Erin The Tourist...

To quote a great 20th century poet, ‘It was a good day’.

Yesterday I got my first full paycheck from my new job. Very nice. I got some over time, and the best part, my moving expense reimbursement. I of course used this money to pay back my mom, pay my rent, cable, electric, and phone. After that was complete I noticed something interesting.

I had money left over. Better yet, I had a nice sum of money left over. Apparently 16 hours of over time will do that for you! That, combined with the moving expense reimbursement that I didn’t have to pay back to anyone.

I pondered purchasing the parts to fix my computer but my mom smacked some sense into me via T-Mobile. I’ve been here almost a month and I haven’t done anything fun. Haven’t gone to the casinos, haven’t done anything touristy. Nothing.

So I decided to do something that no nerd in Vegas can pass up on. I went to the Star Trek Experience.

I’m not going to lie to you. It really was the most fun I have had in a very long time. I had a lot of fun going through the museum and seeing all the props from the show. But that isn’t really why you go to the experience.

I paid my fee to get in (29.99 after my locals discount – it pays to live out here!) and got into line for the 4D Borg experience. It was a Thursday afternoon so there really wasn’t a lot of people there.

They ushered us in and people in full Starfleet uniforms played characters on a space station. They interacted with prerecorded Star Trek characters, leading us through corridors that had the Borg walking down them.

Then the coolest part of the attraction. They put us into a ‘shuttle craft’ and had us wear ‘safety goggles’. This was the 3D area.

Now I am not going to give away what happens, but this really was the coolest thing I have ever experienced. I swear that when you are in there you tend to forget that there isn’t a little Borg fly 6 inches from you face, spraying you with Borg nano-probes. Freakin’ amazing.

The Klingon ride is very cool to. Kind of violent though. The simulator shakes you HARD, but the 60 foot screen makes it very cool.

Once I rode the rides twice I went and spent some money in the gift shop. Spent a little over 100$ on a NX-01 t-shirt, a Star Trek Experience polo, a computer game and the coolest thing at all, a picture.

I was hungry though, so I headed down to Quark’s. Got myself the Warp Core Breach. It was fuckin’ huge with 5 ounces of alcohol in it. I was EVENTUALLY able to finish it, but I’ll be honest, when I was done I was buzzed like a motha’… Which made my next time through the Borg Invasion even more trippy…

I also had some very good fettuccine, with shrimp and lobster.

Once that was done, and I had dropped 60$ in the casino, I took a ride up and down the monorail (I’ll talk about that later) and drove on home. 7 hours later.

When all is said and done, I left the Las Vegas Hilton and the Star Trek Experience about 240$ poorer. It’s not something I could do every day but considering that it’s been a long time since I have done anything really fun I think it was worth it. Sometimes you have to splurge on yourself.

Yeah, Ice, it was a good day.