Dew Tour: Las Vegas

In a post this past August (Wine Tour, Dew Tour) I mentioned that my boys had won this crazy Nerf Dart Tag competition at the Dew Tour when they stopped in Portland. This past weekend was the Dew Tour Finals (coming to ESPN soon, I'm sure), and with it, the Nerf Dart Tag Nationals. Today's post will be all about that. No bus stuff; I haven't done a thing since ordering that part (which arrived when we were gone).

Lively Up Yourself
The Nerf folks pulled the whole travel itinerary together, and both Portland teams (8-12 and 13-17) flew together on both flights. This made for a common bond among the 8 players too.
The flight itself was actually very routine. My wife had checked us in on line 24 hours ahead of time, so within the Southwest Airlines scheme, we were in the lower end of the "B" group. So, the plane was about half full when we boarded. Fortunately, the teams were able to sit mostly together, and it was a typical raucous flight to Las Vegas. The Nerf folks met us at baggage, and shuttled us to the Hard Rock Hotel for our 3 day / 2 night mini-vacation. At this point, some of our group split off to see shows, while the rest of us hit the the Dew Tour for some shwag and then the pool (it was 86* and mid-afternoon). If you've never been to the pool at the Hard Rock, its kinda like Spring Break all the time. There's rock music cranking at one set of pools while a DJ is spinning beats at the main pool. Crazy time. Fortunately, the only pool that had a slide wasn't the pool with the half-dressed (drunken staggering) 20-somethings. The boys stayed near the slide, and so did I :)

Them Belly Full
After enjoying the pool, and connecting with Gramma Marianne, everyone was hungry. Marianne lives in Las Vegas and has done so for 20 years, so she was able to route us to the best buffet in town under Planet Hollywood. Incredible eats spanning many different cuisines. The desserts were amazing - I had a chocolate mousse pie, and we shared a crape. The boys ate like they hadn't seen food in days, and we actually welcomed the very long walk back to the car. That's one thing I forgot about Las Vegas - everything is so spread out, you have to walk, like 1/2 a mile from the hotel lobby, to your room. We fell asleep early-ish, hoping to boost energy for the competition on Saturday. Not all of our teammates had luck getting to sleep early, however.

I Shot the Sheriff
Saturday was competition day. First thing in the morning, I got a text from T that he had seen Shaun White walking through the hotel. We had many such encounters this weekend, and grabbed some pictures along the way. For example, we met Ryan Sheckler in the Bell-Hop line. Great guy, nice as can be and totally down to earth. The competition wasn't supposed to start until 2:30, and it started late. By the time they figured out the competition round-robin it was almost 3:30. Still, our team was in the first match, and they lost to the eventual champs (Salt Lake City) by 1 point. The boys got upset about some calls, but we parents tried to explain that if they had played their usual run-n-gun style, the points wouldn't have been close. They took that to heart the next 2 games and blew out Boston and Las Vegas. As they announced their last match, I could see the boys grow uneasy. The ref said "with this win, (our boys) go into the finals". Well, they tensed up, didn't play their style and lost by a less than 10 points. So, they were out of the competition, but they bounced back. Before the finals had even started, C went bull riding at the Matador booth and T was off getting shwag from the Verizon booth.

Exodus
Leaving the Tour grounds, the boys were a little dejected, but a dinner of pizza and soda turned them around. The following morning, we hit the pool for one last dip, and visited Las Vegas a little bit. T rode the roller coaster at the New York - New York, and C won prizes in the arcade. Then we hopped the train over to the Luxor to see the inside of the great pyramid. Time was getting tight, so we hopped a cab back to the Hard Rock, and joined the teams for the shuttle back to the airport. The other Portland team also came in third. Oh well, we all agreed that the trip was a great prize for winning the regional, and look forward to competing again next year. The final flight was delayed on the ground for 2 hours because of lightning, and we had some turbulence in-air, but otherwise, passing through McCarran Airport was a breeze for a Sunday.

I think we all agree that it was a great trip, and the boys plan to compete again next year. They can't be on the same team, as the age grouping has pushed T and the other boys into the higher age group. Still, C will figure out another trio of boys to compete with while T finds one more shooter. That's it for now. I'll post on the bus when I actually have a few minutes to work on him.

pictures:
top - The Hard Rock Guitar in front of the hotel - now my phone desktop picture :)
middle - the Nerf team enjoying their pre-contest breakfast
bottom - a huge Ozzy lithograph hanging in the Hard Rock Hotel

Wine Tour, Dew Tour

I'll be brief today, since I haven't been able to touch the bus since the last post. My sister and her family were visiting last week, and that put a small crimp in that work. I'll touch on some of the visit, and a little surprise at the Dew Tour.

San Diegans Strike
My sister, her husband and 2 kids visited last week, and just left on Sunday. We were able to keep each other entertained for 6 or 7 days. More importantly, though, my kids and her kids had an opportunity to really get to know each other again (its been a couple of years). The last time we saw them it was at their place in San Diego for 2 days after we blew our vacation energy at Disneyland. This time they visited us here in Oregon. We showed them the local lake-side swim park, and had the whole extended family in for a big day-long picnic / swim-fest. Good times. I had to work (new job = no vacation time), but my wife took them around to different attractions here ranging from Oaks Park Amusement Park to Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI).

Yamhill County
I've lived in Oregon since the early 1990's, but I've never done the "wine tour" bit through Yamhill County. I've complained about the traffic snarl in Dundee like all the rest of the non-locals trying to get to the Oregon Coast down US99, but I hadn't ever stopped in Dundee. My wife and I took my sister and her husband there this past Friday. I'm not a wine drinker, so I was the designated driver. My passengers enjoyed Pino from 3 different wineries, and purchased a few bottles along the way (they really liked DePonte). We overnighted at Hotel Oregon in McMinnville, enjoyed a night of music in their main-level bar, as well as whatever was pouring behind the bar.

Dew Tour
Saturday morning, we readied ourselves, enjoyed a breakfast at the Hotel and headed home. No sooner did we arrive home than I needed to truck the boys down to the Rose Garden for the annual stop of the Dew Tour. For skateboarders and BMX-bike enthusiasts, this event is pretty amazing. Beyond the large selection of tents swinging schwag (like Nike, Powerbar, and Mountain Dew), there are the large acts. In the middle of it all, though, is the Nerf Dart Tag Battledome. This was the destination we sought when we left home. My older son competed in the Nerf Tag Tournament during last year's Dew Tour and they lost by a split second to the eventual World Championship team. They were disappointed they didn't win the Regional, but the consolation prize was a set of Nerf guns for each of the team members. Not bad. Since they didn't even know the competition existed last year before they arrived at the event, they recovered quickly and took their prizes happily.

This year, they knew about the tournament, and collected a team. Unfortunately, the age bracket tops-out at 12years old, and many of my son's friends were not eligible. T said, "how about C?" The parents were concerned that if C made a mistake, the whole team would blame him, and he'd be crushed. Still, the other guys on the team thought C was a great addition, so they went ahead with him. They learned to really appreciate that decision, and called themselves the Beta Squad.

In Round 1, C captured the flag once and shot many of the other team with his gun. Meanwhile, he was only hit once. His brother, captured the flag multiple times and also hit the other team multiple times. In the end, the won the first round easily 37-15. The second round proved much harder than the first. The opposing team shot well and had good speed, but neither team captured the flag very much. In a mostly defensive battle, the Beta Squad won again, this time by 3, 26-23. This placed them into the finals against a team that had won using heavy defense and sharp-shooting. They were much larger boys, but they didn't move as fast as the hip-less Beta Squad. In a contest that wasn't close after the first minute, the Beta Squad won the finals going away with a final score of 31-13. As the final ticks spun off the clock, they started jumping up and down realizing that they had just won a trip to Las Vegas for the Dew Tour Finals - and a chance to be crowned National Champions.

That's all for today. I'm traveling for a while, so it'll be radio-silence.