Thank You For Being A Friend

The 2018 vlogs had been made and posted and throughout the first half of 2019 we we're watching more and more vlogs and joined a couple of Vegas fan pages on Facebook. It seemed there was an active community of Vegas fans all sharing their love and experiences of Vegas.

Then one day a new group appeared - made by a group of fellas that have vlogged and done PodCasts all about Vegas who decided to unite as many people together who wanted to know more about Vegas outside of just wanting to know what the weather would be like in June. The page was called The Vegas Club and was created by Matt Moss, Nicky Furmage, Ben Heath, Chris Taylor and Matt Bridger. I knew these people from vlogs, podcasts, posts etc. and it was a good idea and very popular. They decided to do a meet up at the Victoria Gate Casino in Leeds giving Vegas fans the opportunity to meet up with the very people they've been watching.

Jane : "We should go"

Me : "Why?"

Jane : "You need to promote yourself more, others are doing it. Why don't you?"

Admittedly I was enjoying the fact I had over 100 subscribers and had already decided to vlog 2019. The meet up would be in November after our October 2019 trip so maybe I could promote the channel.

"I'm small fry, no-one is gonna care who I am plus I'm not the kind of person to go around self promoting and chatting to strangers, you're lucky I speak to the patients where I work"

Jane convinced me to make myself a t-shirt that I could wear on the night, that could possibly be a conversation starter. I'm actually pretty good at blending into the background with nobody noticing or wandering where I am so I agreed to go . I'd already bottled going to go to the meet up in London early 2019 so we'll make a day of this trip to Leeds. The Vegas Club had kindly highlighted my channel a week before the meet up so it'd be rude to cancel.

We booked an overnight stay at Leeds so we could have a look around, go to Victoria Gate, then go home the following day. On the day of arrival we covertly went to the casino, had a quick look around then went and got changed. I was still reluctant to go back as I really do not like these social situations but we still went. Inside, the casino going down the escalators both Jane and myself thought we'd heard someone say;

"That's the Black Country Vlogger"

On the look out for the Vegas Club founder members and looking for somewhere to hide someone came up to us and said how he and his wife really enjoyed our vlogs. Kind of took me aback to be recognised and even more that someone would admit to liking my vlogs. We chatted to Matt and Lucy Caton who were really nice and so it kind of put me at ease, then someone asked me for a photograph. Crikey! If I knew this was going to happen I'd have combed my hair!

Throughout the night I met the TVC founder members, very briefly got to chat to Matt Bridger and a very kind Kevin Alderton - the UK winner of my UK custom Lego competition bought me a drink. There were quite a few people who had said they thought I'd have gone to the London meet up - Jane gave me a 'I told you so' look and I replied with a 'yes I know I'm an idiot' look. Everyone was so kind and pleasant, sharing experiences of their Vegas trips and everyone was complimentary of my vlogs which really took me by surprise. A few comments of how it was nice to hear a local accent was greatly appreciated, there were a fair few people from the Midlands there and it was great speaking to them too.

Did I actually say it was nice speaking to people? To strangers?

The common denominator here was Vegas and how the love of this place had brought people from all over the UK together and I had gone from not seeing the point of going to a place like Vegas to not only going every year but now I'm blooming vlogging about it. From the misery of 2018 came the joys of 2019. It may sound a bit soppy but thanks the these people and their enthusiasm and kindness, it made 2019 not that bad a year.

The blogs have loosely been in answer to my initial question of why would I want to go to Vegas but it's also about why I continue to go to Vegas and here you can see it's not just the place that holds a place in my heart but it's also the community of people around the world like Hog and 2cent from the US sharing their love of the Bellagio Fountains, Mark Anderson from Canada - a large Cesar raised to you Pennys4Vegas and many, many others who through their shared love and different experiences of Vegas have helped me through the darker times and are supporting each other throughout the quagmire that is/was 2020/21. Never has it been needed more than in a time where hardly any of us can travel to Vegas.

Anyway, enough of that, you all want to know about the 2019 Vegas trip and that my dear friends will be in the next blog.

If you want to know more about the wonders of Downtown Vegas then I recommend you read it, it's a place we love with so many hidden treasures. I'll try to make the next one as detailed as possible because Downtown is more than just The Fremont Experience.