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My wife and I flew into Vegas last night for a 4 day stay at the Flamingo and as usual we take a cab to our hotel.

Entertainment can be found almost everywhere in Vegas…including your cab ride from the airport. Our driver for this ride to the Flamingo was one happy cabbie and could not wait to tell us his story. Juan, a Guatemalan, arrived in US in the 80’s as a young boxer. He told us he worked as a professional sparing partner for boxers from Colorado to California.

He spoke rapid fire English with a slight accent and lots of hand gestures. It was a bit disconcerting that he was waving his hands about while driving, but he got us to the hotel safe and sound.

Juan was quite the enthusiastic story teller and ready to promote his return to boxing. Not sure what the status of boxing is these days, but if Juan were a golfer he would definitely be on playing the Senior Tour. Do the have have a senior boxing tour?

He said he was working on very little sleep as he drives a cab all night and trains as a boxer all day. Juan said he fights under the name Super Juan and went on about how the young guys don’t have the dedication or the drive these days. All they young guys want Super Juan exclaimed “are to be superstars without the work!” He boxed the air…yes, while driving, and shouted “I can take um all.” He didn’t even miss a lane change, a signal or and exit.

On the 20 minute ride we talked about all the old boxers like Frasier, Ali and Forman. And, we laughed about how Crazy Oscar de LeHoya is… caught up in some kinda of cross dressing scandal. Though his racing conversation and hand gestures he also called his 23 year old girl friend to find out what magazine is publishing an article on him next month. American Memorabilia was the name of the magazine. Not exactly Sports Illustrated, but a step above the Thrifty Nickle.

Every time you get in a Vegas cab or a bus you are a captive audience to a whole bunch of wannabe entertainers from comedians to lounge singers. This was my first experience with a self promoting, geriatric boxer who can drive a cab with no hands. There is always a show in Vegas.

A few snags trying to leave my office and head out to Vegas today.

Around 2pm my office and several offices buildings on our campus were evacuated. An employee of a company in a building across they had been recently terminated and came in waving around what appeared to be a grenade and making threats. He left the grenade like device behind and the building security service removed it and placed it in a field nearby.

The “grenade” turned out to be paper weight that looked like a grenade. They found the alleged grenade waver and arrested him but not after the building the buildings on our grounds were completely evacuated and searched.

The problem for me…. I left my backpack behind in the evacuation containing my computer, iPod, sunglasses, Vegas players cards and most importantly our boarding passes for our flight to Vegas leaving at 5pm out of DIA. My wife was on the way and would not be able to get in the area as there were police barricades placed all around the area a block away.

It was 2:30 my wife would be picking me up at 3:00 and the evacuation was going to go on for another couple hours a least. I headed to an office building across the street where a vendor for my company was located. The receptionist there helped me out by letting me print out my boarding pass for the flight. So we got on the flight without a hitch and left and arrived on time.