[BottlesOf]

This trip really was something. It was wild putting so many names to faces and learning more about the people I interact with so impersonally on these boards. As usual, everyone was really friendly, and it felt like I was hanging out with old friends rather than meeting some of you for the first time.

Here are some observations/mini anecdotes about the trip tied together in no cohesive way:

Joe Tall is kind of a girlie man. He went to bed at 11PM on Friday night and then the next day took a nap in the afternoon. He ordered a salad for dinner Friday night, and I saw him eating yogurt/fruit on two separate occasions.

It was really a trip meeting Mike Gallo (MG in NJ) who has helped me so much in my development as a poker player. Mike could not have been less like I envisioned him. His posts on this board are very "elder statesman like," and he comes off as a wise, quiet and introsepctive guy. In reality, Mike is very funny, outgoing (as Homer would say, "loud") and was all about having fun and making sure everyone else was too. Congrats on the upcoming wedding, and please come back here and visit.

Some how my table at dinner (Brian07..., Homer, morgant, Dr. Savage, scrub and myself) ended up with more money than was required for the bill. How often does that happen? Especially with money grubbing, bonus whoring 2+2ers? They also persuaded me to add the "Of" back to my name. Anyway we decided to take our extra $8 and put it on the longest shot in the casino. We didn't exactly figure out how to do that and decided to put it on one spin of the roulette wheel. We decided to put it on "4," and if you can't figure out why 4, then you need to throw yourself away. Some people from the other dinner tables wanted to invest money of their own, so a few more people chipped in $2 and we ended up with close to $20, and off we went.

Imagine a dozen or so 2+2ers, and not just any 2+2ers we've got some of the big guns here, wandering around a maze of slot machinies desparately in search of a roulette wheel. It was an experience I never thought I'd be a part of. We put our money on 4, some start chanting "E-V-E-V-E-V" and wait for the ball to stop. Flop comes...BRICK, 25 or something, and we lose. No one seems to care, and we move on.

I go to JoeTall, JTG, JoeU and maybe someone else's room for the above mentioned home game. It took about 15 minutes for 2+2's best and brightest (I am of course excluding myself from this group) to figure out how to arrange the beds and table to accomidate 8/9. "Don't worry, we're engineers" says JTG after it looks like JoeTall might drop a queen size bed.

The game gets going but more 2+2ers show up than the room can handle. CrackerZack and mosch decide to play a $40 heads up sng on the floor next to us. They take some of the green chips we aren't using for the home table game but find they don't have enough chips. No worries, Zack (I think) pulls out a few fistfulls of Borgata $25 chips, which are of the same color, and the two begin.

The two games were hysterical, and I'll let someone with a better memory pick up from there.

I ended up about +$300 for the trip playing 6/12 and 10/20, but for me, the highlight was meeting and hanging out with the 2+2 gang. I hope another get together of this magnitude happens soon.

All the best,

Bottles


p.s. I was the youngest 2+2er clocking in at 21 years, 10 months [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]