Monday Morning in Montana
I'm on vacation baby... Satruday went a little something like this. I woke up at 6am (this story's already weird, eh?) bright eyed and bushy tailed. I had gone to sleep Friday night at 7pm and slept straight through finally putting my body back onto a normal schedule after LA. The only thing I could think of was putting my butt on the back of my new toy, a 2005 Honda VTX1300C Cruiser motorcycle pictured below. I've been fixin to buy a bike for a few months now (I gave my old POS to my neighbor in MN since I didn't have room in the trailer to move it out here) and figured that was a great way to reward myself for a successful past several weeks.
So I woke up, fired her up, and headed out on the morning open road toward Lake Mead. I rode across Hoover Dam, hung out for a little while, and then rode back into Boulder City to find some random Mom and Pop breakfast shop. I love those things! I found the best one ever in the Las Vegas area, spent some time mingling with the locals and conspiracy theorists, and finally rode back home, where something else unusual happened. The entire house was up by 11am.
The night before Shaun and Jared fixed the trailer on the pontoon boat and we were finally ready to get her back out on the water. The three of us headed out on the water, and as soon as the boat was launched we knew there was problems. We were sinking. Again. But really this time. Aparrantly when the boat was crashed into by the truck some of the welds on the pontoons were broken, and the last time it was out while I was in MN, they filled up with a ton of water, and thus we were low-ride-in.
Back to the trailer.
We pop three fresh beers, pop the drain plugs on the back of the pontoons, and siphon an estimated 50 gallons of water out of the pontoons over 40 minutes.
That's when things started getting werid for a Saturday.
I called my friend Lara Miller in Montana cause I said I would at some point during the day, and I figured that sinking my boat and fixing it was as great a time as any. Her and I have been chatting through the world of MySpace for a while, know a ton of the same people, and have partied in the same room before, but have never consciously met before. We think that we may have met at some point during the series, but *I know* that I *don't know* much of what happened at those poker parties, so it is very likely that I forgot most of anything. Yeah. Anyways, the conversation went something like this. She is coming down to Vegas for the Bellagio Five Diamond in December, I said that's too far away cause I want to hang out sooner, she said how bout next weekend, I said how bout tonight, find me a flight, and hung up. She called back about fifteen minutes later with a flight for Sunday morning at 8:25am.
Oops. Bluff called.
So, I decided to re-raise all-in and said, book it for me, I'll pay you back later, and I'll be on that plane.
She said sure. Looks like I was going to Montana.
Sunday morning I woke up again at 6:30 am, grabbed my still packed bag from LA and headed to the airport. I had genuinely forgotten how much the airport in Vegas SUCKS on Sundays for obvious reasons. I never get to the airport early like most americans because I'm a poker player and we don't do that. I speeched my way through the 30 min check-in line, speeched my way through the 1hr long security line, speeched my way out of another "random" bag search that I was subjected to, and made it onto the plane 10min before takeoff, the last guy on-board naturally. I hate those random bag searches. Not sure how they know, but something about last minute tickets paid for in cash combined with traveling light and having cash on me somehow means "terrorist" to the TSA. Thirteen Arab's and me in a room getting ready for the random search. Riiiight. Anyways, I digress.
I finally made it to Lara's poker room in Helena, MT Sunday night at 5pm. Three feet in Jeremy asked me if I wanted anything to drink, and within thirty seconds an ice cold Bud Light was in my hand. I like this place already. I'm still getting a grasp on the state laws here and the state of poker, but basically Lara rents space from this sports bar/casino (casino meaning they have like twenty old school video machines) and runs a poker room. She carries endorsements from Bluff and Full Tilt Poker, so their name is all over everything, and it's actually a pretty cool vibe going here. About five minutes into my adventure Terry "Coinflip" Manska walked in the door. Coinflip was dubbed by Rick Fuller who was up here last month. He demanded that we flip a quarter for $100. I lost. I then played in the cash game, basically a $2-150 spread with a $300 cap on the pot (state law), and, well, lost. I then played online and lost. Patterns? Aparrantly I run bad in Montana, but based on how good the trip is going thus far, I don't care in the slightest about my poker results.
I am here until Thursday. I'm basically taking this like a vacation. I do have to do some work along the way though. I'm giving a seminar up here Tuesday night so I have to do some reasearch for that. Totally worth it though for the suite they're putting me up in! The shower is literally big enough for four guys to shower comfortably in... but there's only two showerheads in it (only... sick). I love it. Also on the work plate I have an article deadline Wednesday so I suppose I should put all those thoughts onto paper soon so I can edit, eh?
Ok.. that's enough for now. Thanks for reading, and I hope that you're shaking your head and chuckling by this point at how absurd my life is. :-)
Peace and good luck!
Devo
posted by Devo @ 11:58 AM
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