BY DC CUEVA
A little short but sweet reveal here: as I return to active duty on this website, not much has changed in my world. Two years have now past since my dad's passing and funeral, and that has forced me to take a sabbatical from regular blogging and video work to tend to being the big man in my family... and we continue to feel his absence every day since, even as my kids, sister & bro-in-law are with us along with my cousin & her hubby from L.A. for this long weekend.
As this summer concludes today with that first Monday of September known as Labor Day, it was just another 104 days of sorts. I spent nineteen of them watching the world's best, and the Paris Olympics represented a chance for all of us to take our minds of everything going on in our world to watch what became one of the most memorable Games ever. The time before all of that with all the division and everything else going on made wanting to escape all that much more worthwhile... and if you know what the slogan I got to preach during that awful time we just got out of is one thing, then there is that time where the need to escape out of that shell of being at home is very much needed. That's the basis of this.
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My very first Vegas trip was during that summer of '94 when my family, cousins and relatives flew to the Desert... and when you have a lot of kids too young to roam the casinos, you pretty much are resigned to having to stay at Circus Circus, which we did for one long weekend. And it was in that playhouse of a resort complex where I actually got lost, and was separated from my party for a couple tense hours before we reunited in our hotel room. But that was just an inauspicious prelude to a relationship with a city what would ultimately join music, sports and reality TV as a major passion of mine by the time I returned to Vegas, not as a wide-eyed kid but a 25-year-old adult in 2007.
So began what has become an annual to biannual tradition of coming to Las Vegas that has now lasted for more than half of the last thirty years -- twelve trips in all during that time, and eleven in this current era. My trips to this city have become just as anticipated for me personally as waiting anxiously for the Olympic flame to be lit, and where every one of the twelve trips in the twenty-nine previous years have been memorable in producing many stories worth telling and documenting. And just about everyone in my whole family have come with us at one time or another for the best time of our lives, which is almost always the case when you take a 90-minute flight or nine-hour drive to the desert.
The past few Vegas trips have brought me a better appreciation of how important Vegas is to me and what it is also to my family: the tenth in 2019 came months before both the world and Vegas shut down by the pandemic, while the eleventh in 2021 came months before my world came crashing down by my dad's cancer battle... and the twelfth last year was the first Vegas trip I ever took without him at our side with me and mom. There was also some drama with momma and our third member of our traveling party that led to a falling out afterwards... but that's not of anything else to elaborate much more here.
Earlier last year, I officially severed the last contractual tie I had before the lockdown where I officially transitioned into becoming a full-time and self-employed content creator... and I have always seen my Vegas trips as a playground for me to put those video and camera work to great use. Just a glance over at DC YouTube and the hundreds of videos I've posted there in the eight years, and it is perhaps a major reason in why Sin City has grown in stature on a personal level -- and it doesn't put into account the thousands of hours of Vegas content I've watched from various YouTubers just about every day in the past several years as our family's daily escape.
It was obviously no surprise that a few of my favorite moments of the last trip came when I met not one, but four Vegas YouTubers in Jaycation, Norma Geli, The Other Me and Sin City Angel. The first two came as it happened live on his YouTube channel as he celebrated reaching 100,000 subscribers, and the other two came during what has to be the single most memorable of the forty-four days of my Vegas experiences: Freakmont Friday on Halloween weekend in downtown at the Fremont Street Experience. And even now, because of my inactivity the past several months the entire YouTube vlog series from last year has still remained stuck on that Friday... but need not worry, work will resume on getting new videos from that trip prepared to be produced for the next couple months ahead.
That is because, by the time that the season finale of that series covering DC VEGAS XII is finally published, that will be just at when I will be COMING BACK to Las Vegas for trip #13. The dates on which that trip will go down are now set in stone as far as the hotel is concerned (that place we're staying in shall remain a secret until before we leave), and all that's left is to just book plane tickets... then, the countdown will officially begin for the week of NOVEMBER 11th, just after everything from that thing the week before should finally die down. It will be the second time that I will have celebrated a birthday in Vegas: the last came in 2009 when Manny Pacquiao fought Miguel Cotto, and where I went by myself to the MGM Grand to soak in the fight night atmosphere... and also, when my late dad came back to our hotel room completely wasted after seeing the Pac-Man win.
As the promo video that proceeded my 2021 trip can attest (and unfortunately, there is no such clip to accompany this reveal), Vegas represents that ultimate of all escapes from both the world and our lives. And as I get to work on both the blog (recaps on the first elimination and team challenge on Battle of the Eras are forthcoming here, among other things) and the DC Vegas XII vlogs, the preparation for this 2024 trip will get underway. I have started mapping out the best laid plans for this year's extravaganza which will only begin once I walk through the terminal towards the baggage area at Reid International - from putting together my arsenal of technology (six cameras & other gadgets) and fashion, to the playlist and possibilities for the many experiences there... don't be mad if I get behind on the content schedule -- it's likely I'll be busy getting set for four days in the desert again.
And there is a reason I why come to see these trips as, what I always allude to, my very own Super Bowl. And as we are a few days from the start of the pro season as far as football is concerned, now Vegas is on the clock: it's now seventy days until #DCVegas XIII... may the countdown begin again.
- I AM DC
@DC408DXTR
