Let's see...We were at the airport...Raiders fan guy was busted, so to speak...Yeah...

Always Look For The Silver Lining...Then Rip It Out And Sell It On Ebay...
So the airline had told us that we would be an hour and a half behind schedule due to the aforementioned mechanical problems, et al. Looking very hard to find a silver lining in all of this, I was at least happy that I could wander away from my gate for the time being and head back to the recently created "seating area" to finish watching the Broncos game...So I did that...Then I did me some of them "crossword puzzles"...Then I watched the tail end of the Colts game...A couple crossword puzzles...Then some of the Chiefs game...I may have eaten some beef jerkey...Watched people wander around, some aimlessly, some quite purposeful...Time passed, but it wasn't passing fast enough...See, the hour and a half timeframe that the gate folk initially gave us turned into a 3-hour delay almost by magic (if "magic" takes an excrutiatingly long time to occur). Pair this scenario with the fact that my cell phone battery was damn near dead and that I was sure that the friends that I was going out to stay with were going to be waiting to eat dinner until I got to Vegas, my happy-fun fly-to-Vegas Sunday was quickly turning into a very frustrating evening, to say the least...

...And They Gave Me The WHOLE CAN!..
So, long story short, blah blah blah FINALLY boarded plane, blah blah got on our way...Being the total fucking cheapasses generous motherfuckers individuals that they are, the low-fare airline which was ferrying me to Sin City decided that, to make up for the delay in transit, they would be offering us a COMPLIMENTARY SODA during the flight! Oh MAN! I nearly wet my PANTS, I was so excited! You mean I get me a WHOLE CAN of ginger ale!? AND I DON'T HAVE TO PAY!? Shit...That makes spending 8 hours in the airport SO worth it...It also like...TOTALLY made me forget that I could've driven and been more than halfway to my destination by that time...At the very least (silver lining, SILVER LINING!), I didn't have to sit next to no damn screaming kid. Thankfully, the adult I sat next to was relatively well behaved...

Thank God For Noise Cancelling Headphones...
Did I mention that I was sitting like...Right over the wing? Shit, that gives me a headache...Anyhow, when I landed in Vegas (3 hours later than I was initially supposed to) at around 9:00pm Pacific, I was pretty well done with the whole "waiting" thing. Yes, I had a rental car reserved, but given my deteriorating well-being, I was in no mood to wait in line, just to pick up a shitty little Chevy Aveo and to be given the hard-sell about insurance and coverage and stuff...As such, and with as much defiance as I could muster, I squeezed the last bit of juice out of my cell phone battery and called up my buddy Andy who then (graciously) came and picked me up...

Give Me All The MEAT!..
So, as I had assumed, Andy and his wife HAD, indeed, been waiting to have dinner pending my arrival. You can imagine how hungry those poor people were by the time they picked me up! (Oh the agony! Imagine one of those "Feed the Children" commercials except for, in place of the little African children and their distended bellies, it would feature a carload of relatively healthy American adults...Also: my belly isn't distended, it's just fat...Anyway)...Andy gave me the choice of two restaurants, both inside Mandalay Bay...One called "Red Square" and one called "Rum Jungle." Of course, being the butterfingered drunkard seasoned rum connoisseur that I am, I heard mostly pops, buzzes and "RUM" while he was speaking. Seriously, though, choosing Rum Jungle was a great decision from the standpoint of the food...I enjoyed an all-you-can-eat Argentinian barbeque, folks bringin' you meat on swords type of thing called the "Rodizio Fire Pit." This $40 slice of meaty heaven came complete with black beans, rice, fried plantains (dear Lord, I love fried plantains), a cuban salad and all the BeefChickenLambPork you could consume in one sitting, all done up with exotic marinades and glazes, many of which featured the noble habañero (a personal favorite)...SO MUCH MEAT!..

It's Their Service That Keeps Me Coming (Back)...
You may have noticed that earlier I mentioned that Rum Jungle was a wise choice as it relates to the FOOD, and it most certainly was...What I couldn't have anticipated, when making my abject hunger-fueled snap decision was the fact that we would end up with easily one of the worst waiters to ever take a whack at making a living in the service industry...Case in point, when this guy was doing his best to sell us the priciest item on the menu (the fire-pit thing, which I DID end up getting), my buddy Andy asked if it would be too much hassle if he could share it with his wife. Andy, you see, had the gastric bypass surgery about a year and a half ago and, as such, can't consume as much food as he once was able to. Now, nowhere on the menu did it say that you COULDN'T share, Andy was merely being polite. He also had the little laminated card which the hospital gave him out and ready, which states that he does, in fact, have a limited capacity for food...Our waiter, being the chubby jackass tactful and helpful individual that he is, didn't even glance at the card...On top of that, he didn't even fake like he was going to go and ask if it were possible, he just simply said "no...No, that would make the chef mad and I've already pissed off the kitchen a couple times tonight. I really don't want to push it."

Yes, GOD FORBID we make the CHEF mad...

Our server was even reluctant to ask for a very small substitution on the appetizer plate that Andy was pretty much forced to order when it was all said and done. All in all, I'll surely go back to Rum Jungle and enjoy their food again, but I'll certainly go earlier in the evening, before the waitstaff has a chance to thoroughly piss off the kitchen staff and I'll surely do my best to avoid the server which we had. Seriously, though...If you like meat: FIRE-PIT...Can't go wrong...

That's just about enough blathering for now...Be sure to join me next time, when I impart EVEN more tales of MEAT (and things of that nature)...

Labels: get outta town, I eat food, lame stories, misguided rantings