The good part of the trip in to Las Vegas on Thursday was spending time with Marie and Gary, mostly Marie because…well…just because, and having lunch with Sylvia Hart after she gave me a ride to the Orleans. 

The downside to the trip still has me locked in a bit of despair, nothing life-threatening despair but still…

When I got to Costco at Summerlin, my jeep had started with its own beat, a light tick-tick-tick. I finished at Costco and headed for The Orleans where Marie and I got into a $2/$4 limit hold’em game that only ended up costing me a few dollars.  The game was fun, Marie won, and we had plans to meet Dadparental and Riot at the buffet at 5 p.m.  We did that.

Then my boy went to the parking garage with me to check the transmission fluid and oil in my rig.  All was good, the ticking sound was worse. We made arrangements to meet the following a.m. at his friend’s place that works on cars.

I stopped at a liquor store on the way to Marie’s — if I’d known the news was going to be so bad on my rig, I might have bought a 5th of tequila, as it was, I bought a bottle of Beringer white zin.

I did enjoy the wine and the conversation at Marie’s as I bitched about Sheldon Adelson and his goal to stop online poker and gambling, and we caught up on other news of people and places. I was in bed earlier than I have been in 400 years or so — nah…I only had 2 glasses of wine.  But then all I did was wake up repeatedly to fret about my rig.

The thought of being 70 miles from home, having to drive another 10 miles to the friend’s place and wondering if it would just blow up on the way, being short funds (my middle name), and trying to figure out how I was going to get home if I couldn’t drive it home, was almost too much for my granny brain to handle through sleep infested cobwebs. Yeah, where is that bottle of tequila anyway?

So…the bad news. It’s something to do with a crank and bearing that shifts the rig.  SUX! Crazy amount of sifting through options ended up with me leaving it where it sat – arrangements being made to order a rebuild kit for it – son driving me to where Sylvia Hart was and he went on to work, Sylvia taking me to The Orleans and hanging out for a while. Marie and I in a $4/$8 where I lost way more than I wanted to…I flopped the stone nuts in BB position and put in every raise I could while a gent that had j-4 off flopped top pair and helped trap a 3rd player in the raising war.  Nice pot!  It wasn’t to be claimed by me as it came runner, runner for the j-4 and he filled up.

My son was coming back for me about 4:30, with his Riotness, and he drove me and the boy to my house.  What a day of driving for him…he had to get back to Vegas and go to work. Riot had a 3-day weekend, he goes home tomorrow but dad will have to come and get him.

I will be carless for a while. I hate leaving it in Vegas. My son’s friend will fix it for about 1/4 of what it would cost me to take it to a shop. It’s still complicated because of the insurance on the rig and people other than me driving it and the area it’s parked in isn’t one of high level security, but I’m stuck.

I’m happy to be home and alive, just in one helluva slump over the way everything turned out.

*****

Thinking about the Borgata tournament being cancelled due to counterfeit chips in play gave me a headache.  It was the first event on the schedule, down to 27 players,  and 423 players had already cashed when the tournament was stopped. They are talking investigation and holding the prize fund in trust.  Major bad beat in my eyes — for the entire poker world because some asshole has to compromise a major tournament to accomplish what?

Maybe Adelson hired them!

Also a major bad beat for the players in the tournament, all of them, and especially the final 27 that were coming back to fight for 1st place, they don’t even know what will happen with their money and time/skill investment at this point.

*****

Play at the WSOP.com is not working well.  I’ll keep trying. But then it didn’t go well at the Orleans either.  The jackpot was over $86K but not even a smell hit the air while I was there.

All-in-all, over the last few days I’m reminded of a guy I dealt to a lot in Mississippi, “It ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun!”
Amen, Brother!