Well, that didn’t work.

US Airways flight # 386 — an Airbus a320 — departed BWI on August 15th at 9:05pm and landed safely in LAS at 11:04pm. Six days later, US Airways flight # 24 departed McCarran at 4:34pm and arrived back in Baltimore at 12:21am. At the Westin Casuarina, a double-occupancy room was cleaned and prepped for occupancy beginning 8/15. Over at the Luxor, a double Pyramid Suite was also prepped and awaiting its guaranteed-late-arrival guests on the same date. Just a few miles away at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car facility, a 2007 Chrysler Sebring convertible (hey, you want a convertible in Vegas, you get a Sebring) sat patiently waiting for its reserved guests to take it on the same whirlwind three-single-and-reasonably-loaded-guys-in-town-for-a-week that it’s been on hundreds of times before. After four months of wrangling with Travelocity, everything had been finally locked in — perfect!

Unfortunately, our seats, hotel rooms, and car — not to mention our guest list positioning on Jet, Body English, and presumably Tryst — were all given to other vacationers. At the last possible second — less than 48 hours before wheels up — one of my friends backed out. My 2007 vacation went down in flames faster than Brett Michaels playing at Stallions. Or Eclipse. Or whatever that place is called this month.

Did I mention that I had managed to score us a tour of Apple in Cupertino? You simply can’t get those, at any price.

But rather than dwell on the negatives, there are a few positives that I want to point out. Specifically, I’m reminded of how many monumental events took place in August 2007:

- It’s been five years since floor9.com went live (technically, the site was registered in June 2002, but nothing happened until that August)
- It was five years ago that downtown Harrisburg’s nightlife *really* took off. I’ll go ahead and take credit for that.
- It’s been ten years, almost to the day, since my first night clubhopping. Junior Vasquez was spinning at Twilo, and he was terrible.
- It’s been a year — almost to the day, again — that I left the high-pay, high-stress world of sales management for the okay-pay, no-stress world of IT. As an interesting footnote, my current pay is lower than it was managing the T-Mobile store in the Harrisburg Mall, but higher than it was from Verizon Wireless and Wireless Central combined.
- It’s been five years since the end of the only all-dance-music nightclub in Harrisburg.
- This is the year that the famed “OMG SUPERCLUB” will open on Cameron Street.
- Three years ago this month I bought a house. I guess that’s not really a noteworthy milestone, but it IS noteworthy that I’m a fourth of the way through my mortgage.

My 2007 vacation wasn’t a *total* loss. I did manage to use it as an excuse to perform a much-needed update my wardrobe. I also used the trip as an excuse to spend the preceding month or so enjoying my employer’s fitness center (a trend which I’ve somehow managed to continue, despite the best intentions of my inherent laziness). The trip also prompted me to get my Powershot repaired, so I now have a working camera. I also used my time off to go back and document the eastern entrance to the abandoned turnpike, and visit The Matrix in the process. And even though I’m out a few hundred dollars over the trip, I’ve managed to … well, no. That part actually does suck.

2008 is just around the corner. Maybe this time I’ll save up and do something really special, like Ibiza or Pripyat. Maybe I’ll save the money and put it towards a downpayment on one of those new Market Street Lofts ($190k in the weak part of town on the verge of a real estate collapse?).

Regardless, I did get one of my wishes to come true. It was, in fact, cold and rainy for pretty much the entire week that we were supposed to be out west.