DC VEGAS XIII: A Birthday Escape in the Desert

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

What does the word "escape" mean? Its dictionary definitions are many, like breaking free from control or confinement as in escaping from prison, or that key on the very top left corner of any computer keyboard. A better meaning of it as far as nouns are concerned reads, "a form of temporary distraction from reality or routine," and there is one place that can lay claim to being the most ideal place of escape that there is in the entire world. And as this latest DCBLOG deep-dive takes place, the events depicted in this post had its date set for the week after what happened in our nation, but also the one week that I look forward every year... but this was one that was a bit unusual than normal for one very special reason.

All Photos Taken by the Blogger

In the midst of this past summer's heat and me enjoying what is my most binge-worthy TV miniseries -slash- sports event, while I was watching the Paris Olympics my mom booked plane tickets and a hotel room for the one event that I look forward to doing most every year for almost the last two decades -- a fall classic that stretches its lineage further back to 1994. Almost a hundred days after my #1 supporter and our family bedrock made those reservations, I was on the ground for this year's edition of DC VEGAS... and for only the second time in my 41-year-old life I was celebrating a birthday not in my Silicon Valley neck of the woods, but instead in that happy place in the desert that has grown from humble beginnings into the one place on earth that I love traveling to every year.

Every Vegas trip I've made in the last thirty years have had their own special character or meaning to it: the first one saw a then young 10-year-old get separated from family in a crowded casino, which is why I had to wait over a decade for the second. That return in 2007 marked the start of both my grown adult phase of sorts as a 23-year-old then, and of these regular trips when my newlywed sister & brother-in-law decided to tag me along for the ride. So many of these glorious trips and its assorted memories have followed as these journeys have since become a near-annual tradition, just as I would grow a big love affair with Sin City that's joined music, sports and reality TV as my biggest passions... all while using this place to help burgeon my skills as a content creator beyond this blog and into YouTube.

Although my actual one was three years ago with my 2001 grad class, every Vegas trip feels like an annual high school reunion with this metropolis of 2 million being that long-lost friend. And whenever the last digit in any annual tradition reaches 5 or 0, it's more than worthy of a celebration or special commemoration of a milestone. So it was only appropriate for the thirtieth anniversary of that very first trip I made to this desert oasis that this escape to this happy place for DC Vegas XIII just might be the best one of the thirteen times I've been to this city, which might just double as my second home. For this instance, the number thirteen isn't just the date of my birthday, but also this number is lucky indeed.

DC VEGAS XII: Just Another One of Those Epic Sin City Weekends...

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Usually, the way things work at DCBLOG is that it takes a good deal of time, effort, thought and detail to put together the many posts and the outstanding content that this site has been able to offer on here the past ten years. But for someone who has put this passion project on pause for much of this year for tend to a new family reality but who has just got back from a city he loves so very much, this blogger decided that he did not want to wait to let it all out after letting it marinate a bit before it's published on here. Hence, this post began its draft just eighteen hours after he departed his favorite city on this planet and returned home back to reality, and now it sees light on my biggest weekend.

All Photos Courtesy of... ME!

On this long Veteran's Day weekend, I'm celebrating my birthday smack dab in the middle of the busiest time of year when it comes to celebrating the holidays: today, November 13, falls right in between Halloween and Thanksgiving with the ensuring Christmas season riding on its coattail. Off of this site, I've been marking it with the ones who I love the most, and who are my greatest supporters: my family and a few of my relatives who flew in from New Jersey. But in many ways more than you can count, the #DCBDay celebrations began two weeks early just two weeks ago -- as it normally is the case in this guy's calendar. And when it comes to getting the party started, there's no better place to get to celebrate an early birthday than in the ultimate of happy places that there is on this earth.

So much has changed in my life since the last time I went to Las Vegas: mid-November of 2021 came at almost a last-minute kind of trip being booked a month beforehand instead of two, and I got to go on my first big vacation since this world changed like night and day a few months after that tenth trip. But as I got to stay in the luxurious Wynn tower, did an all-nighter at the town's newest hotel across the street at Resorts World and paid my first visit to downtown, there was no hint that the perfect world of this blogger and his family would turn upside down. This was the last vacation my dad would ever go on in his 71-year-old life, and four months before the heartbreaking news that he had been diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer that would claim him the following summer.

Mariano loved going to Vegas as much as I did and go to the casinos as much as my mom... and as we continued to mourn his absence a year after his death, the feeling has always been there to recapture that Vegas feeling. Just that jealousy I had for those in my inner circle who flew there on weekend trips and gave me no advanced warning over the summer, and being a loyal viewer of the daily flood of Vegas YouTube videos only fueled the anticipation I had of going back once again. But fear not, earlier this summer my mom booked that flight for the pre-Halloween weekend... so started the 127-day leadup that culminated in that twelfth #DCVegas trip just like the anticipation sports fans like me have for an NFL season or most especially the Olympics: everything all leading up to a few weeks ago.

DC VEGAS: Countdown To The Dirty Dozen

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

This brief post here that's short but sweet on this Labor Day Sunday... and it has just been revealed on all of my social networks just a half-hour ago including a new YouTube teaser as seen below.

Anyone who knows me will be most interested to know that there is one thing that stimulates this one more than any other topic in my house: any talk within our entire inner circle of family, friends and relatives about the city that has grown from one that I first visited as a young kid, but which has grown in the past decade & a half to becoming the biggest single happening in my universe. Even a single mention of it while I am on this desktop that I do blog posts like this will garner a keen eye from me.

When I took that first ever trip to Las Vegas in the summer of 1994 as a young kid on his summer vacation, I had not much to do on that trip... and where kids like myself back then had just the arcades and the midway at Circus Circus to hang out in. But little did I know back then that it would become the preferred and favorite vacation spot for both myself and for our entire family -- both mine and in our circle. Eleven times in the course of twenty-seven years -- including ten of them in fourteen -- have I been able to set foot in Sin City... plus, there have been so many other trips that those in my family, my cousins and my relatives have taken place there that I wasn't a part of.

The last trip I took in 2021 turned out be meaningful in so many ways: the first I took in not only two years, but also one that took place during the pandemic... and like so many others, it was just as memorable -- first trip to Fremont Street in downtown, a Strip view for our hotel room in at the Wynn, and everything else. But most poignant of all, this Vegas trip turned out to be the very last big vacation that my dad ever took in his life... and eight months after celebrating his 71st birthday a few weeks earlier with me, brain cancer took him away from us much too soon than we all had expected -- though if he had wanted Vegas to be his last trip, he certainly made the most of that opportunity... and having just marked a year since his untimely death earlier this summer, we still feel that void in my house.

Twenty-two months after that last trip to that favorite happy place of all, here I am announcing that DC VEGAS XII is now set in stone. There is one reason why my blog work hasn't been as timely as I would have wanted: when my mom made those reservations earlier this summer, that's when the planning process began for this year's big trip. It's as if you have been waiting all summer for it, but yet I have been at work starting to plan out what I want to do for these extravaganzas... one that might take four days for it to unfold, but which take four months for me to ponder what I want to do once I step foot in the Harry Reid International Airport terminal after that hour & a half's flight from California and being full of anticipation just like the football season that's just begun in college and this week in the NFL.

The way things are for me, I've "accepted" that dream job of being a self-employed content creator in addition to being man of the house... and one of those duties is getting to be a part-time YouTuber. If you've seen my DC Vegas videos there, I have put a lot of work into creating those nearly 300 clips of various lengths spanning nine of my trips... and it will be no different when it comes to getting to capture most every minute of this fall's rendezvous. That is, except that I have just bought my very first GoPro action camera... and that will join a few other cameras in my arsenal -- two regular vlog cam's, a gimbal, a camcorder & my phone -- that will disobey that infamous "What Happens in Vegas" stigma.

To put it out there in the open here, I've let those in our circle know that I am ready to take a Vegas trip at any time and will be willing to tag along if they wanted to invite me. It hasn't panned out as much as I wanted so far this year... but now that we have our date set for the last weekend of October (and it will mean, likely sightings on the Strip and on Fremont Street of Halloween costumes) -- I am now officially in that mood of anticipating what is always, in my world at least, the biggest event of all... and one that I see as my very own Super Bowl. If we can speed ahead to Thursday, October 26th, it'll be fine... we will sure have a lot of fun once again in this Ultimate Escape.

- I AM DC

@DC408DXTR

DC Vegas XI - A Vegas Vacation Unlike Any Other

This DCBLOG Post & Its Accompanying YouTube Series is Dedicated in Loving Memory of My Late Dad Mariano, Who Was with Me on This 2021 Vegas Trip That is Being Documented on Here, and Who Passed Away the Following Summer After a Brave Battle with Brain Cancer.

A #DCBLOG SPECIAL

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

     ESTIMATED READING TIME: 34 mins.

One year ago at this time, my world was about as perfect as you can have it... but a month earlier was somewhat different. At the beginning of October 2021, I was so busy with this very DCBLOG site and covering the one thing that takes over the full attention on here of The Challenge and the world that surrounds it & other MTV Reality shows -- this site's primary beat. But during a year where things returned to normal a bit, and where leading into Season 37 of that show I got to enjoy the one event that gives me reason to take my mind off of this hobby in the Tokyo Olympics, I never even thought that there would be something that, to me, is just as big a deal as those two events define last year.

Sports and MTV Reality shows are among my four biggest passions right now: a third is Music -- and proof of my love of that comes in another of my traditions before something big happens to me. There, I got to do something you all probably got to do when Thanksgiving comes around and just before Christmas: going on a binge-buying fest -- but not for gifts for loved ones. For there, I spent money on buying legal online music to compile a vacation playlist... for that it led into the fourth & newest member of this quartet of what I'm into the most: everything that's related to Las Vegas.

Vegas has grown from just being a small vacation town to now being in the big time, and where (as I've written here before) it has also grown in stature to me on a personal level. I first got to go there as a kid on my summer vacation back in 1994... and obviously there wasn't much to do there other than roam through the Circus Circus midway. But it was in 2007 and well after I had turned adult age that I truly got to experience Sin City for the first time... and ever since, it has almost become a bit of a personal Super Bowl to me: the single biggest occasion that I have looked forward the most almost every year for the past decade & a half.

To me, the vacations I take to Southern Nevada aren't just a simple little trip, it also feels very much like an event. Ten previous times I have gotten to venture on either that 90-minute flight or that 9-hour drive from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, and each of them have been special. I've gotten to experience a lot over the thirty-six total days of my trips over the last quarter-century, from going to the biggest hotels in town to spending quality time with family and relatives as we have also experienced the evolution of this city into a major metropolis that brings millions of people the world over to the desert. And the addition of professional sports to the town has only fueled that growth, even with many challenges including the decreased size of Lake Mead on the outskirts of town as of late.

So, to think that there would be an eleventh edition of DC VEGAS would not have been possible back during the heat of last summer and during a time where we have been reminded many times to be very cautious during this time. But as it turns out, the return of yours truly to my favorite city during a global pandemic turned out to be just as memorable as the ten others that came before it. And also, there was something just as poignant that came out of it that proved another point that's just as important.