Vegas Baby! Battlebots Fight, Fish Don’t Bite, and a Wheelchair That Didn’t Stay Upright

Vegas Foot Buffets and the Broken Elevator Incident

Today, Leesa and I kicked off our morning by heading over to the Dr. Fish Spa at the Miracle Mile Shops so Leesa could achieve her annual dream of having her feet aggressively nibbled on by tiny marine predators. To prepare for this grueling trek, Leesa strapped the Firefly attachment onto my wheelchair, and we embarked on our mile-long odyssey.

Naturally, Leesa had consulted the infallible oracle that is Google Maps and located a perfectly “wheelchair-accessible” walking route. With Leesa acting as our navigator and blindly trusting her phone, we meandered down to the backside of the Bellagio, only to realize we were utterly trapped. Thankfully, a security guard on a bicycle rode up to rescue us, mapping out how to navigate what was essentially a concrete maze just to reach the actual Strip.

Once we finally broke out onto the Strip, we hit a literal high point: an elevator up to the skywalk that was actually operational. We crossed the bridge, riding high on our own good fortune, only to meet our inevitable doom on the other side. The down elevator was broken. I absolutely love Vegas elevators (please visualize the largest sarcasm font humanly possible here).

Because of this single mechanical betrayal, our “accessible” route devolved into a full-scale expedition. We had to roll about six blocks away from the Strip, find a working elevator down to street level, cross a side street, travel down a block, navigate a crosswalk, and then double back three blocks just to breach the perimeter of the Miracle Mile Shops.

Against all structural odds, we finally reached the Dr. Fish Spa. Since allowing a school of red garra fish, imported from India, to use my feet as a complimentary buffet is not exactly my definition of a good time, I happily played the role of coat rack while Leesa got her ankles attended to.

(Leesa speaking): “My annual trip to Dr. Fish! It was amazing. The little fishies just suck off all that dead skin everywhere. It is wonderful, and afterward, your legs and feet are just so smooth. It was great! Just to be clear, the fish do not even have teeth. They suck the dead skin off to clean your feet just like they clean the turtles in nature.”

With Leesa’s feet thoroughly exfoliated, we refueled at a Mexican joint called La Salsa Cantina. We ordered a round of drinks called Palmados and a massive platter of nachos, quesadillas, taquitos, and hot wings—because nothing pairs better with foot-nibbling fish than fried appetizers.

We have since retreated back to the sanctuary of our resort to rest up, because the heavy-metal violence of BattleBots is awaiting us tonight.

Flipping Wheelchair!

Before we could even get to the arena to witness the controlled mechanical violence of BattleBots, I decided to preview the action by staging a little gravity-defying stunt of my own.

Following our grueling Firefly expedition, Leesa was attempting the noble task of stretching out my legs. During this physical therapy session, I apparently forgot to engage the brakes on my wheelchair. In a seamless display of physics, the chair flipped completely backward. Suddenly, I found myself flat on my back on the floor, looking straight up at the ceiling like an upside-down turtle with my feet in the air, completely bewildered by how the room had just rotated 90 degrees. I was grounded, trapped in what is arguably the worst and most humiliating position a human being can occupy.

Once the initial shock wore off and the reality of my horizontal existence set in, we decided to call the front desk to see if the resort could send some muscle. Security arrived in about 20 minutes, which turned out to be an absolute waste of time. They informed us that they “couldn’t touch anyone.” I’m not entirely sure how “secure” a security team makes you feel when their official protocol in a crisis is to stand there and watch, but they did manage to accomplish one vital task: making Leesa sign a liability report. Because heaven forbid the resort get sued while I am still actively bonding with their carpet.

With their paperwork safely secured, the guards promptly abandoned us to our fate.

Leesa and I were left to figure out how to get my body off the floor using ancient Egyptian engineering methods. We attempted a few maneuvers, including dragging me across the carpet and trying to stuff sofa cushions under me to create a makeshift ramp, but that went absolutely nowhere.

Admitting defeat, Leesa bypassed the useless resort channels and called the local police department. They gave her the direct line to the fire department, and within a lightning-fast 10 minutes, a crew of EMS guys burst into our unit. They lifted me onto the couch with professional ease, checked to make sure I wasn’t broken, had me sign their tablet, and went on their merry way.

Finally vertical, uninjured, and with my pride only slightly dented, we were officially cleared to go see some robots destroy each other.

It’s Robot Fightin’ Time!

We decided to drive over to the BattleBots arena, which sits kitty-corner to the old Horseshoe casino and about a block off the Strip. Because Las Vegas never misses an opportunity to nickel-and-dime you, parking was a cool $20. We had secured our tickets on Ticketmaster eons ago, so we flashed them on our phones at the front door.

We casually mentioned we needed ADA seating, and the staff rolled out the red carpet, escorting us directly to the side of the BattleBox—right across from where the main audience sits. There was only one other wheelchair occupant in our ADA section, making it feel highly exclusive.

However, we noticed they had pushed our seating area a bit farther back behind the safety glass compared to our visit last year. Apparently, there had been some minor “incident” involving flying shrapnel, and the glass appeared to be heavily reinforced this time around. It’s always comforting when a venue tacitly admits, “We upgraded the shielding so a flying piece of motorized buzzsaw doesn’t decapitate you.”

In the opening qualifier, Kraken dragged Tazbot into the deep and came out on top,

followed immediately by Mammoth asserting its dominance by trampling Overkill in the second round.

Here BBot!

Next up was the highly anticipated cultural exhibition match, where Nightmare absolutely pulverized a slot machine on robot wheels, actually leaving slot machine shrapnel in the cage’s ceiling supports. It was a beautiful, cathartic metaphor for what the casinos had been doing to our wallets all weekend (Just kidding!).

In the semi-finals, Mammoth continued its prehistoric rampage by extinguishing Kraken, punching its ticket to the main event.

This brought us to the grand championship fight: Witch Doctor squaring off against Hypershock. In a brilliant twist of reality-show drama, Witch Doctor was being piloted by the driver of the recently victorious Mammoth, while Hypershock was commanded by the defending champion.

Both machines miraculously survived the full three minutes of mutual mechanical assault without exploding into a ball of fire. With no clear knockout, the ultimate fate of the universe was left to the audience decision, who loudly decreed Witch Doctor the supreme victor of the night.

We used to religiously watch this show on TV, but experiencing it live is a completely different beast. The machines are insanely loud, surprisingly massive, and the sheer destructive power is mesmerizing. The lineup featured four regular fights plus the main championship match. As a bonus comedic palette cleanser, they even staged a fight between an actual robot and a slot machine on wheels—the ultimate tribute to Las Vegas culture. It is an absolute blast watching these mechanical gladiators tear each other to shreds in person, and it was the perfect, high-octane cure for a day that included me flat on my back on the floor. To borrow a line from our niece Tali, “Big Slay!” #BattleBots #BigSlay

Round 2 of the Foot Buffet

The next day, Leesa decided her feet hadn’t been sufficiently traumatized, so she left me in the safety of our room to launch a solo raid back to the Miracle Mile for a second round of Dr. Fish.

Rather than repeating our disastrous urban hiking expedition from the day before, she played it smart and took the resort’s shuttle straight to the Strip. She then walked back, deliberately plotting a detour past the Bellagio fountains and through the Bellagio lobby to admire the magnificent glass ceiling.

Unsurprisingly, by navigating alone and taking a completely different route than the one we had ventured together, she managed to completely bypass our favorite broken elevator. It turns out that navigating Las Vegas is infinitely smoother when you aren’t trying to engineer a wheelchair around architectural barriers.

Leaving Sin City: Sagebrush, High Altitudes, and the Great Utah Migration

Tomorrow morning, we are officially escaping the flashing neon lights, the broken elevators, and the ravenous skin-eating fish of Las Vegas. We are loading up our trusted Ford Flex and pointing the nose north toward our ultimate home base for the next phase of our summer trek: St. George, Utah.

But because a direct, logical four-hour drive up Interstate 15 is far too mainstream for our taste, we have decided to engineer a massive scenic detour. Tomorrow, we are conquering Great Basin National Park.

Nothing says “vacation comfort” quite like leaving a desert basin and driving straight up to a casual 10,000 feet of elevation. We fully expect the blistering Nevada heat to give way to alpine forests, ancient bristlecone pines, and jagged mountain peaks that have absolutely no business existing in the middle of the desert. Leesa is already priming her camera lenses for the mountain vistas, while I am preparing my lungs and my wheelchair wheels to negotiate the thin, high-altitude mountain air.

Once we finish staring at glaciers and dodging sagebrush in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, we will barrel down the highway, cross the state line, and officially touch down in St. George. We have a sprawling condo waiting for us there, packed with all the amenities required for us to unpack, unwind, and plan our next round of desert exploration.

Stay tuned for our next update, where we find out if a wheelchair can successfully navigate a mountain peak, and whether Leesa’s newly exfoliated feet can handle the Utah dirt!