Well, it was SEMA time again. For those of you that don't know what SEMA is (which should be a lot of you) it is the largest automotive aftermarket convention in the world. Two million square feet of exhibits overflow the Las Vegas Convention Center. Some people claim to go to the show to make new business contacts, etc, but we all know that its really just a chance to go to Vegas.
I won't bore you with the details of the show. I'm a car guy and even I was overdosed with the damn things. Here are a couple photos, though: the Michelin booth and the Giovanna booth. There are roughly $4,000,000 of vehicles in each booth. Shiny, shiny.
A fun note is that the Mopar booth had a racing simulator with two seats representing two cars in a Nascar race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The line was fairly long, but Vlad and I managed to race it three times. We were each driving in a pack of 20 cars in a 6-lap race. After the first race the operator told us that no one had done better than a 3rd-place finish since the show had started. Well, we couldn't walk away from that challenge, so we raced again and Vlad took first place. As the crowd cheered we got in line again, and during our third race I took first place! Felt pretty good, even if it was just a game.
But, as usual, the cars were just a sideshow to the mutant city. My buddy Vlad and I each got hooked up with some free top-floor rooms at the Hard Rock Casino. They overlooked an awesome tropical pool area and the strip was just past that. When we checked out we noticed that the rooms were over $500 per night. Not too shabby!
We managed to have a little fun. One night was the Scion party at Body English. VIP wristbands got us inside quickly and we had a private booth overlooking the dance floor. An open bar meant that we had a stack of drinks on our table the entire time.
Another night we saw the Bodies Exhibition at the Tropicana. It was spooky. Real bodies had been preserved and disected to show off the various systems. It was eery to realize that every body displayed was a living, breathing Chinese person whose body had been preserved 30 years ago. After that we walked through the Titanic exhibit, which featured a scale model of the ship that was about 40' long and a recreation of the grand staircase from the First Class level. Too cool.
On another night we went to see Lance Burton at the Monte Carlo. He disappeared and reappeared several times, then made a Corvette fly around in the air over the stage. Neither of us had a clue how he did these things... amazing. We watched The Prestige after that, which was a movie about magicians set in the early 1900s. Go see it, pretty good even when you didn't just witness the illusions in real life.
I was only in Vegas for about 48 hours, but I really couldn't wait to get out of there. That place is so damn overwhelming that quiet, little, rainy Portland looks so much more appealing. Of course, I'll be back in Vegas in a couple of months, anyway. Vegas, baby!
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