Vegas, Baby!

Taken on the drive south

I am back home from my first Shadow Lane party and I am exhausted. But I want to get some of my thoughts down before I forget any of the little details. Friday morning I woke up at 4:45 and was in the car and on my way by 5:30. I discovered that half my neighborhood is apparently closed off from construction at that ungodly hour, so had quite a detour to get to the freeway. S, bless his heart, had loaned me his GPS so I didn't have to be as nervous going to Vegas alone.

The drive went pretty smoothly as much as I'd worried about it. It was really long and boring though being by myself, and my legs were achy from being in driving position in such a little car for so many hours. There was this jackass in a Ford Explorer that I kept coming across for several hours. He would constantly drive in the left lane going exactly 75 blocking you so you couldn't easily pass.

I was about 4 hours in before this freak thunderstorm hit. It had been pretty sunny all day and then all of a sudden there's thunder and lightning. Then it started pouring rain like crazy to the point I could hardly see anything and needed to pull over. But by the time the next exit came up, it just all stopped. Thank God. But that was the scariest 5 minutes of my drive. I only had to stop once for gas and after driving on pretty much one road for 400 miles, I went the wrong way as soon as the GPS directed me to do something. But it didn't take too long to get turned around and I made it to the hotel in a little over 6 hours. Faster than I'd expected.

I lugged my bags across the gross smoky casino floor and located the hotel room. I was greeted by Ms. Margaret, Mr. Ryder, and Erin, my SCONY pals. Harry from CA and Vegas Chris were also there. They were about to head out to do some shopping and leave me to rest, but not before Mr. R overheard some supposedly bratty comment I made. The force of his glare pushed me into the other room and he pulled me over his lap, giving me a few swats to welcome me to Vegas. So nice of him. I got a big hug (my favorite part!) and they went on their way.

Before I got a chance to lie down, Joey and B had arrived and were knocking on the door. We all excitedly greeted each other and talked about our morning travels. The nap wasn't meant to be, they never are. Once I get to a party I hate to waste much time sleeping. I want to talk to everyone! Soon enough the rest of the crowd was back and about to change rooms to the big presidential suite for Friday and Saturday. B let me use her room to change and I headed to the newbie party with her and Joey, meeting Miss Rose on the way. We also chatted with two women near the elevators I presumed to be with the Northern Spanking crew based on their accents. One of them said I had a beautiful smile which made me blush.

Rice Krispie Peep!

We headed into the newbie party being hosted by ColoDom and spank4fun. I can't remember everybody's names but I met quite a few people. B knew a few from Texas including Princess Kelley. I met Bob the DJ and Kitty, the maker of several paddles in my collection. Stacy and Strict Dave who runs the spanking court event talked to me for a few minutes. Everyone was really nice. TB from Hawaii, another SCONY friend, arrived and we chatted a bit. Things got a bit crowded and hot and we headed out.

I got a surprising text from my friend A asking where I was which tipped me off that she had shown up out of the blue. I had not been expecting to see her on this trip and nearly tackled her with a hug when we found each other. And she brought me a Rice Krispie Peep which is one of the coolest things I've ever seen! My friends are awesome. And this now made 7 SCONY friends present which filled me with glee. It's not often they come towards my side of the country. I got ready for the vendor fair that evening and headed down to help with the SCONY table. I'm not sure how I, the non New Yorker, ended up answering questions to people passing by, but I hope I gave accurate information. Lol.

I recognized all sorts of people around the vendor fair from spanking video people to faces I recognized from FetLife and bloggers. This continued to be my issue all weekend though, because I feel really shy and silly just popping in and interrupting somebody's conversation to say hello. Doesn't that seem creepy? "Oh hi, you're so-and-so, I'm some stranger off the internet you don't know." Lol. So there were a lot of people I never met even though I noticed them there.

Fortunately, Joey is a talker and much more social than me so if I tagged along with him I got inadvertently introduced. We met Erica Scott and Beth who were as awesome in person as I'd expected from our online interactions. I also met SpankCake who was super cool and also attending her first Shadow Lane. These were some of the top people on my list I'd hoped to run into over the course of the weekend, so already seeing them on Friday was great. Someone really needs to organize a bloggers party next time around!

As a birthday gift, Joey got me a copy of Cassandra Park's book "It's Supposed To Hurt- Volume II" and I met Cassandra who signed it for me. She was really nice. I also briefly met her husband Radagast who was at the table with her. I enjoy reading the posts in his Fetlife group and am a frequent commenter, but once again shyness won out and I didn't tell him any of that or explain who I was. I went back to the suite and got ready for the night's party. The suite had to be at least twice the size of my whole apartment. There were even phones in the bathrooms. Fancy!

It had been set up SCONY style with the privacy cubicles throughout the suite. God, how I missed the privacy cubicles. I hate, hate, hate playing in front of people. It makes me super uncomfortable. I seem to be a rarity in the scene because of that preference, but I'm happy I can be accommodated somewhere. Ms. M gets it. Throughout the night, various people filtered in and out of the room. I got to talk more with SpankCake and met some California people. Also a couple who will be coming to the SCONY October weekend.

I played once that night with Mr. R. My birthday had been the Friday before and though some had promised to keep their mouth shut reminding others about it, he still remembered. He took me back into one of the cubicles and I went across his lap on the couch. He asked me if I'd turned 139 and I said no, 27. He still thought it was 139. He pushed up my skirt and pulled my panties down and spanked me in time to him singing happy birthday. I was distracted by his lovely singing voice and didn't know I was supposed to be counting so we did it twice. We hugged and returned to the party.

Overall, it was a whirlwind of a first day. So many faces, so much driving, so little sleep. I was already having a blast getting a rare chance to hang out with some of my friends and enjoyed meeting some new ones. I was so tired though and finally got to bed. Much more to come!