Rain, rain and more rain…
Thursday, September 17, 2009 - Bryan Devonshire
I cannot believe how much it has rained in the south. They tell me that it’s not normal, but ever since I arrived in Charlotte back on day 25 it’s rained waaaaaay more than it hasn’t.
Florida was one big long series of thundershowers, which I can understand: tropical climate, this time of year, etc. But damnit, Saturday morning at 2am I was passed out in my tent, comfortably naked in my sleeping bag, and it started raining. I was prepared enough to have the fly ready to go since it was still Florida and likely to rain at any time, but I still had to run around naked waterproofing my stuff. I really hope somebody was watching because it had to be hilarious. Semi-out of shape white dude with really tan arms, legs, and face scrambling around a tent naked in the rain trying to set up a fly and stash gear underneath it in record time. I did pretty well though, and actually enjoyed camping in the rain, until the next morning when it was time to wake up (because I couldn’t sleep anymore) and my boots got left out. I packed in the rain, a party came in as I was leaving at 9am, and they said there was no rain the whole way down (from Georgia) until they hit Panama City.
Fine, I’m about 4 hours from New Orleans, hopefully as I head that way the rain will lapse. It didn’t. In fact, after Pensacola, it just got worse. So bad that by the time I was on the east side of Mobile Bay I couldn’t take it anymore and had to quit. I parked in downtown Mobile, found me a Holiday Inn, checked in, and took apart everything I had because it was soaked. The poor maid must have been like, wtf, how is there sand and pine needles in the bathroom?
I played the HORSEament online, took 50th/1000 or so, annoying after a 48th in the 8-game, same field earlier in the week, both in which I had huge stacks and ran terribad at the end. I went out in downtown Mobile, had a great time, and experienced my second encounter with “membership” bars in my life. The first came in Utah one summer when I broke down on my way to guide a river trip in Cali; apparently to drink at a bar you have to be a member. Odd. In Mobile it’s that way for many of them after 2am, all I had to do was fill out some card and I was in the club. Dumb legislation.
Was gonna leave Sunday morning, get to New Orleans, then play online. Nope. Up too late the night before. The group of peeps that I met the night before invited me to go sailing, I’m like it’s supposed to rain, they didn’t care, I was insanely tempted to go since I miss sailing a ton (I dabbled with the USC sailing team in college, declining a spot on the roster to work with Jr. High kids at a church instead). But since it’s the middle of the WCOOPs I decided I needed to work, and it looked like a good decision when I ran the entire day with a top 100 stack in the WCOOP $1k. I made it to day 2 slightly below average after losing QQ to 99 on a Q9x flop for a huge stack. I swear I’m cursed at poker; I’ve run significantly below expectation in key deep spots lifetime, and I believe that our lives are too short to truly ever reach the long term. I mean, how often will I get it in set over set deep in the money in a $3m guarantee tourney? I can think of one time this year. I lost.
Whatever, I can’t complain, I did finish 2nd in my first ever WSOP event, this game is just brutal sometimes. However I may be cursed at poker I more than make up for in life. So Monday morning I had the same plan, get to New Orleans, and I woke up to sideways rain on the window. Nope, staying in Mobile another night. I ran errands after the rain broke, got all fired up to play online, and lasted 4 hands. Four. I open AQ, an 18 bb stack shoves, I call, lose to 99. 3 hands later in my SB it folds to me, I have 15bb’s, jam 44, lose to QQ in the big. So frustrating.
I chilled out that night, hanging at the local pizza and beer place I found Saturday night, talking with a gay dude named Dick about fly fishing in the Gulf. There’s a neat vibe in Mobile that I thoroughly enjoyed, and it marked the third city that I spent more than 2 nights in.
Tuesday I woke up eager to get going, and it was still pouring rain. My gear had dried out enough that I said, eff it, I’m going, wrapped trash bags around everything, and after about an hour of packing and prep, literally 3 minutes before I left as I was bungee cording my bags to the bike, the clouds broke and it was clear skies all the way to New Orleans. I still wore my rain pants cause there was enough water on the ground, and did drive through one thunderstorm but it was short enough that I didn’t even bother stopping to put on my jacket. Sigh.
Got to New Orleans, checked in at the Frenchman Hotel, waked down Bourbon street, wasn’t really impressed, actually walked back to play the $1k online, busted and lost playing cash games, walked back to Bourbon street, started drinking, still wasn’t impressed, walked back to the locals neighborhood where I was at, enjoyed this bar called Molly’s cause there were people there that I could talk to, and then went to sleep.
The most consistently enjoyable part of this trip for me has been meeting people along the way. I’ve encountered so many interesting people and enjoyed so many awesome person’s company that I’ve had a wonderful time traveling over 8500 miles of this continent in the past 56 days. Thank you everybody for being good people.
Woke up to blue skies with one thunderhead to the east, no prob, packed up, left, and began hauling ass. I wanted to get as close to Dallas as possible and knew that I had a legit shot at getting all the way there. I hit rain south of Shreveport, stopped to put on the rain gear, and after the thunderstorm when I stopped for gas I was expecting to take it off. It looked like there may be another cell ahead, so I kept the gear on. Sadly I wouldn’t take the gear off for the rest of the way, over 250 miles of constant rain, and once again all of my gear is soaked. I kept thinking that the rain would break and I could de-gear, I never needed to stop to put trash bags over my luggage… and I was wrong. Damn you one thousand miles of gulf coast and your lack of hurricane raininess. Y’all say this is abnormal, I want to know where the hurricane is so at least I could say I rode through that. Nope. I just rode through the rainy south.
Peace and good luck,
Devo
Tags: Poker Poker Poker, USC, WCOOP, WSOP
