Weekend fun

Watched the Browns game Friday after lying around all day in severe pain. I'd been out of meds for my hernia for a few days due to a miscommunication between the doc and pharmacy. I took the day off work.

Went kayaking on the Black River Saturday and had a blast. I'm already looking for a good CL deal on a used model. Those things move along pretty good and they are a great workout.

Fair and demo derby SUNDAY evening. Ate gyros. Drank lemonade.

Great Craigslist find!

Couldn't pass this up, pretty sweet bike. Needs some minor adjustments but for $200 it's a steal.

I think it retailed for almost $1000 a few years ago. Came with a bike computer too. I was going to just sell it for a nice profit, but It's quite a bit more comfy than the Giant Defy I got last year. Think I'll hang onto it for a while.

Camping with the boys...in the rain

Camping in the rain SUCKS. Started raining early evening on Saturday and poured all night until around 6 AM Sunday. My tent leaked. I couldn't sleep. Not much fun.

Went to Virginia's Beach in PA again. Same site, nice and far away from all the other sites.

Got there early on Friday to set up. It was raining then, but barely rained most of the evening. Didn't get bugged by a single mosquito which was strange. Ate well and drank too much.

Saturday all we did was eat, drink, and play cornhole. Phil and Krueger were the ringers this year. Those guys started drinking as soon as they awoke. I cracked my first beer around 6PM. Was too windy to go to the beach although we took a walk down and there were people swimming in the churned up sludge. We had open fire fajitas for lunch a la Phil and I chef'd up whiskey peppercorn steaks and monster sized baked potatoes for dinner. Everything turned out great. Got raided by skunks and racoons late Saturday night as usual.

Kickball

We're still losing a lot of kickball games, but the last couple games have been a lot of fun. We got clobbered the one game but the opposing team was cool. We had several chances to with the last game but it got away from us 8-6. Still a blast to play. Some people take it a bit too seriously and there have been a couple of actual fights. Come on people, it's kickball!

Enjoy a pic from crazy wig night.

Almost forgot...

I played in the Amvets' old timers vs. young folks softball game a couple weekends ago. Lots of fun. Some of those old bastards still play pretty well. I hit the ball decently and played 3rd base and left field. saw a lot of action and actually did a great job fielding the ball.

One of the old timers brought out a walker and wheelchair for laughs.

I rode my bike up to the park, they seemed more impressed with that than anything else.

My new blog

Pure pickle devotion http://mypicklejournal.blogspot.com/

Pedal to the Point ride

81 miles on Saturday! Didn't do day 2, we had some other stuff going on. Day 1 was PLENTY. Temps were in the mid-90's after noon. Caprice had to give up at the lunch break, she's been fighting some back problems for a while now. I rode with Larry Fish the rest of the ride, we had a good time. Laughed our asses off. Met a guy that used to be his boss 30 years ago, he was great. He had to bow out of the ride at around 60 miles with some leg problems.

I started getting elbow pain about halfway in, don't know why. Took some ibuprofen and it seemed to take care of it. Holy smokes was it hot. Pretty much an exact copy of my first year, only we did 3 more miles this year because of the new start point at Brunswick HS. Had some problems with traffic (both car and bike) at the new location, but once we got moving, there were some great downhills the first 6-8 miles.

So anyway it was another great ride. I did pretty well considering my longest ride this summer was only 27 miles. I am carved out of wood. My new(er) bike did great, it's so much more efficient and smooth than the Trek. Although, now I'm already thinking about a higher-end hybrid with some carbon components, or maybe adding some upgrades to this one. We'll see.

2nd pic is Phil Keoghan from The Amazing Race.

Poker news: Lost 2 buy-ins Wed night last week. First one, flopped nut straight with J-10, got it all in with the bottom end of it (5-6) and the guy catches running clubs for the 6-high straight. Lost the second buy-in after flopping a set of K's and the guy calls me down with a gutshot and nails it. Well played sir. Went down after dinner at the Kilt with Rao and Prowest, and even JC stopped in but didn't play. A few others from the group were there as well.


Maps:
First leg

Second leg

Horseshoe win...again!

Up $304 last night after 2.5 hours. Played well. Made 1 really good play on a $100 pot, I'll post the details after I write it up on the CPMG board.

Update!

Hot summer temps rage on! I love it.

Did the 2nd annual CPMG campout last weekend. Great time. Got a bit too loud for the neighbors (we had 14 people over 4 campsites, all in a row) but managed to not get booted out.

Had to tow my mom and her friend from the canoe. They got tubes and would have taken more than twice as long to finish the 7 miles. Got a little tired at the end, but had a lot of fun. Grayday was hilarious the entire trip. I made jambalaya over the open fire which turned out great. Played some $.25 poker, I think I lost about $8 over the weekend. OUCH. Lol, that's OK, I made up for it this past Sunday at the Horseshoe, finished up an even $200. 8-2 down there now!

Got the big 163-mile MS-150 Pedal to the Point coming up the first weekend in Aug. Looks like we are gonna skip day 2 due to some other obligations, and the fact that they changed the route. I think 80 miles on day 1 is PLENTY. Especially if it's hot. I'm glad we upgraded our bikes since last year. I got such a good deal on my Rapid I couldn't pass it up, and it's so much smoother than the Trek, although the Trek looked better. The Giant also fits better, and I get almost 2MPH better performance out of it.

Made whiskey peppercorn steaks this week. WOW were they good! Deglazed the pan with Makers Mark, beef broth, worcestershire, and cream. I've been trying a low carb diet the last couple weeks. Meh...no big results yet, though I'm down almost 5 lbs. I've been eating tons of veggies and keeping the meat to a minimum, but splurge a bit a couple times a week. Hence the steaks. Had fresh green beans and huge salad to go with them.

The other pics: JC celebrated his 50th b-day last week, and the other is the view from Lakewood Park during an urban assault bike this past weekend.

Vacation report

Played kickball, tried to go fishing, did some swimming at my apartment complex, took the dogs for a beach adventure, got together with friends, went to a private beach party, started a new low-carb diet, lost a little money at the casino in poker and blackjack, went on a couple bike rides, saw 2 movies: Savages and Moonrise Kingdom. Both were good, but I'd have to say Moonrise Kingdom was a bit better.

...more to come!

Vacation!

Off next week. Not doing much but I had to burn the time or lose it. Gonna do some biking, fishing, and poker playing. Looking forward to fishing more than anything else. TK might join me. Gonna hit my club.

Low stakes cash game at my place on Tuesday, and I'll likely hit the casino a couple mornings as well.

Meanwhile, it's HOT outside! I am not complaining, I'll take this over snow ANY day.

2 more winning sessions and an awesome Aerosmith concert

Up $420+ in 4 hours over 2 sessions going back to last week. Even hit a royal flush and nearly hit the BBJ for $60k! Nothing fantastic to report, just kinda grinding it out. Seems like I have to dig out of a hole every time though, except for session before last.

Mr John Coleman hooked me up with a free ticket to Aerosmith last night, and what a freaking show! Our original tickets were taken from the will-call booth from someone claiming to be Jennifer Coleman, John's wife, lol. So, he had to text Johnny B (Aerosmith's road manager that buys tobacco from JC year-round), and for our troubles, got us 2ND ROW SEATS! Wow. I think this was my 12th time seeing them, and despite Steven Tyler joining American Idol (UGH) and doing BK commercials, his voice is as good as ever. They played a couple new tunes from a forthcoming new album, and they sounded pretty good as well. They had some technical glitches and missteps on a couple songs, and Perry/Tyler seemed to bicker like an old married couple, but they held it together. I guess this was only the 2nd show on this tour.

Still undefeated at the CLE casino!

Banked another win last night. Up $92 after 6 hours. Went deep early, getting KK and AA cracked by J3 suited and QJ suited respectively. Guy with QJ called $75 preflop. I made it $12, he made it $25, I bump to $75. I shove $140-ish on the J-high flop. He tanks a while. I consider showing him my AA, which I should have done. Q on the river. Some will say I overplayed the hand but this guy was in there splashing around on every hand, and I wanted him to fold. That was no value bet. Guys like that make it worth it to play there, but they are gonna hit now and then.

So this is what I have recorded there so far... about 2 hrs of the 4th session is $2-5:

Up $231/7.5 hours
Up $214/3.5 hours
Up $123/3.5 hours
Up $11/8 hours
Up $92/6 hours

$671 over 28.5 hours = $23.54/hour. Nothing huge, but wins are wins. Made my car payment with poker money!

I am beginning to see why the rake is a factor. I have yet to sit at a table with a number of big stacks. I'm still not driving to PA to get away from it.

OG CPMG sighting of the week: Five Dollar Josh was there playing PLO. He's still a dick.

Prometheus...good movie!

Thumbs up for Prometheus. Visual effects were fantastic, had a few good thrills, and plot wasn't incredibly watered down. You don't see many R rated movies any more.
If they make another comic book movie, I'm gonna puke. How many times are they gonna remake Spider Man?

Savages looks like a winner. http://youtu.be/KC2zbOwbeEs

We also saw a preview for The Possession. It's based on this story http://www.dibbukbox.com/ but it looks like they really embellished and screwed with the story. They should have stuck to the "real" accounts, they seemed much creepier. I learned about this thing from the Mysterious Universe podcast. As I was listening to it, on my way home from work, a bird smashed into my windshield.

$11 win at the casino!

Played some this week, got WAY deep, but still scraped up a $11 win. That puts me at 4-0 down there. Played $2-5 for a few hours to get it back. I may have to play more of that. The players were no better than the 1-2 crowd and the rake doesn't kill you as much.

I finally managed to hit quads down there. Q-10 in my hand, flop was 10-10-x, turn was a 10. Got a guy's stack when he thought his pocket 9's were good.

Funny wig night for kickball tonight! We have the late game. Pics to follow. I might be pitching. I'll lead the team much better than the current pitcher. He rarely covers home or first if needed, never moves fielders to better spots, and just doesn't guide anyone, which is very important.

Prometheus man-date coming up Tuesday. Looks like a fantastic flick.

Last day of school for our teachers today, which means we will be busy for the next 3 months. Not gonna be as crazy as last year but we have plenty to do.

I have some vacation time left to burn, so we'll be planning something very soon. The poker group heads to Vegas next week, it should be an epic trip. I think there are about 30 people going. I just haven't had a big desire to go back. I want to see some other great places, not sit in an air conditioned hell hole for a week.