Vegas Bound...Again

David R.

March 18, 2011 - 8:53 AM

Ahhh, another blog from the spacious cabin of a Southwest Airlines jet. Today's voyage through the skies will bring me to Sin City for another spring break adventure.

We are currently on our way to Spokane, Wash., America's most exciting city, where we have a not-so-brief two hour layover before making the final leg of the trip to McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. Our flight left Portland at seven in the morning, so we left my buddy's house in Lake Oswego at around five a.m. to make it to PDX in time. It's been a rough morning for everyone, including the infant in front of me that has been steadily crying for the last 20 minutes. I pounded a delicious late before I got in the plane and luckily it has helped to shake out some of the early-morning cob webs.

Our flight is expected to get into Vegas at around 1, and the first bullet point on the agenda is to hit the pool at our hotel, the MGM Grand. We have been told that this casino has the nicest pool on the strip so I'm pretty stoked. There are few things that are better than a nice float in the lazy river under the desert sunshine.

March Madness is officially underway, so I plan to spend a little bit of time at the sports book catching up on all the action. As it usually is, my chance for a perfect bracket is already ruined after only one round. Thanks a lot Louisville. The four-seed Cardinals lost to 13-seed Moorehead State. It's games like these that always throw a kink in everyone's bracket. No one that thinks logically could have possibly picked this upset, and I know many people had Louisville advancing a few rounds farther in the tournament. Kentucky barely held on to a win over Princeton and the smell of upsets is in the air. Tournament time is always a frenzy but I can't think of a better place to watch the tournament madness than Sin City.

It's nice to be done with another winter term, but the end of finals week was a little more hectic than I originally anticipated with the Oregon men's basketball team participating in the CBI Tournament in Eugene. We won our first match up against Weber State and are scheduled for another game on Monday. Unfortunately it is on me to find a halftime group for the game, which should be difficult considering that all of the Eugene schools are on break. Regardless, it's exciting that the Ducks will move on and it would be fun to see them win it all.

I unfortunately don't know my grades for the term yet because I forgot to fill out my course evaluations. That is the University's way of forcing students to do them. If you don't, your grades are withheld. It's hard to remember during finals week and this definitely isn't the first time I have done this. Hopefully I'll be able to see them soon and they are as solid as I am expecting them to be. Until then, I'll be enjoying the weekend in sunny Las Vegas for the start of my last official spring break.