Wooooooo. I'm sitting here at a Days Inn in Plano, TX, and I figured I would make an update before I head to Las Cruces, NM today. It's a 12 hour drive, so that's going to be zero fun :/. Anyways, my stay in Tunica was much like all of the other times I've been there. My Dad came down from Memphis, and we had dinner at Jack Binion's Steakhouse which was surprisingly disappointing. As we walked in to the place, I asked the hostess if they had a dress code, because I was wearing a hat. She replied somewhat snoodily that no they didn't have a dress code but that Binion's was a five star restaurant so that I should act accordingly...loooool. Well whoever rated that place five stars is ****ing delusional. Ruth's Chris is easily better than Binion's, and it's a chain.
After dinner we hit the three card poker and blackjack tables for a little bit of gamble. My dad doesn't really play that much, and whenever we do play he just gets destroyed all the time, so I feel somewhat bad always dragging him down there when he never wins anything. Alas, it was great to catch up with him, and he fully supports my endeavors which is all I can hope for! Since he works a normal 9-5 he had to leave pretty early, but having had a few drinks I decided to play some live poker with my buddy JN over at Harrahs where they were hosting a WSOP event. As I walked in the cardroom, I see a familiar face sitting at a 2/5 game and ask JN if that's who I think it is. He confirms that yep it's Chris Moneymaker. Because he's from Memphis, I guess he likes to frequent the events in Tunica. It was pretty cool to see the guy who really started everything and gave most of us the opportunities(although inadvertently) that we have today.
I hop in a 1/3 game with JN, and immediately I like the energy of this game. These days I honestly have abandoned the idea of playing live to try to make any money. I play mostly to drink and have a good time, and within five minutes of sitting down I'm doing shots of Jack with five other people at the table. My kind of table! I can see that Steve, an older gentleman to my left, has a bit of gamble in him, and I ask him if he wants to play red and black flops for $5 a hand with a $10 bonus for all of one color flops. He snap calls my offer, and we do several more shots while sweating flops more than we were actually playing the game.
I woke up the next morning having only snuck in 5 hours of sleep. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to the 7 and a half hour drive while slightly hungover and tired. Luckily I bought an audiobook on CD and some new music to enjoy so that mostly got me through it without falling asleep at the wheel. Once I hit Texarkana though, a big T-storm popped up and the driving got extremely intense. I had to say focused for about two hours, and it was pretty exhausting. Finally though I punched through it, and I was in Texas. This is when I did something pretty stupid. I had the Pontiac cruising at 82mph in a 75mph zone with basically no cars on the road. This seems more than standard, and I don't expect to ever get pulled over only going 7mph over. Well I came up behind a state trooper who was doing what I assume to be exactly 75 mph and being lazy I decide to just keep it in cruise control. Bad idea. He sees me pass him and just snap pulls me over. Now I honestly thought cowboys were extinct, but this trooper was the closest thing to one that I had ever seen. He was quite nice and asked me about what I did for a living and where I was going and what not. After explaining everything to him, he just wrote me a warning and sent me on my way. Bink! It's always nice to run good early on a trip.
Well today is going to be very long, but if i can just get through today, I'll practically be home free.
Here I come Meeehhhhhiiiicccooooo!