Vegas -> Slabs -> Money Factory.
hate having to write something in this box. Friday morning I kissed my girlfriend goodbye. She was about to leave on her Great Adventure that she had planned for a long, long time. Her destination was Mammoth Mountain, Tahoe, and the rest of the Western United States. She just launched a womens snowboarding apparel company and is using the next four months to travel around to the different mountains, everywhere from Whistler to Breckenridge. She is going to ride and to promote her product.Yeah, so news there. After 16 months of whatevs, Tiffany and I are officially together, finally having that talk somewhere around 3am Saturday the 8th at the Spearamint Rhino while celebrating Kevin Saul's 2nd place at the Bellagio Friday the 7th.
So, with her leaving town, I knew it was time for me to get back on the road. I've been ancy since about Nov 1 and have been going especially nuts in the past two weeks with it being so cold in Las Vegas. I needed to go somewhere warmer, and I was missing the money factory. So, Saturday afternoon at 1:30 I left and drove south.
I wasn't too sure where I was headed when I left. I was planning on driving south on the 95 rather than the 15 mostly because I wanted to go somewhere that I hadn't been before. Also, I had been itching to go to Slab City and I knew that it was somewhere by the Salton Sea.
Sometime in the late 1960s people moved into an abandoned military base east of Niland, California. All that remained of the military base were a few guard shacks and the concrete foundations where there used to be buildings. The place was called "The Slabs", and after some time of people consistently living around The Slabs, it became known as Slab City.
I had first heard of the Slabs when I first read Into the Wild and had been planning on heading there for a long time but never really had the opportunity to until now (course I had never gone out of my way to make an opportunity, but I will be doing that in the future for sure).
Every Saturday night at Slab City they fire up what they call "The Range." It is basically their weekly hangout gathering open-mic night where everybody hangs out and some people/bands play sets. I figured if I was driving to San Diego on a Saturday night, I might as well stop by the range!
I found Slab City about five hours later after a sweet solo drive across the desert. I found the Range, parked in some secluded spot, and walked up to the gathering of people around the fire barrel. The first guy I met was named Mike. He asked me if I had a warrant out for my arrest. LOL. Aparrently less than 15 minutes before my arrival the police were snooping around (who never bother anybody at slab city) looking for a guy named Brian from Niland who had a class C trailer. I convinced them that I was from Vegas and all was well on the hippie front once again.
We stood around the rusted out oil drum that held our campfire and talked about whatever. I met good person after good person. Many of these people I would not have acknowledged if I passed them on the street or if they asked me for a quarter, but here I was drinking and smoking with them and having a great time. After about 20 minutes, Mike asked me, "Do you play?"
Ten minutes later I was walking onto stage with my djembe drum. I played an eight song set and had an absolutely incredible experience. At the end of the night I played another set with just a couple of the guys. They asked me to lead a song, and then I lead another one, and then they asked me to do my own stuff, and before I knew it I was putting on a regular concert, leading with my voice and acoustic guitar, the drums were driving the music and the electric guitar was giving it life. It was awesome.
Everybody ended up going to sleep around 11pm. I was like, now what? I'm still wide awake and definately not drunk. I decided to finish my drive down to San Diego, made it halfway, and unrolled my sleeping bag in the bed of my truck somewhere between the Salton Sea and San Diego.
The following morning I was waken up by the Border Patrol. You can imagine my state of disorientation with this one. I was in the mountains off the 8 freeway and aparrently pretty dang close to Mexico. Anyways, the officer was just checking on me as he saw a body in a bag in the back of a truck. After confirming that I had a pulse he left, and with the sun rising I wasn't going to be able to make it back to sleep.
7am. I'm in the mountains near Mexico. I'm not going to go wake the fellas up. What do I do? My questions were answered as I was driving west on the 8. I saw the Viejas casino, one of the few in Southern California that I had not been to. I wandered into the poker room wearing the clothes that I had worn yesterday (and slept in), slippers, and a bandana. Their biggest game was 1-3NL, and I beat it for $170 in the 90 minutes that I was able to play. The game broke for their 10am $27 bounty tournament. They told me it would not last longer than three hours, so I was in.
13 bounties and two hours later we had gone from 113 players to 9. LOL doubletheblindseveryfifteenminutesaments. I had a lot of chips (like 13 bb's... good for the chip lead) and really didn't feel like making a deal anyways. Second hand I get it all in vs 3rd, 8th, and 9th in chips. I had 77 and was against A4o of the 3rd in chips guy (who limped and then called my shove), K2s of the BB, and something goofy of the other player that was way behind my hand, so maybe like 63 or so. Anyways, I lost that pot, never recovered, and then with 6 left we chopped evenly. I had seven chips. The four players ahead of me had 9, 10, 19, and 24 chips. The A4o guy had like 75 chips. Thanks bro. We all took $325 each.
By the time we chopped it was 12:45 and i was on my way to the money factory to manufacture more money. Alas, it was not to be though as I ran like dog shit, the most painful one being two outed 20 off the money in the UBOC $1k main event.
I grinded a ton of cash games last night too. I was up about $500 playing 1-2 NL and PLO, but then the wheels on the bus fell off and I lost $1k straight, putting me about even for the day. The most painful was with about $350 behind in PLO I had the AAJT with diamonds and opened for pot, got re-raised pot, I re-raised pot, and we saw a flop for $62 each. It came Q72. I bet pot, he called. Turn a 9 of diamonds, I bet all-in (about 80% pot) and my opponenet showed me QJT8 with one suit. So, I had him all-in at 60% to win and 15% to chop. OBV i lost, but these are the most painful beats ever when you look at their hand and are just like, what the?!?!? That hand had no business playing a pot that big ever, but because he played so bad he stacked me. Sigh.
So, I'm in San Diego for a while. I love it here.
Oh, and I'm playing Cantu in the semi-finals of my fantasy league right now. He's ahead of me by 4 points and has the Bears defense tonight while I have Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor. So, MN rushing has to beat Bears defense by 5 points tonight for tha moniez. Also in fantasy news I won my $1k side bet with Theo, so that's nice.
Aight. Peace. Good Luck.
Devo
posted by Devo @ 3:57 PM
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