We got hit with an incredible windstorm – I named them Diabolical Underhanded Bastards…DUB for short.  It began to wreak havoc with everything – even stuff that was nailed down – on Monday and then it rained too – off and on in spurts and drizzles. 

I was hoping the DUB would start to slip off to parts unknown but as life always seems to have its own little bag of surprises, it’s still here, coming in from another direction, and it’s hateful and cold.  I’m cold most of the time anyway so…shiver me timbers…I’m freezing my ass off.

The weather came to mind a few days ago when I started to remember the summer heat here in southern Nevada on my first trip down to deal a poker tournament in Las Vegas in the summer. I road-tripped down with a creep I used to live with and we were dying from a 16 hour drive; we hit town in the early morning but couldn’t get into a room until after 1 or 2 p.m. We slept in the rig and even parked under the scruffy trees in a parking lot, it felt like I had an apple in my mouth and was rotating on the spit in super siz mode.

The air-conditioners drove me nutzzz back then, and still do at times.  It can be 110 outside but if you’re going into a casino or an eatery, it’s best to bring a sweater or jacket.  Now I never leave home without one. So…imagine this kid with no true desert summer experience, coming from Montana where the night temps drop and the day temps are around 95ish in summer.  We’ve all heard “it’s a DRY heat” right?  Yuppers, it is, but it’s still unbearable when you’re first exposed to it. And the fact that if you walked down the Strip at 3 a.m. it was still 100 degrees was a real eye opener.

It wasn’t only the temperature that was brutal, the water was something truly disgusting.  Turn on the tap and don’t breathe through your nose, it stinks to high heaven.  The water never cools down when you turn on ‘cold’ – there should be a knob that reads ‘pee warm’ instead of ‘cold’ in most Vegas establishments and even at home.  Don’t drink it!!! That’s my advice.  I learned the value of bottled water really fast.

Showering?  Turn on the cold and you can usually shower in it without turning on ‘hot’ in the summer. Everything in the desert is designed to dry out your entire body, the wind robs you of moisture, bathing robs you of moisture, if you can get past the smell as the glass comes to your nose, there must be some hydrating value that would add moisture to your system, but how much can you drink in a day?

When I moved to LV permanently, I learned that jumping out of the shower and covering my entire body with a good hand lotion helped keep the moisture in and eventually – about six months – my skin felt like it belonged to me. My hair took a lot longer for some reason.

The DUBs, however, I’ve never gotten used to.  I hate the wind.  A breeze is one thing, but these are gut-rippers and even going out in them is miserable.  When I lived in the fifth-wheel (the ‘toy house’ as Riot calls it), it was like being on a boat in the middle of a hurricane.

Ahhhh…yes…the tournament I came down to deal? The first Gold Coast Open. We had to audition to get hired…I’d already dealt at the Golden Nugget in their last Grand Prix event and hit several other big tournaments.  So…obviously I passed because I got hired.  As with all new events, players that hit the circuit were always busy telling you how to do your job.  In those days I didn’t handle any of it well. I can’t look back and even find one ‘happy thought’ that went with that whole trip.

The creep I was with always wanted to prove that he was ‘a player’ and someone knocked him down, drugged him, and put a dealer’s shirt on him that grew to his skin…after all, he was ‘a player’  – not a dealer for crap’s sake.  He had no money management and could win $1,500 in an hour and lose it all back in the next two hours and start looking around for someone he could borrow from…consider the fact that in those days most side games were limit.  The only time that NL or PL came to town was during a tournament.  His favorite place to play was the Stardust where he tangled with the likes of Roy Cooke and Sissy Bottoms in the $10-20 Holdem games.  From his mouth, “they get so lucky…” Those two went on to become part of poker’s landscape.  The creep?  As far as I know he went on to become one of ‘life’s bust-outs’ and I don’t believe I’m the only person that holds that view.

As DUBs and creeps go, the only way something can bother you is if you let it.  The wind bothers me, it grates on my sense of peace and serenity and interrupts my time I would like to spend outdoors.  The creep never bothers me, he didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t allow him to do…I lost any angst or pain brought by my relationship with him long ago and let it all blow away in the DUBS.