Big Finish: My Super Sweet 16-Hour Sleep

by Darin Bunch

WHAT HAPPENS IN LAS VEGAS USUALLY ENDS WITH SOME SERIOUS, SMILIN’ REHABILITATION

This is a day for confessions.

I like to drive.

Not exactly an eyebrow-raising statement when it comes to most golfers. After all, who doesn’t like to unleash the Big Dog, swing from the soles of their softspikes and tap a Texas Two-Step when their Top-Flite finds the fairway a few yards farther than the others in their foursome?

But I’m not talking about a love of launch angles and lofty hangtimes. I’m talking about actual driving.

Vehicular assault on the roadways.

Hittin’ the open road.

Whether it be a poppin’ and pingin’ Saturn Ion, a smooth Hyundai Santa Fe sport-utility or a giant GMC Sierra pickup, just give me a full tank, Sirius NFL Radio and an iPod full of Tom Petty (cue “Time to Move On” from the Wildflowers album), and I’m good to go, usually across the desert toward my onetime hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

If not, maybe the city will come up with a memorable ad campaign someday.

I like to gamble.

Again, not exactly a WMD-level secret. I figure Jesus knows poker is one of my favorite pastimes, so there’s no harm in telling a few of my closest FG-reading friends.

It was late January 2004, and my arrival in the adopted epicenter of Texas Hold ‘Em landed me off-Strip at The Orleans, which then sported one of the larger small-stakes card rooms in town. It was little more than six months after Chris Moneymaker had taken the game to a new level, coming out of nowhere to win the World Series of Poker downtown at Binion’s Horseshoe, and years before nearly all casinos would begin cashing in on the flop, turn and river with brand-new, spacious, comfortable palaces of poker.

I was a bad, low-limit player. As with golf, my game consisted of poor strategy bolstered by occasional runs of luck. But I was learning — and loving it. So much so that, as has happened to nearly all who have visited Vegas, afternoon gave way to evening and evening gave way to night, which quickly became midnight, followed by early morning. When the clock read 6:05 — that’s a.m., a solid four hours before I prefer to be out of bed in the morning — I cashed out around $100 ahead and hoofed it back to my room for a quick shower. Sleep would have to wait; I had someplace to be. You can probably guess where I was headed.

• • •

I like golf.

If that weren’t the truth, I’d most likely find a more profitable way to spend my time than owning a travel magazine.

But golf and poker are similar obsessions — you rarely have the time or money for either, but you can always find a way to justify both.

The problem is, I’m not exactly a fan of 8 a.m. tee times. But when you’re playing on Super Sunday, you take what you can get because finding a tee time on a decent track can be as tough as buffet roast beef.

Hittin’ the links for a morning round on Big Game Day is becoming a tradition — albeit a somewhat expensive one — for many golfers these days, with courses offering shotgun starts to put as many players on the tee sheet with a guarantee of getting 18 holes on the card before Monster.com makes you laugh or Britney makes you ... well, laugh ... or some other company surprises you with a new, cool TV commercial concept that you’ll be talking about long after the game becomes a blowout.

On this day, my buddies and I were checking out the new Aliante Golf Club on the north end of town. The 1-month-old track had fast, rock-hard greens, and the typical Southern Nevada breezes were as brutal as our swings. Five hours felt like a heavyweight prize fight. With Mike Tyson. The one who pummeled Spinks, not the one who bit off Holyfield’s ear. My guess is that I shot a sleep-deprived 95 that day, although I can’t remember much of the round, except that I beat my buddies, as I usually do.

I like football.

Speaking of beating my buddies, I’m the Jack Nicklaus of my fantasy football league, and there is no Tiger Woods. With two championships and a handful more runner-up finishes, it’s safe to say I’m the greatest fantasy football owner my friends will ever see, even if I do say so myself. And I do.

Aside from the golf and poker, football is what really brought me to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl between the Patriots and Panthers. And a group of newspaper friends from my former place of employment had gathered, with betting tickets in hand on everything from who will win the game to who will score the opening touchdown, around a co-worker’s wide-screen to watch the annual spectacle.

It had been a long day’s journey into night and back into day again, and sleep still wasn’t in my future anytime soon.

I like boob.

Actually, I like boobs — plural. What guy doesn’t? But, in this case, we’re only talking about half of a set — one very high-profile, dare I say infamous bosom. Unfortunately, I’m not especially fond of Janet Jackson, but you have to take the boob with the bad. Of course, my luck at halftime wasn’t nearly as good as my earlier luck at the tables had been. The break seemed like a good opportunity to curl up in a corner of my friend’s living room and close my eyes for a minute or two ... or 30, considering how long these mid-game breaks are being stretched out in the MTV Age.

Twenty-nine-plus hours without a wink was starting to catch up with me, so when everybody in the room collectively screamed Did he just do what I think what I think he did? I wasn’t quick — or lucid — enough to catch a glimpse of what Jackson a decade earlier so famously covered with two hands (not her own) on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Understandably, CBS gave us no instant replay or post-game interview with the “playmaker” Justin Timberlake, and unfortunately DVR wasn’t the household acronym it is today. If there were ever a sports moment that deserved multiple camera angles and John Madden on the Telestrator, this would be it, wouldn’t it?

• • •

I like sleep.

Generally, I’m an eight-hour-a-night kind of guy. But I’m also a binge worker with a history of night shifts dating back to my early days putting the Merced Sun-Star daily newspaper to bed around midnight. And I’m a binge player who loves 24-hour towns like Las Vegas. In fact, that’s how my golf game went from averaging 103 to 83 — you’d be amazed at the fine-tuning that can be accomplished when quittin’ time is 2 a.m. and you live around the corner from an all-night driving range.

So it’s safe to say my eight hours don’t match up to the same schedule as most of the modern world.
My mother-in-law contends that humans can’t “make up” sleep. I say she’s wrong, and each debate of the subject ends with me inviting her to sit beside my bed the next time I put out the do not disturb sign and hit the Imperial Palace mattress for 16 hours straight.

Only in Las Vegas. Only on Super Sunday. FG