful day.

Sunday we wandered around and did some walking until I got checked in at the Speaker Ready Room. It was great to finally meet several people that I’d only known through email or webcasts. I saw several people I knew along the way including Shaan Hurley. It amazes me that people even remember who I am.

The LOVE show Sunday night was fantastic! There was so much to look at that it was hard to know what you were missing. The music was great. Beatles music is my all time favorite. Peter was at the final Beatles concert and while the concert was not all that great, it was the experience. He’s my own little piece of history.

Monday we will take the car out again and go out for breakfast off the strip and try to salvage some time to ourselves. I am rehearsing my presentation. I want to be the best speaker of all the new speakers. I realize it’s a long-shot with all the great presenters here, but I’m sure going to give it my best.

Tonight there is a speaker’s dinner and then two parties/mixers (there are really many) including the bloggers and beta testers and the Revit mixer. It will be nice to put some faces to names.

Tomorrow the real work/fun begins!