Here are the Cliffs...

Lived in a tent in a major warm weather metropolitan area from Sept. 1999 to March 2009 near a horse track.

Gambled exclusively on horse and greyhound racing. Had a starting bankroll of 2k. Doubled it in 6 months. I thought I was on my way to owning the place.

Fell in with some degens. Lost it all. Quickly. Became a degen. Lived the Degen Playbook. If you are or have been a degen, you understand.

Towards the end, I really got into the freedom of tent living and quit going to the track. When I did, on occasion, it was mostly to pick up a few bucks and split.

I was forced to leave when my campsite became a religious shrine for the homeless dross in the area and feared for my safety.

Spent the last two years caring for my ailing mother and honing my poker skills. I used to think I was good. I was wrong. Now I consider myself an adequate poker player with still more to experience and learn. Back then I was just playing cards. Does that make sense?

Thinking of writing a book about the experience. That's why I have started this thread. Mostly an exercise for myself to relive the experience and see if it plays in Peoria.

Anything is fair game. Ask away.

The first thing that pops into my mind when I hear about about people who don't live in normal houses/apt.s is hygiene. How do you take care of that? How often did you shower/bath? Where'd you get water?

sounds awful

Did you have some close friends during the time? Can you tell us about them?

How would you describe your mental and physical health throughout those ten years? Do you think your life the past ten years have had a positive or negative experience on your life?

Sunday night was always water night. For bathing and washing I had three main water sources. The horse track, a golf course, and an industrial park all within walking distance. I used empty gallon milk jugs that I would Dumpster from a nearby Donut Shop.

I was a regular Gunga Din, completing several trips, always making sure I had enough for the week. For drinking water, I always kept empty Aquafina bottles in my backpack and would get water at the track or the nearby Jack In The Box as needed.

As for hygiene, I used the gallon jugs and created a make-shift shower. Worked pretty well. In the winter time, I would place a jug on a nearby concrete slab to warm. I nailed a mirror to a tree to shave by. I can boast that I was cleaner than most that inhabited the horse track on a daily basis. Many of those degenerates wouldn't know a bar of soap if it hit them in the face.

For the first couple of years, I would make a bi-monthy trip to a washateria (about a seven mile hike, roundtrip) to wash clothes. That became tiresome and I then just washed them by hand using a old paint bucket as a washing machine and a clothesline as a dryer.

The toughest thing to keep clean was the sleeping bag. It could get quite rank at times, especially during a prolonged rainy spell. When I did not take it to the washateria, I would haul it over to the industrial park at night and wash it with a scrub brush, detergent and a water hose. It was satisfactory.

How many women did you have sex with in those 10 years?

Is horse racing 'beatable?"

Oh yes. At the track, I ran in my little hardcore group of degens. There were eight of us. They had no idea that I was living in a tent for the first six years. The only ones that knew were members of my immediate family and a few people that I used to play trivia with. I only then told someone at the track (and showed him my site) when he was suicidial about going through his inheritance of almost one million dollars in less than a year. I thought if he saw how I lived, he might feel better about himself. True story. He was first shocked and then amazed. I made him promise not to tell anyone. Of course, by the next week, everyone knew! This person has been banned by the track three times now, mostly for digging tickets out of trash cans in hopes of finding an uncashed one. I did this too, but with more stealth. I was only thrown out once, though I had other run-ins with track personnel. He once tried to bribe a cleaning woman to give him all the tickets she cleaned off tables. She then immediatley ratted him out to security. He then proceded to call the guard, who we had nicknamed "The Penguin", a piece of sh*t. He hasn't been allowed back since.

He also had this "Fatal Attraction" relationship with this "woman". I use that term loosely. She was like Godzilla but with a bad haircut. She was approaching 40 but still dressed like she was 18. She also had a special talent that she would use in nightclub parking lots and when she was pulled over by police. (Use your imaginaton, here). She also helped relieve him of his money. Once the money was gone, she was too.

He especially loved it when they would get drunk together and she would beat him up. If she didn't do a sufficient job, he would beat himself up, punching himself repeatedly in the face. Again, a true story, I seen it. I could write a book about their relationship alone. The last time I spoke to him, he was selling electricity from door to door, getting paid every Thursday and losing it all before Los Alamitos had finished their racing the same night. He often begged me to come live with him, rent free. I said no thanks.

One more thing about this guy, he was the best quarterhorse handicapper I ever saw. Too bad he couldn't profit from such knowledge. I tried everything to keep him from popshotting on harness racing and midnight racing from Australia. But he never could.

I will share stories of my other degen friends as we procede.

This is difficult to answer since my worldview isn't all "puppies and ginger snaps" to begin with. I believe the compulsive gambling was obviously a negative experience. I do believe that many people actually love to lose. It's easier that way. Just ask the casino industry. I am not one of the people. Losing can and has made me physically ill.

As for the living experience, the first eight years, I would consider neither positive or negative. Where I lived did not matter, as long as I was gambling. I was too numb to feel anything. However, the last two years of the experience, when I took a step back away from the track, my state of mind was sublime, approaching mystical. I still cannot explain why.

As for physically, it is far more healthy to live in a tent than to play online poker. In the past two years, I have gained 30 pounds.

Zero and yes.

Do you know Karate?

Do you have any deadly skills?

Sorry, this is the living in a van forum, tent forum's down the street.

I have this weird ability to move people to the other side of the street when I am walking down a sidewalk. Strange. I am not threatening looking in any way, shape or form. I gather cockroaches from my flat and release them into the wild so not to harm them. So I am just going to assume it is a superpower and leave it at that.

That seems kind of cruel to take them out of your warm apartment and throw them out into the cold.

LOL! I am a fan of the van living guy. To me, that would be more frightening than living in a tent. I never had a run-in with the police (at the site) in the entire ten years. Living in a vehicle, you are likely to have one every week since you are out in the open and a magnet for police harassment when they aren't pre-occupied busting panhandlers or the mentally ill. People often spend more money on their vehicles than they do their own houses, therefore should have that right to live in their vehicles if done properly and with respect to the community. Johnny Law will never grasp that. Here endth the sermon.

Yeah. I'm a rat bastard.

Read this, and not sure if you can answer, but what made you take a step back? Was there any one thing, did you wake up one morning and realize, etc..?

Brief TR of life pre Sept '99?

ty for doing this, can't think of any more questions atm. gl if you decide to pursue the book idea.

what city was this? How big was the tent exactly?

pics of crib

i knew there was no chance i could make it to this joke, but i opened the thread to make it anyway.

What made you think you were so much smarter than all the other racetrack bettors? what age were you when you started? Biggest swings with stories? What track? What are you doing now?

Okay..

Cliffs pre '99...

Decided at the age of 12 that the world is nothing but cheats and liars. I was ahead of the curve.

Public school educated so I never had a chance! LOL! All the teachers cared about was tenure and a paycheck. They didn't care so why should I? I was a misanthrope even before I knew what it meant. Stopped showing up on a regular basis by my sophomore year of high school but still managed to graduate.

Conned myself into a bartending job at a famous restaurant in town. Met my wife to be there. Due to outside forces, we never had a chance. Marriage lasted three years.

Became discontent, quit bartending, and took a job delivering pizza's for a large franchise. Had a stormy two year relationship with a hottie but with some serious self esteem issues.

A greyhound track opened near where I live and I was hooked from Day One. Once I figured out how to beat it (took about one year and 5k), it became a cash cow. A friggin money tree. $1000 a day wasn't uncommon.

Then, the beginning of my demise... the advent of full card simulcasting. Then more full card simulcasting, then more...

I tried to beat every track, therefore, I began losing. I decided to take a break. I rode my bicycle 2000 miles across country. This was my first experience with tent living. I loved it. The freedom. The open road. Flipping off the Amish as I peddled by. Well okay, I made the last one up. Maybe.

When I got back, I laid on the couch for two years, mad at the world. I hadn't discovered online poker if there was such a thing a the time. Played alot of bar trivia, dabbled in bad poetry.

I then entered a relationship with an alcoholic with a heart of gold. I soon grew tried of waking up in her urine.

With nowhere else to go, and with just 2k to my name I decided to give horse racing a try.

That's pretty much it.

Do you look like this guy?

LOL. Especially great are the people who say: "I could write a book"

Well yeah, you might (?) be able to, but would anybody read it?