It’s that time off year again: our internal Autodesk geekfest (called TechX) is being held this week in Las Vegas at the Resorts World Hotel. (It's held in a different city every year.)
I’ve come across to attend a Technical Leadership Forum on Monday, and then present a TechX session on using WebAssembly to create a Forma extension (in this case using VASA) on Tuesday. I’ll also be participating in a number of other activities before heading home on Friday.
As I wanted to be here in time for a reception on the Sunday night, I headed across on Saturday morning to fly from Zurich to San Francisco. (There are no direct flights from Switzerland to Las Vegas on Saturdays, it seems.) The flight wasn’t very busy, so I had the middle seat empty next to me. This meant I could catch a few hours of sleep, helped on my way by a formulaic Jason Stratham movie called The Beekeeper which seemed to be what might result if James Bond, John Wick and Hudson Hawk had a drunken threesome.
I’d chosen an itinerary with a 4-hour layover in SF, so despite the 60-90 minutes waiting to get through customs (there was a queue to *enter* the customs hall!) I still had time to leave the airport and meet my old friend Elise for sushi in San Bruno.
I was pretty shattered by the time I took the onwards flight, although the sun setting at the airport was very pretty.
On arrival in Vegas I somehow managed to negotiate baggage pickup and getting a taxi to my hotel.
I’d tried to book the Saturday night in the Resorts World, but there had been no rooms available (at least none that were affordable by normal folk). I did manage to get a room in the Circus Circus, which was very close by. The Circus Circus is a Vegas institution, having been mentioned in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and depicted in the movie with Johnny Depp of the same name.
Here’s what Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the hotel:
The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos... but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space.
Heading there from the airport the taxi driver explained why the hotels in that area of the city - next to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds - were so busy, this weekend. There was supposed to be the Lovers & Friends 2024 Festival held there on Saturday night:
Unfortunately high winds had meant that the event was cancelled just hours before it was due to start.
Anyway, it’s actually surprising I was able to get a room in the Circus Circus at all, considering the 60,000 people showing up for the concert. It wasn’t the fanciest room I’ve stayed at in Vegas by any stretch of the imagination, but I was just happy to see a bed.
It seems most of the 60,000 would-be festival-goers were checking out at the same time as me, the following morning, as getting an elevator down to the lobby was basically impossible. After 20 minutes of waiting I gave up and walked with my luggage down the emergency stairs, finding myself by the pool and having to work my way back to the lobby to check out. What fun.
The fact I could walk between the hotels was very nice, though. Here’s a snap I took of Circus Circus from The Strip:
A few hundred yards along, there’s the brand-spanking-new Resorts World:
And yes, my room isn’t really comparable.
Having dropped off my bags, I could head further down The Strip to the Fashion Show Mall - a pre-AU habit I’ve picked up from years of staying The Venetian or The Palazzo. I usually just wander around aimlessly, buying a new pair of jeans from Macy’s, followed by an over-sized (and -priced) Jamba Juice.
It felt somehow fitting to do this one more time, as I have no idea when - if ever - AU will come back here.
I’m now back at the hotel, writing this. I’ll be heading down to reception preceding the Technical Leadership Forum in a few hours: I have no doubt I’ll be catching up with lots of old friends over the coming days and I admit it’s nice to enjoy the calm before the storm.
