From: deadhead
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 17:43:21 -0600
Subject: [BARGE] deadhead's trip report
Tuesday
Got to the airport, reached for my phone, realized I left it at home,
couldn't bear the possibility of being at BARGE without my phone,
drove home, got the phone, drove back to the airport.
Main Street Station has good beer. They do not, however, have
internet access in their rooms. Time to go play pocker instead of
staying in my room and working.
I remember nothing of the ring games and almost nothing of the Low
Ball tournament. My strongest memory is that of having forgotten who
bust me. Ill-prepared, I didn't have a bust-out gift. If you were
he, please let me know and we can work something out.
Wednesday
Checking out of MSS, I do a little work on my laptop in their lobby
and am spotted by ADB Bingo. He has just checked in and is going to
lunch. Main Street Station has good beer. Bingo is good company.
The Golden Nugget allowed me to check in early. Life is good.
I don't drink anywhere near as much alcohol as I used to. However, I
still like ales I haven't tasted before. As such, when the family
drives to Arizona or Colorado, I buy a bunch of beer (typically ales)
and bring it back to the house where they sit around for a long time.
I thought about bringing some to BARGE, but figured I'd just drink the
Chimay Blue that the Golden Nugget gift shop carries.
Oops. No Chimay Blue. I bought and drank four Lindemans lambics
instead. Nolan saw me with one at the table and I couldn't help but
bring it over to him and say "Nolan, you're not going to like this."
I expected him to find it too sweet and fruity.
Dan Goldman got aces a bazillion times in the Pot Limit Binglaha
tourney. One of his pairs of aces fatally ran over my queens. By
then I had started making origami bust-out gifts and Dan got a gecko.
I'm not sure what I did after that, but it wasn't sleep. The two quad
shot espressos I had earlier in the day assured me of that.
Thursday
CHORSE Breakfast. JRX had previously declined his former role in our
team, because he wasn't going to attend BARGE 2012. He changed his
mind. Yay! We truly are everywhere.
After years of trying, we finally got lucky and won first place. I
suggested we celebrate by doing coke and going bowling or taking LSD
and playing darts. I stole that line from a non-BARGE friend. I am
an unrepentant thief; the tagline on my business card comes from "The
PJs".
For the 6-game tournament I only drank two Lindemans. I cashed at 7th.
Whee. Two scores on one day and a Thursday nonetheless, too. Thursday
evening is when I go out and shoot pool and drink back in 'burque.
When I was a pup, I would either shoot pool or drink, but not both.
My game improved back then. Married with kids, I don't have the time
for separate drinking and pool nights, so on Thursdays I do both.
sweet($(won[Th])) == 2 * sweet($(won[^Th])) == 4 * sweet($(earned[*]).
Friday
Fun Run! Nolan joined us, huzzah! Usual crew otherwise. Apparently
Jessica Kuznick had been inspired to continue running between BARGES.
Yay. One more addict. For the record, the song Joe was singing was
"Desolation Row".
TOC: I didn't take notes, so I have no memory of what transpired. I
do know that I continued right shifting my lambics (i.e., I only had
one).
Bought Ron Grossberg in the calcutta. *Should have* bought Northshore
in the unmutual, but didn't think to. It would have been excellent
insurance, since if he went deep we wouldn't be shooting pool on
Saturday.
Saturday
Last year I had a date with the La Luz Trail Run on the Sunday after
the NLHE tournament. I booked an afternoon flight back to ABQ, with
the idea that if I went deep in the tourney I'd skip my flight and
LLTR. I told myself that I wouldn't let the presence of my flight
affect my play, but I'm pretty sure it did.
This year, I decided to forgo LLTR, but still wound up booking a bus
that I'd have to catch somewhere around 8pm on NLHE day. I resolved
to deliberately play conservatively and try to miss my bus. Perhaps
my conservative play was too conservative and trivially exploitable,
but I wound up busting a little after noon. Oh well, at least I'd get
a chance to shoot pool w/ Northshore.
Sometime during the tournament--at least I think it was during the
NLHE tournament--I "deadheaded" RazzO. By deadheaded, I mean I said
"Hi RazzO", got a nondescript reply, then asked him if he knew who I
was (without the PH intonation), eventually getting him to admit that
he didn't.
It's been a few years since I've gotten to deadhead anyone, but it's
been even more years since RazzO has attended and I just couldn't
resist. It's OK, RazzO, mph deadheaded me earlier:
"Hi deadhead"
/me stares
/me thinks
/me figures it out, due to his voice
"Holy shit. Holy fucking shit."
3pm comes and Northshore has a bunch of chips. Inconceivable (and
yes, that word *does* mean what I think it means; remember, it's
Northshore). I'm heartbroken and homeless. I hang out. NSM busts.
We pick up Scott Samarel and are off the the LV Cue Club.
Alas, their beer selection is not too good, but we do get a pitcher of
an acceptable beer. All told we play six games and drink two pitchers
of beer. Surprisingly, I beat NSM two out of three, Scott beats me
two out of three and NSM beats Scott two out of three. That leaves
me the overall winner because I drank the most beer. hic.
I'm not sure it was worth bringing my cues, but I did get a chance to
use my jump stick three times. The first time my goal was to jump an
opponent's ball and pocket my ball. I succeeded, but the cue had too
much bounce and continued to bounce off the table afterward. The
other two jump shots were safeties that I successfully made. Fun toy.
Our taxi driver back to the banquet was a riot. I gave him a nice
tip, but when getting my wallet out I managed to let my phone slip out
of my pocket.
The cab had just dropped us off when I reached for my phone and
realized I left it in the taxi. Losing a phone in general is
annoying. Losing your sole source of tunes when you're going to run
for a few hours later that night is painful. Oh well, at least I had
two drink coupons. I was graciously allowed to cut in line, so I
could get my two beers and grab a couple rolls before heading out for
my evening's adventure.
Insomuch as the rest of my time between 7:15pm Saturday and 10:30am
Sunday was not particularly BARGE specific, I've relocated my
recounting to after my signature.
10:30am, roughly, I ask the taxi driver to take me to Binion's or the
Golden Nugget. I apologize for smelling awful. He drops me off at
Binion's and I stroll, quickly, through the poker room.
I recognize a bunch of the people there, except on closer inspection,
*NONE* of them are BARGERS or anyone I really know. At that point
I've been up about twenty eight hours with only a tiny bit of sleep
here and there on the buses and my brain has been fried into an
extremely loose pattern matcher. As I've said before, "free drugs".
Outside the cardroom, however, I run into Aaron, Caryl & Deron. I
chit-chat just a tiny bit. On one hand, they may be the last BARGErs
I see for a while, so I definitely want to talk, on the other hand, I
reek and there's a shower in my room just waiting for me.
Oh! the refreshing water. As the soap takes away my grit and grime, I
am awakened by cleanliness and thankful that I've survived another
BARGE (at least in *this* universe). I sleep on the plane.
I had a great time and thank all who participated, and double thank all
who organized and contributed. I triple thank Janie since she was at
all my tourney tables and all my ring games.
deadhead
Area 51 51K Race Report, i.e., reindeer games for runners
OK, so by the time I left the banquet, I had drank approximately six beers
(a pitcher while playing pool, plus the two free banquet beers) and lost
my cell phone. You might think, "hey deadhead, is it really a good idea
to drink a sixpack before going off to run 32 miles?" Yes. Yes it is.
You see, this was not a race for me as much as a training run. On
October 27th, I'll be running my first hundred miler
. It starts at 6am,
so by nightfall, I'll have been running about twelve hours. I'll be tired
when I run at night then, so I wanted to be tired when I ran at night
outside Area 51.
The 51K started at midnight. My goal was to prepare myself for
running through the night when I'm already trashed. So I got up at
6am, had no caffeine and a bit (I hesitate to say "a lot" in the
context of a BARGE trip report) of alcohol. With the race starting at
midnight, I'd have about five hours to metabolize.
Or I would have, had the directions to packet pickup not been on the
phone that I lost. I remembered that packet pickup was at the
Hardrock, so I asked the taxi driver to take me to the Hardrock Cafe.
I got there and found out that I needed to go to the Hardrock *Hotel*.
Oops. I didn't know for sure that'd be able to catch a cab anytime
soon, so I started walking / jogging / running.
It was a bit hot. I was a bit tipsy. Drinking the beer, especially
the two I had at the banquet, was not my best idea, but it doesn't
even crack the top hundred of my worst.
I got there, but missed packet pickup. Luckily, I was dressed like a
runner, so I was able to get on a bus even though I didn't have my
bib, which was to be the bus pass. Whew!
On the way out I sat next to a fellow Marathon Maniac. I'm #4395:
.
We chatted about how we got into running. You've heard my story. His
was that he went to his doctor, had some blood work done and was told
that he needed all sorts of drugs. He asked if he could try exercise
instead. One thing led to another and now he doesn't need the meds,
but the side-effecdt is that he turned into a maniac.
I tried to stay awake during the bus ride out, but after the
conversation tapered off, the boredom got me nodding. Then the bus
stopped. We were not there; we had only been driving about an hour.
A couple buses in front f us had also stopped. Eventually someone
came in and counted seats. We took on a couple of passengers from one
of the other buses. Something large had hit and shattered the
windshield of the other bus.
The fog of communication never did fully lift on that incident. The
return bus driver claimed that one person had to go to the hospital
with glass in his eyes. Yipes. At the time, when we were boarded, we
only heard about minor cuts and scrapes. Soon the bus was rolling again.
Then once again we were stopped. This time some of the passengers at
front were claiming that we were going in the wrong direction. When we
stopped, the bus in front of us stopped. Going out we were a caravan of
ten or more buses. Now there were only two. When we turned to go the
direction advised by the passengers, the other bus disappeared.
Other than the spoof _Tucker & Dale vs. Evil_, I've never watched a
teen horror movie. Still, even I could see the cliches: mysterious
object crashes into first bus, we somehow get separated from the herd.
I knew I was going to die a gruesome death, but at least some lithe
young women runners would disrobe first.
Alas, the incidents really were coincidental; nothing else happened.
I live.
I ran the 51K carrying two 24 oz. water bottles poorly mixed Vitargo
S2. I had no tunes to distract me.
For some reason I was thinking the run would be flat and at sea-level,
but there was about 1,200 feet of gain, which isn't much for a trail
ultra, but this was a road ultra. That gain was pretty much all at
the beginning, the first thirteen miles were uphill. We started at
4,500 feet ASL and climbed to 5,600 feet. With Pikes Peak two weeks
away, I had to run slowly so I wouldn't burn out my legs.
At night I got to see a nice shooting star. Others saw many more.
When there was about six more miles left, I started chatting with
Lisa, a fellow runner. Lisa had weighed three hundred pounds a few
years ago. She had lost weight before, but mostly by dieting. She
then changed her lifestyle into that of an ultra runner. She's going
to keep the weight off this time.
As the sun rose, I realized leaving my sunglasses at the hotel showed
a certain inability to contemplate the foreseeable. The surrounding
area was gorgeous, the road-kill less so. I was surprised by the
number of squashed scorpions. I have no idea how long dessicated
scorpion husks linger, so I couldn't judge whether I was seeing
ancient carnage from cars or recent deaths due to runners.
A few minutes before seven, Lisa and I crossed the finish line. I
didn't know it at the time, but I finished 67th out of 83. I've done
worse. This was my personal record for the 50K distance, but it was
also the flattest 50K I've ever run. My second fastest 50K was had
4,700 feet of gain.
Lisa's Race report is:
The bus ride back to Vegas was cool; the first thirteen miles were on
the race course. It was interesting to see what the terrain looked
like.
I chatted a bit with the woman who sat next to me. She is also a
maniac, but largely limits herself to marathons. Her husband runs 100
milers. In front of us and to our side were four women who run
together in Arizona (I think, or it could be California). For one of
them it was her first first ultra. Like almost everyone else on the
bus, she was happy but tired.