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Whether it's that hurricane that soaked L.A. and Vegas or living through all of that heat, then congratulations to you... you've survived those dog days of summer. But with that taste of fall in the air stretching from Not So Scary Nights with Mickey & co. in Florida to football about to kick off in Kansas City, it's also back to school season for those who follow the fifth major pro sport... as The MTV Challenge has just kicked off a new cycle. And we at DCBLOG are back to covering our primary beat.
When we last covered The Challenge back in March earlier this year, Ride or Dies saw a classic confrontation in the $1 million final that pitted four teams with two multiple champions, a worthy rookie team and a pair of all-out veterans who duked it out for 100 hours in the European wilderness. In the end, it was Tori & Devin that took their first title rings... and as for one of those six runners-up who fell to them in that marathon, her ex Jordan came back on the World Championship that followed on Paramount+ and added that honor to his three titles.
And after that long offseason of sorts, we begin anew again with Season 2 of the CBS version of this longstanding MTV staple... and we all know what happened last time out with that controversial final, but other than that, it was an eventful season. This time around, another all-star cast of alumni from Big Brother, Survivor and The Amazing Race have heard the call from TJ Lavin to suit up... but just as they think that this is just a season for themselves to prove themselves, an invasion of jet skis will tell otherwise. And that more than breaks the ice for an opening act that will set to the tone for this summer and fall, including a titanic battle off the bat in the elimination chamber.
After the break, DCBLOG kicks off not only a new cycle of covering The Challenge in Season 2 of The Challenge USA and its double-hour opening act... but also a brand new tradition of sorts on here as we relaunch our weekly MTV episode posts with the all-new Challenge WRAP. We hope you like it.
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.
