Vegas!

I went to Vegas over the weekend with Al and his brother for Al's 35th birthday.

They are all about blackjack and I'd never played before. We went to see "21" in preparation, which was actually a lot more entertaining then we'd heard. I memorized the basic strategy tables the night before and on the flight over. When we arrived Al scanned the blackjack area for single deck games (not "super fun" which has some extra rules and pays less on blackjack) and found one. After about an hour of the pit boss hovering over the table, he went and talked on the phone to someone and came back and said, "you guys can play other games, but no more blackjack". We moved on to the next casino.

Eventually I kinda got the hang of it. The gist is that 10's and A's benefit the player since blackjack pays 3 to 2. The more of those in the deck, the better. So you keep an eye out for how many show up in the first hand of a newly shuffled deck. In the end, after putting down $100 about 5 times, I was down only $10. I was happy.

We also did the usual Vegas things: hung out at the pool, went to dinner, played a poker tournament (don't ask), and went to a hypnotism show.

Nevada

My last morning in San Francisco was hellish... I got up at 7, finished cleaning my apartment, packed the car, dropped off a remaining load of stuff at my dad's, logged onto IBM network one last time to change my address, dropped off a movie rental, cable box, house keys, said bye to a friend, Noah, and picked up malaria medication. I had to double park, make u-turns, drive around delivery trucks, etc. It wasn't until noon that I was finally crossing the bay bridge with a 12 hour drive ahead of me.

There was this haze, almost smoke in San Francisco. It continued through the whole state of California. It wasn't until the Nevada line that I started to feel myself decompress as the sky began to open up.

As I passed through Nevada the air became clear and all I was left to focus on was the open road ahead of me.