AC/DC

I should have known things would be bad on my DC trip after having missed the flight out with Joe and losing the $10k playing poker online. Just after landing at midnight, my normally get in your car and go Hertz reservation said “see agent” on the electronic board. Sigh. Tired and hungry, I wheeled my wares into their bungalow-slash-office and came across a man who was easily the least qualified employee ever to perform a function and be paid for it. He was amazing. All I kept picturing as people lined up behind me, and he pathetically struggled to make sense of modern computing was how sweet he would look on one of those office motivational posters with the caption: “Ineptitude.” He took twenty minutes to hand me a key to a car, only to have it be to one with a DEAD BATTERY. Steaming, I returned to the office in search of a key to a functioning vehicle, and to his credit, the guy read me well enough to know that bumping me up a few car classes would probably be in the best interests of saving his own life. So there I was in a premium class…Ford Edge (yea).

The following morning Sebok and I drove to some friends of his’ place to pre-game grub and hit the metro to get to the game as a group. Starving, I wasn’t thrilled that in place of your standard barbecue fanfare I had a choice between bagels and cream cheese…and moose burger. That’s right: moose burger. “Hmmm, do I go for the bread donut or the road kill?” Not keen on either I opted for bagel while Sebok got experimental.


We hit the metro for college park, and then a shuttle to the stadium. There were a good number of Cal fans there, as many of Berkeley’s Poli-Sci majors end up in DC for work. We hoofed it to our seats, which as usual were road team nosebleed specials, and soon realized that sun block had definitely been overlooked in the game prep. It was scorching hot and humid, and with our seats half earth’s distance to the sun, we were in for a baking, and so was our team.

Undefeated at the time, Cal decided to play their worst ball of the season, and got beat by a Maryland squad who had lost to Delaware and Middle Tennessee St. in their previous two outings. Sick. To go to all that trouble to watch tiny little people scramble around a tiny patch of grass while contracting melanoma was not fun. At least it wasn’t a conference game right?

The following morning, somewhat crushed, Sebok and I drove up to Atlantic City (AC) from DC for our Poker Road Radio WPT Borgata stop. It’s a pretty drive, but there are a lot of state troopers on east coast freeways, and they are all too happy to tag you for speeding so I had to avoid the lead-foot tendencies. If you haven’t been to Atlantic City, you’re really not missing much. Canned mushrooms, tranny whores, bad weather, and salty east coast attitudes are the highlights. That said, the Borgata is a beautiful hotel. It’s like an east coast Bellagio, complete with Chihully glass installations (look it up, they’re beautiful), and top notch restaurants, but stick to Vegas if you can.

I somehow managed to avoid gambling in the pit during the trip, opting instead to hang out with poker peeps at the hotel bars or club, Guido-watching. Now I know where all excess gold, chest hair, and gel ends up in this country – and the sickest part is people out there generally accept the look as cool! Don’t try that in LA.

I did find time to play some poker one night though, and I regret that I did. Playing 100-200 limit hold 'em with $25 and $100 chips is so strange to me. In any California card room you would just buy all $25 chips, but in AC you have to buy your chips from the dealer rack so there really isn’t any room for that. This means the dealer has to stop the game, count out all your money for the camera, cut out all the chips, and then get a floor person to verify the whole thing. You may as well sell me chips for a different game dealer because by the time you’re done this one will be broken! The high limit games were usually short, and broke quickly, so of course I got stuck a few thousand and was left to get it back playing 40-80. It took me all night and most of the morning to do it but I fought back and passed out even on the session.

So if the people, poker, and weather pretty much suck why go to AC? Well, how else are you gonna meet the cast of The Sopranos?