Vacation, all I ever wanted

It has been quite a while since I posted here; my other interests have been consuming all of my free time, and writing posts has not seemed so important. I haven't played in many blogger tournaments lately, because my FTP bankroll has become totally depleted from playing in blogger tournaments I needed a break. I did win one of those satellites to a satellite in the Poker Stars WSOP run-up, and then traded in some WSOP $ for real $ with some guy on 2+2. I don't know why they don't just have a trade-in directly on the site; Full Tilt charges 5% for their trade-in, so they might make a bit of money. Anyway, I'm trying to build up some money in my FTP account, but it's not working out so well at the moment.

I also started another blog at Green Chutney, to chronicle our attempts to become less wasteful. Even that has been slow this month, as I have also started reading the political blogs, such as Daily Kos. Poker has sure been a shroud over my eyes the past 4 years, as I glanced at the headlines in the Globe or Times, and spent all of my free time playing and/or reading about poker. Now, I'm still playing some, and I'm still reading most of the poker blogs that I've read over the past couple of years, but I'm letting posts build up, or only hitting my favorites if I have just a few minutes in the morning. Now, I've been reading only the front section of the Globe or Times in depth, and read Daily Kos quite a bit. I barely watch any television at all -- I'll flip on a poker show at 11:00 at night, or watch the new green channel for a little while before bed.

It's a very scary world out there, and most people in the United States are so concerned with their next purchase of a plastic/electronic piece of junk, or whether their new "outfit" makes their boobs look good, or complaining about gas prices, that they have no clue how good they have it. Try getting beaten, tortured or raped for supporting a particular political candidate. Or being born with AIDS. Or contracting malaria, as 300-500 million people will this year.

We're on vacation this week, off to the Cape for a few days, then back. We were planning to drive down to Maryland, but Granny's recent health problems make it more sensible for us to remain close to home. I think I will bring the laptop, so I can catch up on all my reading and writing. It's going to be nice to sit in the ocean, bake in the sun, and wake up late every morning. It has been my goal all year to use up all of my time off. Just to keep up with where I was last year, I will have to take something like 27 days off. At the end of next year, I will be eligible for a 3-week sabbatical in addition to regular time off. So 2010 may involve a nice 2-month vacation. Something to look forward to.

Spatial relationships

Driving in the U.K. was difficult, because my brain has a model built up of what a car is, and the model includes everything from where my body should be in relation to side of the road, how to make a left turn, how to pull out into a gap in the fast lane, and everything else that is completely automatic about driving in my usual milieu. When plunked into a wide SUV on narrow roads with cars parked on both sides, and asked to drive on the wrong side of the road with the shift lever on the wrong side, my mental model breaks down, and I have to use brain power just to keep the car's position and velocity approximately correct. Brain power that is normally used for things like reading signs, navigating, talking, eating, or looking for cool stuff. It can be exhausting. After each long drive, I would ask when my next driving assignment was, and upon hearing that it was more than 12 hours away, I would crack open that first (refrigerated) beer. Glass to lips is another one of those automatic actions!

We drove from Fountain's Abbey to Newcastle to catch the ferry, and my toture was almost over for the vacation. Just one last exercise in navigation -- dropping off the rental in downtown Newcastle. So I asked a friendly bobby, and he pointed to a large entertainment building and said to follow it around, but don't go in the far right lane. So I did this, went straight, and then noticed that the building was fading off to my left. So, with the rental car place less than one block in front of me, and probably visible if I had been looking at it, I made the next left, and wandered around for a while. Finally, I pulled into a parking lot, and called the rental company. As I was describing where I was, I saw a sign down the hill with the the word Westmoreland in the name of a business. Since Westmoreland was the name of the street the rental place was on, I was happy. The employee said they were right across the street from that building. Once I dropped off the car, I asked where the train station was, and she pointed at this large building, when I realized -- Doh! -- it was only 2 blocks back to where I had asked the cop for directions. I also remembered the map that I had looked at on the web before the trip, when the rental location looked real close to the train station. So now I have a great, but probably useless mental model of downtown Newcastle.

We took a bus from the train station to the ferry terminal, and boarded the ferry. The security guys gave me the full frisk, but did not touch the rest of my family. Maybe my "angry liberal" attitude shows when I come in contact with papers-please-asking control freaks. Anyway, the ship was much nicer than we thought it would be. We were expecting something akin to the Scotia Prince, but it was closer to the Norwegian Majesty. Unfortunately, the casino was not as good as the ones on the aforementioned vessels. So, no poker for Daddy. I chatted with the potential child molester Kids' Club pirate character, making sure he wasn't going to take my daughter to find any "special treasure." I did this by juggling three balls to show that I could hold my own in any potential entertainer-vs.-parent battles. He said that his son is also a juggler, and they sometimes perform in Amsterdam, so I felt that was enough to leave them alone for a little while at least.

We slept like crap, possibly because we were so far down as to qualify as ballast in case the ship was riding too low in the water. I tried to determine whether we were under water, and I'm guessing that we were not. We were on deck 2, with just 1, engine room, bilge, and Davey Jones levels below us. I don't know, is it legal to have passengers below water level on a ferry?

When we got to Amsterdam, we dropped the bags at the hotel office, and went to get some lunch. We ended up buying the canal boat tickets for the day, up to noon the following day. When we got back to the office, the bitch who cheated me manager told us that our houseboat was unavailable! What the frickin' frick?! After some discussions, we ended up taking a 2-bedroom apartment for 200 euros a night. Not what we wanted, but who wants to go traipsing around Amsterdam with 5 people looking for rooms at 5:00 in the afternoon. Make that 17.00. Well, she will be getting a horrible review from me on the travel site where I found the Amsterdam House.

Our standard operating procedure in Amsterdam was to walk for an hour, then eat for an hour. Repeat until overcome by sleep. We took it pretty easy, as I only dragged the family through one museum. My wife was quite taken with the architecture in the city center, and also by the cafe lifestyle. I met her shortly after arriving back in the U.S. from having lived in Amsterdam for the better part of a year, and I would throw in Dutch phrases here or there, and regale her with stories of sitting around drinking biertjes or coffees outside at one of the pleins. Now she understands how cool it really is. However, it was cheap back then. A small beer was maybe 2 or 3 guilders, and the dollar was worth 1.8 guilders. Nowadays, a small beer is 2 or 3 euros, and the euro is worth 1.6 dollars. According to a friend, when they switched to euros, everything went way up in price, as they just erased the ­ ­ ƒ symbol and replaced it with the € symbol. So that's almost a tripling of prices in 15 years. Maybe that's not a lot, but it seems like it to me.

I was disoriented somewhat, because my memories of exact street locations and orientation of the major pleins are faulty. I still have the basic shape of the city correctly mapped, as I used to study the map for dozens of minutes per week. I used to be one of these young people casually avoiding getting run down by a bicyclist or taxi. But now, I'm just another tourist gawking at the buildings and people, and getting dinged at by said cyclists. I had the location of Rembrantplein right, but the British pub was in a corner rotated 90 degrees from where I remember it. It's very strange how memory can work. The school where I took Dutch classes now is missing the large set of stone steps that I remember on the outside of it (or maybe they were on the inside?)

My wife remarked about how good-looking everyone was, and I craftily told her I hadn't really noticed. She wants to go back, and I would not mind, as a starting point for a nice sabbatical in 2010. The funniest part of the trip was a small moment where I was in Leidseplein with my son, looking for a newsstand, and I wandered into the Bulldog, a famous coffeeshop. There were a couple of tables of potheads with fancy-looking marijuana ready to roll, and I quickly turned tail. Perhaps strangely to some, I didn't take a single puff, toke, or bong hit the entire time I lived in Amsterdam, although friends would regularly offer it. The Bulldog seemed to have moved to the other side of the plein, and I think the nearby McDonalds was in the same place, but turned into a Burger King.

On the last full day, we took the train to The Hague to meet a friend of my wife. We had some poffertjes, little pancakes with butter and sugar:



Here's what they looked like when complete:
I'm not too into the sugar, but the buttery goodness was irresistible. If you like both buttery and sugary goodness, then poffertjes are for you.

We walked right through the Dutch Parliament building's courtyard, with no security other than some anti-vehicle posts and some video cameras. That is in stark contrast to the metal-detector/buffer zones around the U.S. Congress and White House.

Then we did take the tram (which I mistakenly omitted from my previous post) to Madurodam, which is a miniature city covering a couple of acres, and comprising many famous buildings from many Dutch cities. At first I thought it was very lame, but as I wandered around, it kind of grew on me. The buildings are quite detailed, and there are so many of them. What is the mentality of a person who works on a miniature city? Do they stand in front of the real building for hours? Do they just work from pictures? Do they imagine themselves as small people standing in front of the small building? Does Elmo know? Does Dorothy know?

Maintenance

We got back from our European vacation on Saturday, and then immediately went into full blown activity mode. When you ignore items, the items rust and rot away, and then mushrooms and insects start to spontaneously generate thereupon, until, voilà, the roof is leaking, the front bumper of the car falls off during a downpour when the car is supposed to be picking up the kids at school, and you have 758 emails to delete. Maintenance is hard, though, so the fewer items you give yourself to maintain, the better off you are. That is why Phil Hellmuth is so good at No-Limit Holdem tournaments, and why NASCAR drivers can do a pit stop in 12 seconds. Focus is the key; multitasking is evil.

We had a great time in England and Holland for 9 days. We traveled by car, shuttle bus, airplane, car on the wrong side of the road, foot, ferry boat, bus, canal boat, and train. Strangely, we did not travel by tram or bicycle while we were in Amsterdam. We waited in many lines, and were usually last in line, since we had five people, three of whom were outside the first standard deviation for quickness.

First, we flew from Boston To Amsterdam, then changed planes, and flew from Amsterdam to Manchester. It took us quite a while to get through immigration and customs, because of the aforementioned outliers. Then, it took us a while to get our car, then we had to get some food and try to find a bathroom in the under construction terminal. Finally, we hit the (wrong side of the) road, and 242 rotaries later, we arrived at Studley Royal, which is a deer park near Fountain's Abbey in Yorkshire. We stayed in the Chorister's House:




The deer were all over the place, as were the giant old trees, several of which had fallen. It's not a forest, but more of a field with big trees scattered about. They leave the fallen trees as part of the "ecosystem", but the smaller trees have fences around them, presumably to prevent the deer from destroying them. Here's a pic of the largest diameter tree near the house:



That's my ten-year-old son standing in front of the tree, so as you can see, one of the pieces that had fallen was about four feet in diameter, and the main trunk was probably ten feet in diameter.

We had a couple of days of parties, including a trip to the nearby Lightwater Valley amusement park, which boasts the longest roller coaster in Europe, or maybe the longest wooden one in the world -- something like that. The kids did great, with my son going on everything that I did, and my daughter trying many more rides than I thought she would.

Then we had the big event, Magdalen's wedding. You can see her recap and photos at her blog. It was a beautiful day, the first since we had arrived, sunny and warm. After a nice short ceremony, we went down to the foyer of the Fountain's Hall and had a Pimm's cup, which was quite good. My wife brought home a bottle last time she went, so we'll have to serve that on nice hot summer days here in New England. We wandered around the ruins of Fountain's Abbey, which is very impressive:



I think I'll just stop here, and write another post about Amsterdam.

Trip report: Seabrook

On our recent vacation to the beach in Maine, I escaped one evening and headed back down I-95 to the greyhound park in Seabrook, NH, where there is a poker room that opened up within the past couple of years. They donate some portion of the rake to charity, which is why they are allowed to operate in NH. The rake is about 20-25% on tournaments and SNGs, so you have to go deep to make any money. I'm not sure how they make money, as they have to donate a large amount to charity. One dealer said they have 70 dealers, and their web site is advertising for more. They do give a free race book to poker players, so maybe they make money on the greyhound and wire action.

They have several tournaments daily, with buy-ins ranging from $50-$250, starting at 5, 7, and 9. On weekends, they add a 1pm tournament. They also have limit Omaha Hi-Lo and HoldEm, and $50 and $150 SNGs. One interesting feature is that they do not seem to have security cameras at each table. I guess when you donate all of your money to charity, you can't afford such luxuries.

It was a Thursday night, and I got there in time for the 5:00 $50 NLHE tournament. I signed up for their player card, which is required to play, and bought in. Then I bought a (soft) drink and walked out side for a minute. As I walked back in, the security guard hassled me about the drink. I told him I bought it there, and he let me bring it back in.

The 5:00 attracted about 80 players, which I think is pretty good for a Thursday. The stacks were 2500 with blinds starting at 25/50, and 20-minute levels. I made it to the first break with a smaller than average stack, not having gotten many good hands, and not in a mood to bluff much. On the last hand before the break, I re-raised all in with JJ, forcing a limper and a min-raiser to fold, though not after some thought. After the break, I was slowly building up a stack, while a player two to my left bled away his massive stack that he accumulated by getting hit in the face with the deck. I got crippled on a hand where I called two all-ins that I had covered. One had A9d, and the other had 77. I had AKs. A 7 came on the flop for the main pot, and a 9 came on the river for the side pot. I think it was a good call, even though I suspected the second all in had a pair. Maybe not, because I figured one of them had to have one of my aces. The guy to my right said he folded K9, so both of us with aces were drawing thin. The funny thing is, on the very next hand, the two all-ins were again all in, this time against QQ. This time, the guy who had 77 on the previous hand had AKc, and the other guy again had ace rag. This time the ace came on the flop, and that guy went from about T2000 to T20000 in two hands.

A few hands later, I busted out and put my name in for a $50 SNG. The wait was maybe 15-20 minutes, and I ordered a burger and fries at the cafe.

Editing months later: it's now October!

I bubbled out of the SNG. There were a few regulars, and a couple of young guys. The final four were two regulars, one young guy, and me. The blinds were getting high, and I called the young guy's all-in with a semi-reasonable hand, and had him dominated. He hit to double up, and then sucked out on me the next hand or two to eliminate me. No big deal. Pokernews has done a few reviews of NH poker rooms lately, so I might try to get up there again soon.