Vegas With Noah
This summer my son came with me on a work trip to Las Vegas. He saw me in my element, we played TPC Las Vegas in brutal heat, and I finally got to be the dad who knows the secret spot.
This summer I had a work trip to Las Vegas, and I did something I had never done before. I brought my son Noah with me.
He is eighteen now, which is a strange and great age. Old enough to be real company. Young enough that this was still a big deal. And for the first time, he got to see what his dad actually does all day.
## Seeing me in my environment
Kids hear about your job for years. Meetings, calls, flights, "I'm on with a client." It is all abstract. In Vegas, Noah got to see it up close. He watched me work, and he met some of the people I work with, the same people I talk about at the dinner table.
I did not realize how much that would mean to me. There is something about your kid seeing you in your element, being good at something, that is hard to describe. And I think it went both ways. He saw a version of me that does not show up at home, and I got to watch him hold his own in a room full of adults.
## TPC Las Vegas
We played a round at TPC Las Vegas, and it was a great one. It was brutally hot, the kind of Vegas summer heat that makes you drink twice the water you planned, and neither of us cared one bit. Desert golf is its own thing: bright green fairways cut through rock and canyon, with nothing else like it back home. Noah could not get over it. Every few holes he would say it again: "Desert golf is so sick!" He was right.
Some of my favorite memories with Noah are on a golf course. Walking eighteen holes gives you four or five hours to just be together, with no phones in the way.
## The sights
We also did the full Vegas tour. The Strip at night, the lights, the crowds, the hotels that are each trying to out-crazy the one next door. There is no place on earth like it, and seeing it through his eyes made it feel new to me again.
## F1 Arcade
Then there was the F1 Arcade, a room full of racing simulators where you strap in and race each other on real Formula 1 tracks. I went in confident. I came out humbled. Noah absolutely whooped me, and he made sure I knew it. I like to win, but losing to your kid is the one loss that does not sting. Mostly.
## Secret Pizza
The highlight might have been the least fancy stop of the trip. I took him to Secret Pizza, a speakeasy pizzeria tucked into the Cosmopolitan. There is no sign. You find it by walking down an unmarked hallway lined with old record covers, and suddenly there is a counter selling some of the best slices in town.
Watching him figure out where we were going, and then realize it was real, was worth the trip by itself. Every dad wants to be the guy who knows the secret spot. For one night, I was.
## Why it mattered
Work travel usually means time away from the people I care about most. This time it meant the opposite. I got to share my world with my son, and he got to see where his dad goes when he leaves the house.
He will remember the golf, the F1 Arcade, and the pizza. I will remember him walking into a room with me, shaking hands, and fitting right in.