dig it, man, dig it
Living the dream: A Las Vegas adult sandbox taps into childhood fantasies
Dig This, the first and only heavy-equipment playground in the United States.Photo by Tyler Rudick
Headset? Check. Orange vest? Check.Photo by Tyler Rudick
View from the air-conditioned interior of the Caterpillar 315C HydraulicExcavator.Photo by Tyler Rudick
My own excavation effort with a view of Donald Trump's golden Vegas hotel.Photo by Tyler Rudick
Dig This, LLC even provides certificates . . . although the instructors warnedthey were fairly meaningless, unfortunately.Photo by Tyler Rudick
Billed as the first and only "heavy-equipment playground" in the United States, Las Vegas’s Dig This offers what might be the perfect antidote to the glitz and glamor of the world famous Strip.
Located in an abandoned lot just blocks from the city’s most popular casinos, this burgeoning entertainment company has tapped into a strange-but-real part of the human imagination — renting massive bulldozers and excavators to inexperienced adults looking to play in the Nevada sand.
Joined by my brother- and father-in-law during a recent trip to Sin City, I was lucky enough to experience this heavy-equipment fantasyland firsthand.
"You guys ready to tear up this place?" our instructor asked, as if we weren't going to drive 18-ton excavators around an abandoned lot with virtually no training whatsoever.
Absurd? Yes. Fun? Totally.
At the edge of the I-15 freeway on the site of a former amusement park, the three of us huddled in a small classroom for a brief introduction to the Caterpillar 315C Hydraulic Excavator.
"Seriously, you'll be amazed how quickly you get used to operating these machines," instructor Jason Heisig told us before outlining the morning's events with several die-cast toys in a tabletop sandbox. "Plus, we're fully insured."
Our tasks were easy: Drive the machines across the dusty "playground," rotate the cab several times and return to the starting point to dig holes for an hour.
As we put on hard hats and orange vests, our on-site trainer Travis Mills stepped into the classroom.
"You guys ready to tear up this place?" he asked nonchalantly, as if we weren't going to drive a set of 18-ton excavators around an abandoned lot with virtually no training whatsoever. "Let's do this."
Showing us to our machines, he explained the basic controls, which, amazingly, were slightly easier than an Xbox game. We would be communicating with Mills via radio headsets the entire time, in case there were any questions.
The excavator cabs were air-conditioned and equipped with a driver's seats as comfortable as living room furniture. Two handles on the floor moved the tire treads forward and back. To the side of the seat were rubber joysticks that rotated the cab and operated the long shovel.
Driving across the site was thoroughly entertaining, but not nearly as invigorating as digging the holes themselves. Mills, an experienced heavy-equipment operator, stood just out of reach from the excavators, giving us pointers while slyly creating an atmosphere of competition. Each of our three trenches made it well past six feet deep by the end of the session.
After finishing our morning's work, we knew we were all winners — especially when Mills handed us each our own official Dig This certificate of accomplishment.
Watching us proudly hold up our awards for one final group picture, he laughed. "You know these documents aren't real, right?"
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