We are Cheap, but We are Fun

I remember an acquaintance of mine (many, many years ago) talking about going to Vegas with her grandmother. She was absolutely apalled that the grandmother wanted to play nickel slots. I was thinking "mmmmmm, nickel slots." We used to play one nickel at a time and have so much fun it should have been illegal. Then the video slot games came in and we started putting in $5 at a time and playing 9-lines (1 nickel each) that was hard at first but we got used to it and were very happy. Well, now they have penny slots and we are in heaven. We can play twenty lines on a penny machine without having heart palpatations. At the casinos in Gary there were about 10 penny slots and they were almost always full. At Kewadin (the Soo) there were lots of penny machines, and in a pinch we would play the 2 cent machine. (Did you know that they have taken the cent sign off of the standard keyboard? That was the first time I have looked for it in twenty years.)

As mom mentioned in her comment below we got back on the road Friday morning and we were in St. Ignace by noon. I have memories and an x-rated machine called MIB (something that they use in that movie looks just like a dildo and it was a bonus). Mom and I never even made it into the back room before we were ready to go. We got to the Soo by 2:30 and were in our room by 3pm. We snacked and rested and were out by 3:30pm (we will not see this room again before 3am). I hit a little bit on King of the Grill, just enough to keep me going and we ran into Gretchen and Gordon every once and a while to keep in tough. We decided to meet for dinner at around 8pm. We had the best chicken fingers in the state at our favorite deli and then headed back into the casino. We lucked out (or not) and found four "gold coin" machines together. The gold coins are promotional machines that take the special tokens that you get free for staying at the hotel. You play with the tokens but your winnings come out in quarters. So we all sat down and played. Now, in case you don't know, not only do we play cheap machines but we also play very, very slowly. Usually we are only in twos but at this point we were in fours so we watched Gordon spin his reels, then Gretchen, then Mom, then me. It was getting crowded and a group from the hotel was just showing up with their gold coins; they started to hover. Mom had a particularly obnoxious hoverer who kept asking her if she was done yet. We were not hitting anything so we decided just to play one of our three rolls of gold coins. Mom was tempted to play them all (very slowly) just to annoy her hoverer.

We headed back into the main casino but, of course, it was now Friday night and crowded. I hate Friday and Saturday nights at the casino; I don't want to have to fight for a good machine, or feel like have to stay where I am because I won't find another. So we decided to let Gretchen drive us up to Bay Mills (a smaller, usually less crowded casino). There was no parking at Bay Mills so we headed over to the next casino, King's Club. King's Club is smaller, but since it closes at midnight it was much less crowded. We spent about three hours here and only played three machines. I played an Alien machine that was hitting really good; I had to turn away any time I hit anything because the symbols were really gross alien things that throbbed and moved. We moved on as a group and played four machines together; I was at a machine called "Scarfish" and I was not hitting anything. It was making everyone laugh that I could not get one credit on my machine when I got my bonus for about 1500. This went on for a while, with me only getting bonuses and I ended up taking $24 out of the machine. We ended up at some traditional nickel slot until they kicked us out.

We headed back to Bay Mills and went in the back door. Gordon had some coupons for drinks and dinner (oh yeah, happy birthday Gordon) and he knew there was a place to use them in the back of the building. Well, it turned out that there were penny Monopoly machines in that back room (that's right Adrienne, penny Monopoly!!) and they were all empty. We played and I think Gordon or Gretchen hit, but not too much. We ate Gordon's dinner, played a little more and headed back to the Soo. It should be mentioned here that we laughed. We laughed in the car, we laughed in the casinos, we laughed at dinner. Our stomachs hurt from laughing so much. I can't point to anything that made us laugh (I am sure it was unbearably stupid) but we laughed and caused quite a commotion wherever we went.

Back at the Soo (2:30am) we decided to try to play the rest of our gold coins. It was a great decision because all of the machines were empty so we could play whatever we wanted and we started hitting. We ended up splitting (oh yeah, we always split the promotional stuff) about $40 from those machines. Not a bad haul. After that we needed ice cream and then it was up to bed. I was tired down to my very bones and I hadn't even gone to Bay City 24 hours earlier like Gretchen had. So we all slept the sleep of the dead and if anybody snored we did hear it.

At one point in the evening I was down to my last $5, by the end of the night I was up about $15 (from my starting point). I think I came home about $40 down. We played at the Soo on Saturday and then headed down to St. Ignace. We toyed with the idea of heading over to Petosky, but cooler heads prevailed and we had lunch (on the casino) instead. A few more games and then it was time to go. It was a great trip and we had so much fun I am surprised we survived. I can't wait to do it again.