→ Riding a Tailwind
Today’s bloggery comes to you live through tired eyes in the 44th row of my Scandinavian Airlines A330. I’m finally flying in the right direction, east to west around half the globe and back towards home in North Carolina. It’s the 26th of the month (I think), and I’ve been home for a total of 18 hours since I left for Aruba on the 3rd. I miss my bed, the dogs, and American sports. Like crazy.
I laughed/puked when I just looked back at my itineraries this month. Raleigh –> Miami –> Aruba –> Miami — Raleigh –> London –> Madrid –> Marrakech –> Milan –> Warsaw –> Copenhagen, and now finally –> Washington Dulles –> Raleigh! At one point in there, I was on four continents in three days. And there were some brutally long layovers thrown in just for my amusement. At least I’m quickly becoming a golden citizen to a couple major airlines. Total miles flown in the last 23 days: 15,723. I’m thrilled that Washington D.C. and North Carolina have finally peeked into view on my personal seat-back moving map display. SAS has been a pleasant surprise on this trip, one of the few things that’s gone better than expected.
I’ll throw some photos up from the WPT Marrakech at some point, but that’s about all I’d care to do with that. It was not a great trip, but at least I knew that going in.
Okay, then… Warsaw. Apart from upstate New York, Warsaw has to be the grayest, blankest place on the planet. The particular hue of depression that Warsaw is bathed in makes the actual color gray look like a rainbow. Crayola doesn’t even know this color exists. I was there for eight days, and I saw nary a ray of sunshine the entire time. It didn’t help that I had just come from Morocco and then Aruba before that. From 95 and brilliant sunshine directly to 29 with freezing gray drizzle.
Ah, but it wasn’t all bad. The best thing about EPTs are getting to hang with Mad and Benjo and some of the other perennial personalities. EPT destinations are usually pretty solid too, and indeed, we found plenty of interesting places to shop, eat, and sightsee in Warsaw. Shaun Deeb was there, as was Carter Phillips, fresh off his EPT win in Barcelona a couple weeks ago. And Jim “Mr_BigQueso” Collopy, fresh of a big online score on Tilt. The three of them and the three of us (me, Donnie, and Jeremy) had dinner at the “London Steak House” one night early in the tournament. Queso had been drinking since he was eliminated in the first few hands earlier that day. Carter lives in Charlotte, as it turns out. And Deeb is always a good time to hang with. I lifted two beer glasses and the salt & pepper shakers off the table. Will pay for them next time back. Deeb lost CCR too.
The tournament was great until the second-to-last day when all of the big names somehow bombed out. When the money hit at 24, there were still 10 or 12 notables in contention, but thy got picked off one-by-one before the final table. All except Luca Pagano who looked like he might even pull it off at one point. A bad three-outer proved that PokerStars online tournaments are just as rigged as their online site, though, and Pagano went out in 4th. A wealthy French entrepreneur, Christophe Benzimra, ended up taking home the title, his first and the fifth for his home country.
Oh yes, I almost forgot to write about this. Let’s test out video embedding in WordPress blogs. So, Gloria caught a bad stomach bug for the first two days of the event, and I ended up doing a few interviews for PokerNews. I actually didn’t suck as bad as I expected to. I interviewed him, Katja Thater, and Antony Lellouche before notifying the team of my retirement upon Glo’s return. I think my career actually panned out rather nicely. Here’s Deebs:
And so it ends; I’m finally en route home. As we get bounced around by the jetstream over the St. Lawrence, the cloud cover just starts to break up. I can see blue sky, green grass, and the colors of fall in the trees on the horizon. Sights for sore eyes, the likes of which I haven’t seen in weeks. I’m going to really make an effort to enjoy the next two weeks, and really the rest of the year. For now, I intend to get caught up on a month’s worth of photos and paperwork while I have a chance to, and then wallow in a near-comatose state of inactivity for a couple days. Then it’s off to Vegas to cover the November Nine before heading to sunny Portugal for more EPT shenanigans.
Further updates as events warrant.