Tracy Cowles, CEO and owner of Next Step Therapy, submitted the following article:
BEST TRIP EVER (PART FIVE)
Mama Cowles Does Her Tiger Woods Impression
VACATION TIP #5 Leave a day at the end unscheduled: After telling you to schedule a major adventure and telling you to plan on spending money to keep the kids entertained, I’m now telling you to leave one day unscheduled at the end of the trip. The reason? I cannot tell you how many times we have found an event/place that we liked so much we wanted to go back but couldn’t.
In Flagstaff, Arizona, we did a rope/rappelling course that Eli absolutely loved. Halfway through a thunderstorm came up, and they had to clear the area. We had a raincheck for another day but were completely booked with other things we had already paid for. Eli still mentions it years later, “We have to go back to Arizona and do the rope course again.” We do. There was a butterfly farm in Aruba. Leave some time free.
Likewise, especially if traveling with younger children, for everybody’s happiness, leave a morning or afternoon open to have a pool/playground/sleep in day.
Based on Tip #5, I had scheduled nothing for Tuesday afternoon/evening as I wasn’t sure how long we would be at the Nascar Track, and how long it would take to get back. As we entered our hotel, I suggested massages at the spa, but they weren’t able to schedule all three of us for that day. We booked three appointments for the next day. One of the boys suggested that I should play that same machine that I had won the $1500 on five hours earlier. They wanted to go upstairs and watch their videos from the racetrack.
I put money in that same machine, hit the button a few times, and I get the Golden Spin! Yay! The Golden Spin says I get 15X whatever I get on the wheel (same as this morning). The wheel spins. I get $100. I kid you not, I won $1500 again, on the same machine, on the same day.
The cocktail waitress comes by and says, “Oh, did you break the machine?”
Then she looks closer and says, “You’re the same lady that broke it this morning!”
“I am!” says I!
I told her I wasn’t in any hurry this time and ordered a Crown and Ginger.
The casino worker came over and said, “Holy cow! Didn’t I pay you this same amount of money on this machine this morning?”
I texted Noah that I won $1500 again and asked what they wanted to do.
Noah says, “Mom, aren’t you tired?”
Bwahahaha!
If anyone was going to crap out on day five of our eight-day vacation, by all rights it should have been me, but we had killed it for days, had many late nights, and the guys had experienced an incredible adrenaline rush.
They wanted a nap.
At 8 pm we were all up again, and the guys decided that we should go to “Top Golf.” We had passed it in a taxi, and I had seen one in the Phoenix area previously. “Top Golf” is shaped like a baseball stadium with a big building where the dugouts would be, and a big field surrounded by a three-story high mesh fence. It’s a game, like going bowling. There are flags/holes in the field that you aim for, or you can go for distance, and a sensor in the ball is scored by a computer system. The closer you get to the flag, the higher your points. Top Golf has a real restaurant, with a chef. Food includes things like fish tacos, seven-layer dip, and spare ribs. We ordered munchies and beverages and started to play.
I do not golf. The guys do.
I grab the Big Bertha and miss the ball entirely. On the second try, it rolls off the tee four feet onto the field. Oh boy. I finally decided that if I couldn’t actually be competitive, I could become “most improved.” I aimed at the same yellow flag for two full games, and eventually was able to get the ball on the green. By the end of the second game, the guys informed that me that my chip shot, on paper, looked like Tiger Woods and that I would be worthy of doing a scramble. They also pointed out that on video, it would be ugly. We enjoyed it so much that we paid extra to play another game. Interestingly, the Top Golf website says that one is being built in Bridgeville, PA, off of Interstate 79 near Pittsburgh!
We took a Cadillac Escalade back from Top Golf to our hotel, giving the guys two awesome rides in one day.
On Wednesday, day six, we went to the hotel spa and had individual hour-long massages. Noah went for deep tissue to get the knots out; Kahlil and I went for the traditional. When my masseuse was finished with my back and I rolled over, she put a steaming rolled towel under my neck, and a cool compress on my eyes. If I had died at that moment, it would have been in utter bliss. Afterward, there was a choice of showers with special shower heads that were “infused” with your choice of mango, lavender, or pear. Oh, my. I was truly surprised to find that services at the spa were not much more expensive than local prices, and I will absolutely have a massage on each of my future trips. The guys agreed.
We had a huge carbohydrate meal at the Italian restaurant and then went to the Bellagio, which is one of my personal favorite casinos. We were there to see the Cirque Du Soleil “O.” Cirque Du Soleil’s are…so hard to explain. Trapeze artists. Acrobats. Dancers. Synchronized swimming and high diving. All set to music, typically with no words. Just action that tells a story. It makes you gasp. It is dangerous for the performers, and no joke, a veteran Florida performer was killed two days after our show in a fall.
I need to go back for a minute and explain a little bit about Athletic Training, which is Noah’s field of study.
Athletic Trainers are the college degreed, certified person at High Schools, Universities and Professional Teams who in general look after the health of athletes. They set up prior to practice and games with ice packs and wraps, they bandage and wrap the players prior to activity, they stretch and massage. They watch practice and games constantly alert to injury, and they are the ones you see run out on the field when someone is hurt. They stretch our charley horses and assess injury. Highly trained AT’s can often pop something back in when its dislocated. AT’s do the concussion assessment. AT’s often monitor athletes after surgery. AT’s often set up the workout/lifting schedules and teach form.
For this last semester, Noah was assigned to work at Fairmont State University. It was a half hour drive south, and he typically went four days a week. A relatively small college, Fairmont has an Athletic Trainer, an Assistant Athletic Trainer, a few Graduate Students from WVU, and at any given time, two AT undergrad students to take care of all of their athletes. Noah got to experience men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball, and he kept talking about a great group of young ladies that I assumed were cheerleaders. I was wrong.
I had texted Noah on a Saturday and asked him if he was working at Fairmont, as I had lost track of the schedule. He texted back that he was working an “A and T Competition” and couldn’t talk.
He then texted, “Of all the things I do, these A and T Competitions are the most fun to watch, and the most anxiety producing. I don’t breathe normally from the minute they start until the minute they finish.” Readership, I had no idea what A and T was. Noah called a few hours later. “A and T” stands for “Acro/Tumbling.” It is basically cheerleaders with gymnastics experience. There are individual floor exercises, like in gymnastics, small group routines, with two or three teammates doing synchronized dance and tumbling, and then full troupe competitions, with 12-15 young ladies doing dance and cheerleading pyramids and throws/tosses. Noah explained that during these competitions, young ladies are up in the air as high as 20 feet, and if he was ever going to see a serious injury, it would be in a fall/drop here. I had never heard of “A and T Competitions.”
Back to Vegas.
Noah, Kahlil and I are leaving the “O” performance, and Kahlil and I are chattering like chipmunks.
“Loved the clowns!” “Held my breath on the trapeze artist routine!” Noah is silent. I asked him if he was ok. He said he was. I asked him if he had a headache or hadn’t enjoyed the show. He said he was fine, was deep in thought, and we’d talk when we got out of the crowd. Finally, we hit the taxi stand and had a chance to talk.
Long story, short: After thinking for years that he wanted to be an athletic trainer for a major NFL team, Noah suddenly realized that he could be extremely happy as an athletic trainer for a Cirque Du Soleil. It never crossed my mind that they would employ AT’s, but duh, fifty or sixty athletes? Of course, they do. A simple show on a trip opened up a whole new professional opportunity for my kid.
Here we are weeks later, and Noah has now added UNLV (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) to the Physical Therapy schools he will apply to after graduating from WVU. I’m thrilled for him that he is willing to follow his path, wherever it leads.
At this point, we had happily survived six days in Vegas. We had seen shows, eaten really well, had adventures and new experiences.
Little did we know that Thursday was going to be the real challenge.
~Tracy
RELATED:
Next Step Therapy Blog: Best Trip Ever — Part One
Next Step Therapy Blog: Best Trip — Ever Part Two
