Hey guys, I am sorry - I haven't logged on 2p2 in two weeks, I have literally been working every day. The days of me lounging on the couch and typing were gone for a bit with this new gig that literally is consuming my life, but in a good way. I do feel I have let readers down as my stories have slowed down, but I have a few days free this week and will get on it. I really didn't want to leave anyone hanging there, I just didn't think I could write up everything in one post without watering it down. I will try and post some pictures in the meantime. I have been holed up in hotels throughout the Miami area - anyone want to meet up at Hialeah if they are in the area?

no worries. when you are ready, we'll be here.

Beggars can't be choosers. Always happy when you find time to pen another instalment.

Agree with two posts above; no need to apologize. Your stories are fantastic and worth the wait!

George RR Martin's fat ass had kept me waiting for a decade, and he gets paid to write. You're doing this for free, so I can wait.

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Still in Hialeah? I've never been (to the casino) but will go to meet up and play some PLO. My Spanish is proficient, and you have a gun.

I will be staying in Doral Thursday through at least Saturday, I might be able to make it up there. Supposed to be working, but the PLO game was just too good the last time I was there. Spanish is always a plus! PM me if you want.

Back to writing......

Short Update:

So I am sitting in a hotel room at Miccosukee right now, Nicole is passed out and I couldn't sleep thanks to 25 people in the room next to me. It smells like cocoa butter and weed, and I called the front desk and they didn't do much of anything. I went down to the gaming area, and to the poker room with ragged shorts and a "This Guy Loves 'Merica" shirt in front of a thousand people speaking Spanish. There was one person waiting for 1/2, no 2/5. The one guy waiting for 1/2 was complaining that a guy had a dollar chip on the table and he couldn't get a seat. I recognized he was from New York, and they may have made that game semi-private by closing that seat off. I have never heard of a private 1/2 game in a casino before.

This job continues to consume most to all of my time, I have taken on another angle of the job as a plant broker where I get 20% of all the material I find for him to buy on top of an extremely good hourly. He also bought me this ridiculously nice laptop just for his garden management. I make it sound rough, but its actually pretty cool and I do have a ton of flexibility, there is just a lot of work to do. I've gotten tired of hotels, I'm going to buy a camper and put it on his farm so I can just stay there when I come down here. I considered just buying a camper to tow behind, drive around and just live out of it and save money for a nice house eventually. I already feel like I am living out of my car, I travel all up and down the West Coast of FL as it is.

A couple of people have reached out to me about playing on the East Coast, and I will definitely be in touch when I do have a free couple of days play. I went to Hialeah last night and got on the 5-5PLO and Big O list. I am pretty sure I saw that guy Charlie Gomez who vlogs in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area waiting for the same game, but I had to go before my name was called. They really let some of the tables and chairs go to hell there, it looked a lot nicer back in 2013.

I know there are people who were very into this story, and I don't want to let you guys down. There is definitely more to come, and hopefully soon.

thx for the update; and def waiting patiently for the next installment! How are things with Nicole; irrc, in a not-too-distant post, you thought things may be done with her.

We are still working on things, I technically still live there, but I am really just a nomad now. I've been driving around scooping up family members and supplies and trying to board up my sister's house. Probably going to go to Eufaula, Alabama on Friday night. I hope I can get back to writing soon. Should have some free time sitting at a hotel there!

Alabama seems like a good idea; stay safe and good luck with the recovery phase!

your plants make it?

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haha. you know its a good part of the story when it crossed my mind watching CNN and wondering about a few friends in Florida how the expensive plants from that internet poker story is doing

so hopefully this guy made it alive so he can tell us about the plants.

On the Run

Sitting here in a hotel in Aiken, South Carolina with my story of the past week. Last time you guys heard from me, I had seen Irma on the radar and told everyone it was going to just veer off like every other hurricane. Over the course of the week, things got progressively bleaker, my friend Ken said to get out and he swore he would never ride out a storm like Andrew again like he did in 1992. During the last week, I had gotten supplies and even ordered some cool survival things on Amazon. I had also prepped my sister's house for the hurricane as I was in Sarasota at the time and could help. Nicole wanted me to come down to ride it out with her closer to Naples, and she lives in an area that could possibly flood so I told her to come up to Sarasota. Gas lines got worse, stores were out of everything, and I was locked and loaded. On Friday, I realized Irma was going to knock out power in our area and possibly get worse. I drove down to Nicole to drop off some food, water, and gave her an extra .22 I had in case of looters - looters are such pussies that all you have to do is fire in a general direction and they run. I carried a gas tank with me to top off my SUV so I would have a full tank. I went down there, I begged her to come up where it was probably going to be better, but in the end she couldn't leave her house, and it was a very hard goodbye. I went to sleep at 2am sick to my stomach. I managed to top off my tank after getting into a scuffle with a hoodrat in a gas line in a bad part of Port Charlotte. I knew if there was an incident I might not get back to my family. There is nothing creepier than riding down a normally busy road at 9pm with not a car in sight heading south.

At 5am, I woke up and checked the latest forecast - Cat 4 hitting Cape Coral, Venice and Sarasota directly. I instantly went to the bathroom and threw up phlegm and couldn't stop heaving. The weather app was basically telling me my plants, my family, my life was in danger of being no more. Sleeping on a blow up mattress in the TV room of my mom's apartment, I told her to pack her stuff and I was going to get my sister and her boyfriend, 6 dogs, and we were going to head north. I went down to pick up two dogs and we rode back with three cars, one not tagged that my sister had lying around. While we were packing at my mom's apartment, one of my sister's dogs were barking. It was 8am, 78 degrees out with the windows well cracked, and the security guy came out waving his hand like he had to flag me down.

"I've been getting calls for half an hour about these dogs, this just isn't right, I'm going to call the cops!" He was one of those rent-a-cops that took his job too seriously. He said he was the head security guard of my mom's complex and knew the sheriff personally. I told him that it was a temporary situation and he got up in my face.

"There is a Cat 5 hurricane headed our way, and you are worried about some dogs barking? You think the sheriff is really going to respond to a call like that?" He continued his rant about the sheriff and I told him to act like an adult and a human being, and he finally went quiet. He headed out around 9am, and I had to make a call which way we were going by 1pm as I-10 approached. We had a 3 car convoy and with 4 people and six dogs, we were not making good time. I decided to head East as I knew the area better, and had found a hotel in Augusta, GA that burnt up all my Hilton Honors Points, but after driving the back roads of South Georgia, I didn't care. My sister found a dog friendly hotel here in Aiken, and at 230am I finally got to shower and pass out in a nice old southern hotel. The ride out of Florida was like nothing I had ever seen - gas lines with people filling up gas tanks strapped to their cars and lines down the street, abandoned vehicles everywhere, people in desperation to get out of the way of Irma.

I had to find a plan, and that plan was to stay up in the hills for a bit. I got an Airbnb right next to Furman in Greenville, so maybe I could visit Trooper's house in my free time. In all seriousness, if anyone is in the area, I will have some free time, might be looking for a home game. In all of this, I realized how much I love Nicole, she stayed with her family in a safe house in town. I got to talk to her today after a lot of concern, things could have been much worse. I also got to talk to a few people who read this story, I tried to find them the right place to go, but there was no right place - Irma is everywhere. I am at the hotel in Aiken now writing this, waiting for life to come back to normal. On the upside, I know I have a job to come back to, Miami didn't take a direct hit, and there was just some slight to moderate damage. During my week in Greenville I can hopefully relax and finish part 2 - something that has been needed to be done for a while. I will try and get some pictures up in the following days.

P.S. I am pretty sure my nursery is toast, but that's about 5% of my income, I can live without it, and hope my plants there are not dead. I have a lot of friends that lost a lot of plants, its sad to see 20 years of hard work get lost in a single day.

Glad you are and your loved ones are safe. I am assuming that based on the projections of Irma, 5% loss of income is pretty much the best case scenario you could have imagined.

That was well worth the wait. Stay safe

Actually glad to hear you're still into Nicole. Drama with her mom is overwhelming, but that's life, right? Looking forward to next installment.

Also, how exactly do plants get lost in the hurricane, blown away? Flooded and drowned?

I just got back yesterday from SC, what a brutal drive in that Fiat. I have to head out to Louisiana on Saturday, another long haul but worth it.

My main shadehouse is a complete loss. What happens is these are not built to the same codes as houses are - AG property has no restrictions for buildings. I used 6x6" posts laid 2 feet in the ground with 3/4" braided stainless steel for supports and the fugging thing still collapsed. The property owner is mad I am not around as much, and its just not worth it for me to rebuild and have him hounding me, so I am going to pick up whats left and continue with my job.

In the meantime, I will have some time here and there to play poker anywhere from Tallahassee to New Orleans. Any home games on or around the I-10 corridor there, or I-12/55 in Hammond?

If you make it Houston I will show you the games.

Glad to hear that all is somewhat well. We both know it could have been a lot worse. i definitely feel like we dodged a bullet even though i just got my power back on a few days ago! I resorted to going to the kennel to charge my phone, check emails and get in the ac while of course playing some poker but the curfew caused them to close early on most nights. I love the camper idea and feel like its the most optimal option considering your goals w/your business, poker and life in general. Traveling, brokering plants, visiting home games and different casinos; i must say the camper life sounds pretty alluring. Ideally, If you do take that route how would things work out with Nicole?

I am not even close to finishing the story im around page 16 or so, but I'd like to say that reading your thought process about omaha hands has really helped my game.

I always was a confident omaha player and felt that I have a good understanding of hand strength values, but playing post flop I wasn't always sure what the best plays were and was more inclined to just gamble it up.

Also reading the way you think about hands re-assured me that my thought process is on the right track.

Glad to hear that some of my Omaha thinking has also been considered reasonable by other Omaha players. I take a very open-minded approach to the game, there are so many factors that approaching them as they come along tends to reduce variance which is so brutal in the game.


As far as the next week goes, I am back in FL now, but Tuesday I am driving up to Hammond, LA to do a plant pickup, then picking up a travel trailer, and towing everything back in a box truck to Miami. It will be a long haul, but I am willing to stop if anyone will be around and can recommend a game. I can go to Beau/IP most likely as well as some panhandle games. Probably not enough time to go to Harrah's, but it's possible. Nicole will be with me but she's been known to sit through a long session.

Again I feel really bad to those who read this regularly. I was just too busy to even do regular work on the comp with setting up this trip, making sure sellers were paid, and lining up this trailer in Mississippi. I also managed to fracture my thumb when cleaning my RTIC cooler and the top slammed down right on the first knuckle (don't know the right term). Kills my ability to type with two hands.

On a side note, as much as I hate to use this thread to my benefit, I am in the market for a new midsize(possibly fullsize truck). Leaning towards the Honda Ridgeline (I know its not a real truck, but it tows 5k) but possibly a Frontier or Tacoma. I already got some numbers from local dealers, but trying to find the best deal. Anyone work in car sales by chance? I have chosen to tow this travel trailer around and work out of it as I was offered $500 a month to park it in Miami by my client, and can bring it with me where I go. Beats paying 750-1250 for a one bedroom place in most of South Florida.

just spent a week reading this entire thread. Thanks for the stories man, you're a very entertaining writer.

Don't ever break up with that woman.

While the recent hurricanes have obviously been a tragedy in many ways I have to admit I am somewhat curious as to the effect that this has on your plant business outside of the immediate loss of current stock/buildings etc.

For instance does your business increase as people get their **** back together and start looking to replace what they have lost causing a net increase in business or does everything in the affected areas dry up until the memories of the storms has faded somewhat?

I am also curious wether the increased liklihood that the storms (and global warming as a whole I guess) this year so far could become more the norm than the exception has changed the advice you are giving clients at all?