I’ve never been to Las Vegas, and you can stop giving me that look.

I’ll admit that at my age, there are few excuses for me not having graced the strip of Sin City with my presence, but there are a lot of places I haven’t been. Las Vegas has never been one of those, “Holy crap, I need to be there now!!!” places to me. Maybe I’m too frugal and careful with my cashflow. Or maybe there’s just been nothing appealing about neon lights and strippers and buffets. Of course, all I know about the city is what I’ve seen in movies and heard from friends. But that all may change come August 2010.

I was reading one of my new favorite sites, when I happened upon an announcement for an upcoming drifting event. As gung-ho as I’ve been about getting back to my gearhead ways as of late, my interest in street racing and that style of tuning has been slightly diverted by the excitement of drifting and kind of maybe wanting to learn how to do it. Problem is, as is the case with any “project,” I don’t have a garage nor storage space to work on a car. And using a drifter as a daily driver? Probably not the best plan. Maybe somewhere down the line when I’m rolling in dough, have the space, and need a few minutes away from the wife…

Back to the topic at hand: If all goes like I want it to, I should be finally making my inaugural journey to the desert sands and Las Vegas. While the purpose of my journey is not of the cliche manner, the fact I can now put a new pin in my map on the wall is good enough for me. And because I’d be remiss in posting about cars and races and drifting and NOT mention the Fast and the Furious or Bow Wow or the quarterback from Friday Night Lights (the movie) who tried to replace the dashin Paul Walker in Tokyo Drift, here’s a choice scene from the flick…in Japanese.