Smog, Smoke, Wind & Fire (Part 2)

You can find part 1 here, we pick up right where we left off....

As we got back into the car, Woody suggested I stay the night at his house so we could get as early a start as possible the next day.  I initially said no, and pointed out that I didn't have all the medications I needed.  Woody suggested we could swing by my house and get them.  Did I mention that the location of all these car shops is not that far from my neighborhood?  I guess I should point out that I live in a culturally diverse part of town.  There are all types of ethnic groups in my neighborhood....whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, you name it.  The only group you won't find is Jews.  I am the only Jew within a 30-mile radius of my home.

Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it made sense for me to stay over Woody's that night.  These car shops we were at were all just jammed with cars, barely room for the car being worked on, let alone a second car.  And there was minimal street parking around any of them.  So meeting Woody there in the morning, having two cars, then taking two cars back and forth between the shops, didn't seem like such a good idea.  I was planning on having dinner with Woody & LM anyway, they have a lovely guest room, it started making sense.

So Woody swung by my place, not very far out of the way.  I grabbed my meds (though I later realized I forgot one, fortunately it was the one I could most easily skip for a day) and grabbed a change of clothes.  Also picked up a few items for my breakfast.  One thing I considered taking was my laptop.  But I decided for just the night it was no big deal to be without it (even though I had a blog post written that I had to proofread that I wanted to publish the next evening).  I did grab my tablet.

And we headed back to Woody's.  The three of us had a very nice dinner, relating our tale of frustration to LM, who naturally enough, thought we were both nuts.  And so the next day, we got up bright and early and headed back to the shop that installed the catalytic converters.

Now I mentioned that it had been windy the day before (Monday) and this day was also very windy.  You've probably heard of all the fires in Southern California last week. Well on the Monday I've just described, there was one that wasn't all that far from Woody & LM's place.  Now as we were driving towards the neighborhood where all the car shops were, I got a Google alert telling me about a fire very, very close to my residence.  I was trying to find out more about it when I received a phone call from the city of L.A. emergency system about mandatory evacuations.  I didn't take the call because I assumed it was a junk call but they left a voice message and I played it back.  It mentioned the areas where emergency evacuations were and I couldn't understand exactly what they were saying.  I finally used my smart phone to find the evacuation map.  It turned out that the border of the evacuation area was less than a five-minute walk from my front door.  In other words, if I tried to walk in that direction for six minutes, they'd have stopped me!  Oh and also, the freeway right by my house (the on and off ramps to which were in the mandatory evacuation area) was closed in both directions.  I pretty much take that freeway to go virtually anywhere I have to go!

Well by this time, we could see we were driving towards thick, heavy, black smoke.  If my house was near the fires (and it was), the repair shop we were headed to was even closer!  I had obviously picked the worst day possible to do this.

We got to the shop.  The guy Woody had spoken to the night before wasn't there of course.  Instead a worker, one of the mechanics was there—the very same mechanic who had installed the catalytic converter.  Like everyone we encountered at one of these shops Woody has done business with, he greeted Woody like his long lost friend, greeting him in a combination of Spanish and English. Woody had to explain the problem and he put the car on the lift.  Unfortunately, even on the lift, the mechanic (who we are going to call "Rudy") couldn't see the numbers.  Woody looked too and couldn't see them.  Maybe at this point it was determined that the CC's had been installed upside down.

Rudy took off the CC's and then saw the numbers.  Woody wrote down the numbers.  He even took pictures of them with the numbers visible.  He wanted Rudy to call Jesus and tell him (in Spanish) that the numbers were good, that everything was legit.  He tried a few times and couldn't get thru.

This past hour or so was one of the most uncomfortable of my life.  It was windy and cold.  OK, if you live in Minnesota maybe you wouldn't have been freezing.  But it was freezing for L.A., especially with that really bad wind blowing on us.  Also, that wind was blowing smoke and ash from the nearby fire right in our faces.  Woody and I kept getting dust and ash and smoke and  who knows what else in our eyes. If it wasn't hell, it will do until the actual hell comes along.  And for good measure, there was no place to sit down.  Either there was no office or it was locked.  We were just standing in a garage with wide open doors freezing, breathing smoke and getting ash in our eyes.

The experience wasn't a total loss, however.  Early on, while Rudy was taking down the CC's, he told Woody that he and a buddy were going to Tijuana soon.  And he was pretty clear about why they were going.  "We're going to get panocha."  (I'll let you folks Google it, this is a family blog).  Then he invited Woody to join him.  Then he pointed to me and said the four of us should all go.  We politely declined. 

Woody had developed a theory as to why Jesus suspected him of being an undercover inspector.  He decided that as a white guy, being in this part of town, he stuck out like a sore thumb—what else could a white guy be doing in his shop?  He was convinced that he had been "racially profiled."  Personally, I think that's a stretch.  These shops get plenty of business from people who don't speak Spanish.

While this was going on, a middle-aged black guy showed up.  I guess he was there to have his car worked on.  He too had no place to sit so he was just standing there.  Woody struck up a conversation with him.  He eventually told the guy the story of why we were there and about the smog check gone wrong, including his theory as to why he had been incorrectly identified as an inspector.  He said to him, "I was racially profiled." I was a little nervous about that but the guy just laughed, he was totally cool with it.

At one point, when Woody was out of earshot, Rudy said to me "Have you known him (meaning Woody) a long time?"  I said yes.  "He's crazy, isn't he?"  I laughed.  And then I said, "Oh yes.....loco."  Rudy laughed back.  "Yes, loco."

Well, Rudy put the CC's back on the car and went in the back to make one more try to get a hold of Jesus.  When he came back, he said he had reached him and explained the problem.  With hope in our hearts, we drove over to the smog shop.  We were about to have our "Come to Jesus" moment.

When we arrived at the shop, Jesus was not there.  He would be back "soon" we were told.  We waited in the office.  Meanwhile Woody left to make a call.  When he came back, he gave me some much needed good news.  He had called the guy we left my Camry with the day before.  At first he greeted Woody with a long list of issues with the car (outside of the catalytic converter, which he had told him about upfront).  Woody feared he was going to say he could only get me "X" for it, with "X" being a lot less than Woody had insisted on the day before.  But at the end of his list of issues with the car, the guy told Woody, "Well ok, I've got the money here.  You can come by with the pink slip and pick up the cash."  No shit?  Wow, that went a lot faster and smoother than I had any right to expect, especially considering all the problems we were having with the smog check. 

Fortunately, I had the pink slip with me, and the shop where the Camry was wasn't very far from where we were at that moment.  Maybe this was all coming together and we could get out of there with the smog certificate and be done with this ordeal?

No such luck.  Jesus returned.  He said he hadn't spoken to Rudy about the car.  What?  A guy who installs CC's upside down and was planning to go to Tijuana to score with some hookers would lie?  Who could have seen that coming?

Jesus was not interested in seeing Woody's pictures of the CC's with the numbers clearly visible. Nor did he want to see the receipt for the converters that Woody had located and could show him (which clearly stated that they were California approved).  And he still refused to put the car on the lift to look for the numbers.  "That's not part of the test, I shouldn't have to do that," he said.  Nor was he interested in talking to Rudy.  Woody even asked if he would come to the shop where the work had been down and talk to him face-to-face and let Rudy show him the numbers. He said no.  Woody told him the shop was like three minutes away. Nope.  He wasn't having any of it.  In fact, he was still at least half-convinced that Woody was undercover for the Bureau of Automotive Repair and trying to bust him.

So right there, from the office, Woody called the number for the BAR that was on the pamphlet and started explaining the issue to them.  I suppose he was hoping that they would be able to tell Jesus right on the phone to give us the damn smog certificate.  Alternatively, I think he wanted to make it clear to them that this Jesus guy was not at all a helpful fellow.

Well, apparently the only remedy was that we had to take the car to a "referee"  that works for BAR and have him test the car and determine if it was acceptable.  Miracle of miracles,  he was able to get an appointment that same day—but in the afternoon, at 1:50pm (it was still the middle of the morning).  Also, the location of the referee was at a college that was about midway between where we currently were and Woody's home.  So it wasn't some ridiculous drive.

But we before we left, there was still a matter of the money.  Woody had paid the guy $51 or so for the test, even though they wouldn't give him the certificate.  Woody told Jesus that the person on the phone said that Jesus needed to "cancel the test" out of the system—and also that he should give Woody the money back for the test.  The guy balked but then finally said he'd speak to his manager.  The manager didn't put up much of a fight.  But they said they didn't know how to credit Woody's credit card back!  They said they would give him a money order.  Strange, but we waited around for the lady in the office to get a money order from somewhere (she left the premises to get it).

Finally on our way, we headed to get the money for the Camry.  This actually went smoothly.  We both signed a few things and then the guy took the cash out of his shirt pocket and counted it out for me—the exact sum Woody had insisted on.  Now, it turned out that the first four bills he gave me were $50 bills.  I commented that gamblers consider $50 bills bad luck.  But I forced myself to take them anyway.  The rest were $100's.

I said goodbye to the Camry, my reliable transportation for 16 years, and we took off.  By this time Woody had decided he wanted to take it back to Rudy and insist he uninstall the CC's and then re-install them right side up.  That should definitely resolve things.  We were trying to avoid this because this would take at least an hour and was not that simple, apparently they would have to redo the welds or something.  But it could be done.

We got back to that shop and saw Rudy and he put the car back on the lift.  By this time the owner had shown up (he was the guy we had seen the day before just as he was closing).  Woody told him the whole story and then told him we wanted the converters installed right side up, as they should have been all along.  The guy said sure—but he would have to charge us $200!  This seemed outrageous seeing as how Woody had paid him for doing the job properly in the first place.  The shop owner showed Woody that the numbers were easily visible the way it was, you just had to look for them.  Note that Rudy could not see the numbers when he looked for them earlier that morning until he took them off.

Woody could not get the guy to agree to do the job for free.  So we left, rather pissed.  It was actually way too early to get to the referee, so we headed back to Woody's, grabbed some lunch while Woody started telling LM some of our tales of woe.  As soon as we entered the house, LM told us that we both stunk.  She could smell the smoke on our clothes!  Yeah, it was that bad.  We had basically spent a couple of hours inside of an ashtray.

Meanwhile, I had been trying to keep up with fire news.  My house wasn't in the mandatory evacuation area yet, but a couple of new fires had started all around us. I'm pretty sure that at this point, every single route I could use to get to, say, Vegas, was closed to me!  One of the fires actually had the potential to hit both Woody's and my neighborhood.  Of course, we saw smoke the entire time we were in the area where the car shops were.

We headed to the location of the referee, seeing plenty of smoke off in the distance as we drove.  We got there early and the referee was able to take us right awasy and listen to our story.  He turned out to be a very nice guy.  Woody really told him the whole story in great detail (hey folks, if Woody would have written this blog post, it would have been twice as long), including the part about the shop owner wanting to charge us $200 to redo his work.  Woody had assumed the guy would have a lift there but he did not.  Nevertheless, he put the car through its paces.  It took awhile. But when he came back to us he had good news, but he gave us a choice.

He was prepared to pass the car and give us the certificate.  He was able to see the numbers on the CC (and without using a lift!).  But since the CC's were installed upside down, if we preferred he could fail the car and thus give us ammunition to go back to the shop and insist on them redoing the installation.  It took us about three seconds to reject that idea.  Even if if we had a ticket from the BAR that said the CC's were installed improperly, there was no guarantee we could convince this guy to redo the job at no cost.

We gladly accepted the certificate right then and there.  One good thing about having the referee do the test—there was no charge for it!  Only the $8.25 for the actually certificate (which I believe goes right to the state and is fixed).  So we actually came out ahead on the deal.  Also, the referee told Woody that he made some notes in the file on the car and we could come back in two years to him (or whoever the referee was by then) and have him do the test.  Not only would that make getting it passed smooth but it would be free to test it.  How sweet is that?

We headed back to Woody's neighborhood. While we had been waiting (at least it was inside), whenever we looked outside we could see smoke coming from one of the fires clearly visible in the sky.  And I had been trying to get updates on my phone and had seen that even more freeways were closed.  So when we got back up to the freeway we needed to get to Woody's, we noticed that the traffic in the opposite direction was at an absolute standstill.  A complete parking lot.  Fortunately we were headed in the other direction and traffic that way was moving fine.  But that stalled traffic was the heading in the direction of my house.  In other words, if I would have been trying to get home just then, I wouldn't have been able to.

I dropped Woody off at his house, and headed back to the DMV.  Again, the wait wasn't too bad.  Amazingly, I got the same lady who had help us the day before. She even remembered me.  Soon, I was on my way back to Woody's, temporary registration in hand.  The car was finally, legally, mine.

Well, I checked with Google Maps and there was no good route back to my house.  It said it would take 55 minutes to get there (double the normal time), but as it was turning into rush hour I knew that it would likely get worse by the minute. Also, the power at my place was likely out.  Or at least the internet was down. I knew this because I couldn't get my Echo Dot to respond to anything. Everyone agreed it made more sense for me to stay there yet another night and hope things cleared up some by the next day.  I did start referring to myself as "The Man Who Came to Dinner."  So we ended up going out to dinner again and once again I took advantage of Woody & LM's generous hospitality.  But man, I really, really wished I had my laptop with me!  Somehow, with just a smart phone and a tablet, I managed.  But it was touch and go for awhile.

When I woke up the next morning, I checked Google and it showed that I could get home in the usual time.  And it showed that freeway by my house had reopened, except for the exit I normally take.  I'd have to exit one stop earlier.  No big deal.  Woody and LM were still asleep, but I wanted to make it home while the getting was good, and before morning rush hour traffic kicked in.  So I left without even saying goodbye.

Traffic was light and it never got bad.  I didn't see any smoke as I approached my neighborhood.  And suddenly Google was telling me I could exit at my usual street and not one stop before!  Although there were still a few traffic cones that were sort of in the way (they had probably blown back into traffic).  But I navigated through that was very happy to be home.  And yes, I confirmed that the there had been a power outage at my house since I'd been there, but it was working when I got home.

Well that's my story.  I'd just like to publically thank Woody and LM for everything, including putting me up (and putting up with me) for two nights, all the help with the car and of course the incredible deal they gave me on such a great car.  Thanks, guys!

Smog, Smoke, Wind & Fire (Part 1)

This two-part post is off-topic, no poker or Vegas talk.  Although I can connect it a little bit to Vegas because it concerns my transportation to Vegas, if that's not too much of a stretch.  Or just consider this one of my posts about something crazy that happened to me and I thought it was interesting enough to share with my readers.

It all started when I asked my friend Woody for advice on getting a new car.  My Camry was 16 years old and had over 262K miles on it.  It had served me well, but it had several things needing repair that would cost me some serious coin.  When I realized that spending anything above the price of an oil change on the car would be more than it was worth, I decided that I had to look to getting a new car.

To my astonishment, Woody offered me a once-in-a-lifetime deal on one of his cars.  It seems he had an extra car that he or members of his family had had for a long, long time. He had spent a lot of time, effort and yes, money, fixing it up.  Now I don't want to reveal the make and model of the car, but let's just say that it was a top-of-the-line luxury car that originally cost probably three or four times what I had paid for my Camry.  And yes, it was actually older than my Camry.  Again, I don't want to say exactly how old it is but the production date started with a "19" and not a "20."

But Woody loves to fix/maintain his cars and he had basically spent the last year or so rebuilding this car.  As he explained to me, virtually everything about the car was new (transmission, steering, catalytic converters, drive shaft, stereo etc, etc, etc). This is actually one of his hobbies.  I had ridden in this car many times over the years, including very recently.  It was a state-of-the-art car when he originally bought it new, and it had been brought back to virtually its original glory meticulously by Woody. And there wasn't a mark on it.

And he didn't know what to do with it because Woody and his wife, LM, are only two people and they had four cars, counting this one.  Essentially, they didn't have a place to keep this car and so Woody offered me a too-good-to-be true deal on it.  Now if it was anyone else making me this offer, I'd also be looking to see if the Brooklyn Bridge was part of the deal, but Woody has been a close friend for some twenty years or so (and his wife and I have been friends for even longer) and I knew I could trust him.  And I knew if he said that everything had been replaced in the car, it was a fact.  All the issues I had with my Camry had already been repaired on this car, and it was a much better car to begin with.

But one of the pearls of wisdom my late father imparted on me was, "Never buy a used car."  And all this time, I never had. Of course I was a bit skeptical.  So Woody offered me another deal—try the car for awhile and see for myself how I like it.  How could I refuse?

So I left my Camry in front of his house (since I had never mastered the art of driving two cars at once), picked up his car and tried it for myself.  Well, it is a helluva car. The thought that I could have a car of this quality without having to come up with a huge down payment and then have to make large monthly payments was stunning.  So, a week later I was on the phone to Woody saying, "Let's do this!"  Now it was less than two weeks before my next planned trip to Vegas so I wanted to get this transaction completed before then so I could take my "new" car to Vegas.  Besides, I wanted to finalize this sweet deal before Woody came to his senses. 

There was also the matter of the Camry. Since I'd always bought new cars before, I always traded my old car into the dealer when I bought a new car.  I had never dealt with trying to sell a car before and I dreaded it.  Especially since one of the issues with the Camry was that it needed a new catalytic converter and it wouldn't pass a smog check.  And you can't complete the title transfer of a car without a smog check (keep that thought it mind). 

Well, Woody came to the rescue there too.  When I say that he restores cars as a hobby, I don't mean that he does all the physical labor himself.  He mostly figures out what the car needs, finds the parts (usually online) and then when he gets the parts, he goes to a repair shop that is ok with just doing the labor and not selling him the parts.  As such, he knows the owners of half the repair shops in the L.A. area.  He thought of a couple of shop owners who would be willing to take the Camry off my hands and do the repairs for cheap (since that's what they do anyway).  The very first guy he called sounded interested.  Woody named a price that was the minimum I'd accept.  Again, I'm not saying what it was but it was at least 2-3 times what I thought I could get for the car and about 4-5 times more than I could possibly get if I traded it in for a new car.  The guy said he'd look at it and see.  If that didn't work out, Woody had another guy he would try.

So last Monday I drove the car that was soon-to-be mine over to Woody and LM's house to complete the transaction.  The agenda was for me to empty out my Camry, head over to the DMV, file all that paperwork on Woody's—I mean, my—car, then drive the Camry over and drop it off at the shop Woody's pal owns.  He'd check it for a day or two and see if he was interested in buying it himself or perhaps finding a buyer.

As it turned out, I picked a bad day to do this.  We had been having some great weather but this day suddenly a cold wind hit us and when I got to Woody's, it was quite a pain to unload all the crap in my car.  Now although I am a total slob by nature, for years I always kept my cars very neat.  But once I started travelling to Vegas on almost a bi-monthly basis, I just kept keeping more and more stuff in my car all the time.  So there was just a ton of stuff to clean out of there.  And it was 16 years worth of stuff that had been accumulating.

Fortunately both Woody and LM helped and the biggest problem was preventing things from blowing away during the transfer and also keep the garbage bag open in the face of the severe wind.

But we finally cleaned it all out, stopped off for a quick lunch, and then headed to the local DMV, without an appointment.  Fortunately this DMV, located in their neighborhood, is one of the best-run, least busy DMV's you can find.  And so it wasn't a ridiculously long wait for us to be called.

We should have been on our way soon after we were called to the window except for one thing—the car I was buying required a smog check.  Ugh.  I had thought about that but I noticed the car's registration was just renewed in the past month or so.  Since the smog check is required every other year, I assumed that if Woody hadn't mentioned it, the car had been smogged within the 90 day window (so that a check wouldn't be necessary).  Actually when the lady at the DMV mentioned the smog check, Woody assumed that too—but she checked and it turned out it hadn't been done in over a year.  There was no way getting around it.  We would have to get the car smog checked in order to complete this transaction.

I suppose we could have gone anywhere to get the smog check, they have these places all over California, probably plenty within a few minutes from this particular DMV.  But Woody has relationships with many car repair places and wanted to use the one he normally goes to.  Unfortunately, this place was clear across town.  Not to worry, Woody assured us, it was only 2pm and we had until 5pm to get back to the DMV to close this transaction. Plenty of time.

OK, fine.  And then LM realized the place Woody wanted to go was near the place where I was going to drop off my Camry for possible sale.  She suggested we take two cars and kill two birds with one stone—I mean trip.  So we dropped LM off at her house, picked up the Camry and were on our way.  I didn't know where we were going so I just followed Woody, and when we got to a car place, I honestly wasn't sure if it was the place for the smog check or the place we were dropping off the Camry.  Turned out it was the place for the Camry.

Now there's no way to tell the rest of this story without mentioning something that all the car places we were about to interact with had something in common.  And that is, English is not the most frequently spoken language at any of them.  Spanish was much more common at these places, and that is pretty much true of the neighborhood they are all located in.

So as Woody was looking for the owner of this establishment, most of the workers seemed to recognize Woody and said hello to him. Woody returned their greetings in Spanish.  Woody knows some Spanish (mostly slang words) and for that matter, he knows more Yiddish than I do (he is not Jewish).  So he is multi-lingual.  But they all knew him.

Finally he found the proprietor and showed him my car. The proprietor greeted Woody like his good friend. He looked it over for five seconds and said that he would check it out and see what he could do.  And with that, I handed him the keys to my Camry and we took off.  It was a little weird to say the least.  I left my car in his shop, handed him the keys, and didn't get a single piece of paper, no receipt, no nothing.  I am not used to doing business that way but I had complete faith in Woody.

Next we piled into the car and headed over to Woody's car smog buddy.   Who, just like the last guy, greeted Woody like his long lost friend (and in a combination of Spanish and English).  After the pleasantries were over, Woody explained what we needed and the guy said he couldn't help us this day—we should have called.  It seems he has three bays to do smog checks, but only one of them can do the extra tests required for a car as old as this one.  And that bay was not working this day.  Damn.

Woody asked if there was another place in the vicinity, surely there were lots of them.  The guy pointed up the street to a gas station.  "Ask for Jorge.  He's my son."  Cool.

So we went over there.  And asked for Jorge.  "He just left.  Should be back in around 40-minutes."  Well time was a wasting and we didn't want to wait for 40-minutes.  Besides, when someone says sometimes will be back in 40-minutes, it could be closer to 60-minutes.....or not at all, right?

Any other places we could get the check done immediately?  Yeah, tons of them, he said.  He mentioned the name of the street in the neighborhood where they were a dime a dozen.  So without a specific place in mine, we went to that street and just started looking for the smog check sign.  We found one and noticed the bay was chained off, but Woody went to talk to the guy there.  I didn't hear the conversation but Woody got in the car and explained to me that the guy said he had been closed down by the state inspectors.  Apparently they had recently been out in full force and were closing the places down aggressively because (they claimed), their instruments were off and needed to be adjusted.

Hmm....this was getting to be more difficult than we ever imagined.  We were 0 for 3.  We were thinking of heading back to Woody's neck of the woods to find a place when we passed by another shop.  We inquired there.  Nope, they too were closed down by the state.  Yeesh, 0 for 4.  But as we passed by the guy, he did say to us, "nice car."  Except he called it by the exact model of the car.

At this point I started Googling smog check places to see if I could call one and ask if they could do it.  The trouble was, I wasn't sure if these places I was finding were ones we'd already been to!  Then we drove past another one.....It was too late to turn in, so we pulled into a strip mall, parked kind of illegally and Woody went over on foot to see if they could do the smog check.  Well guess what....they could!  On the fifth try we finally found a place who could do the smog check on this older car.

We had to wait and were told to wait in the office, we couldn't see what the guy was doing or even if he was testing the car.  The time was getting near 4pm.  I was wondering if there was a chance in hell of us getting back to the DMV by 5.  I was also wondering if we got there at 4:55pm would we be ok, or if, at 5pm sharp, they would just close down and send everyone waiting to be helped home.  This was the DMV after all—everyone's least favorite bureaucracy.

Well we were waiting in the office and we kept waiting. And waiting.  And waiting.  It seemed to be taking way too long.  And I saw that the time was approaching 4:30 and realized there was no way we were going to make it back to the DMV by 5 even if that would.  There was just no way this was going to be completely finished today.  If we got the smog certificate now, I'd have to make another trip to the DMV on my own tomorrow to clear the title.  And recall that the DMV was close to Woody, not me.

Finally the guy came into the office.  And the first thing he said to Woody was, "Are you undercover?"  Ugh, I figured out what that must have meant.  Eventually, the guy made it clear he thought that we were undercover inspectors trying to trap him into giving us a certificate that wasn't warranted.  WTF?

Woody of course denied this because it wasn't true. It turned out that the issue was the catalytic converters.  The guy (who for this story we are going to call "Jesus") said that he couldn't read the numbers on them, which is part of the test, and therefore he couldn't pass the car.  But he was implying more, that there was something wrong with them, that they were somehow "illegal" catalytic converters and Woody had done something not kosher (pretty sure that Jesus didn't use the word "kosher.")  And then he thought—I guess because he knew the inspectors had closed down some other shops in the neighborhood—that we were with the State and just trying to trap him and bust him!

This was all bullshit.  Woody explained to the guy that those were legitimate CC's that he had bought online, they were certified for CA use, and that he had paid a local shop to install them.  He said he could even produce the receipt for them.  He asked the guy if he had put the car up on the lift to look for the numbers (Woody was sure they were there).  The guy said no, that's not part of the test.  Shops aren't required to have a lift to do smog checks but this shop had one but he refused to use it.  He asked if he would put the car on the lift so that he (Woody) could look for the numbers.  But the guy refused.  All he did was give Woody a pamphlet from the Bureau of Automotive Repair (the agency in charge of smog checks).  And he sent us on the way.

Well the place Woody had the CC's installed was not far from where we were so we headed over there.  Of course, the shop was in the process of closing for the night.  But he told the owner the problem and I think this was the point where it was first considered that the shop may have installed the CC's upside down.  But that shouldn't matter and all that meant was that it was just a little harder to see the numbers.  BTW, the car passed the test in every other way, meaning it wasn't polluting the air, which is the whole reason for having the damn smog checks in the first place. 

There was nothing more that could be done, this now officially became a two-day project (at least).  Woody figured we would get back to this shop first thing in the morning, have the mechanic put the car on the lift, show Woody the numbers on the CC's and then—well, not sure what the next step was.  Perhaps have this shop call the smog place and tell the guy where to look for the numbers?  Or take pics of the CC's so we could show them to Jesus?

That's it for part 1. You can now find part 2 here.  Oh and have you heard about the Southern California wildfires?  They play a big part in part 2.

Easing into a Recovery

As you know, I’m in the midst of documenting the rather disappointing results of my recent Vegas excursion.  Poker wise, it was a total disaster.  Actually, pretty much every which way it was a disaster.  I caught a cold, had a few other minor physical ailments, became totally disenchanted with the city of Vegas itself, and honestly, was very happy to be returning home.  That’s not my usual attitude when I depart from Vegas.

I drove home on a Thursday and gathered up all the strength I could muster to get some work done on Friday.  But on the weekend, I knew I needed to just completely shut down and try to recover physically.  I barely left the couch either Saturday or Sunday.  All the medical issues could probably be considered minor individually, but hitting me all at once made it seem very, very major.

A visit to see two doctors Monday morning put me on the slow road to recovery for one of the conditions.  I kind of disobeyed doctor’s orders to get back to work the rest of the week. And it was double time.  I had to take a couple of evenings knocking out my next column for Ante Up.  Wouldn’t you know it, that column was probably the most difficult and time-consuming I’ve ever written.  You’ll see it in a few weeks, but it was a preview of most (but not all) of the summer tournament series that will be held in Vegas. Just a lot more work than my normal column (I’ll explain when I run it). 

That was the last three evenings of that week, and then on Saturday, did I take some time for myself to aid my recovery (everything was still bothering me, to some degree)?  No.  I had to spend the entire day working on my taxes.  Trust me, that wasn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds.

Now I should have taken Sunday to recover from everything (including doing my taxes) but did I?  Nope.  I wanted to get you, my dear readers, a fresh new blog post.  So I spent Sunday with my nose to the grindstone whipping up the post you can find here.

By the time the following weekend rolled around (which was this past weekend), I was actually feeling reasonably well.  And I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I had been cooped up at home too long, I needed to get out.  My friends were all busy, so the best option was to head to the local poker emporium and see if I could remain card dead for the rest of my life. I definitely had some trepidation about getting back on the horse, but I knew I was going to do it eventually.  So why not now?

Well the answer to that question was, “the weather.”  A rather freakish early April storm had descended upon California and I had to decide if I felt like getting out and driving in the rain (especially having just barely gotten over my cold).  But I decided I just had to get out, I would have gone nuts if I stayed in one more day.

The Google Maps program is a god-send.  Using it, I avoided my usual route and a lot of traffic, and instead it gave me a relatively smooth sailing alternate route.  I didn’t avoid the rain, but at least the back roads it directed me to weren’t flooded and I arrived at PC Ventura in almost the same amount of time as the normal route would have taken me without traffic.

My goal for this session was just to get my feet back under me.  Sure, having a huge win would have been great, but that seemed too much to even try for.  I was looking to recover, mentally, from the beating I took in Vegas.  It wasn’t even so much as leaving with a profit as much as sitting at a table and seeing if I could get some good cards once in awhile.  Of course, booking a win sure would have been nice.  But if I could get some cards finally, and spend a few hours not looking at the four walls of my living room, that would be considered a success.

I knew I would be extremely gun-shy this session, but I was just hoping to find something to start rebuilding my confidence with.  I suppose that sounds a little odd considering I don’t really blame bad play on my results in Vegas.  As I keep saying, I basically went an entire week without getting cards.  I didn’t know that I could have done much differently.  But when you go that long without getting hands to play, it just wears on you, every bit as much as if you are playing bad.  At least bad play is, in theory, fixable.  Bad cards….well, that’s just a waiting game, right?

There were actually a couple of changes waiting for me at the PC.  One, they had brand new poker chips.  The dollar chips were still light blue, but the $5 dollar chips were no longer light green.  No, they didn’t make them red.  They were yellow.  But you know, the $5 chips at the Bike are also yellow, so maybe that’s an L.A.-thing.  The good news though, aside from the chips being all shiny and new and clean, is that you can now very easily tell them apart.  From a distance, the blue and green ones were too similar looking.

The other change was that they no longer offer Diet Dr. Pepper.  Disappointing, but that was always a unique perk at this place.  Have to settle for Diet Coke there now, like pretty much everywhere else.

I was able to get seated in a 1/2 game right away. I had only been there for about three or four hands when I looked down at a couple of Aces.  Aha, I thought, I’ve broken the spell.  I raised, had one caller, and took it down with a c-bet on a Queen-high board.  It actually occurred to me that I could quit right there and book a win, albeit a very, very small one.  Still, booking a win would be a great help psychologically, right?  I think I might have actually considered it if it wasn’t pouring rain outside.  I’m kidding of course.  I think.

There were big stacks at the table but the action didn’t seem particularly aggro and the raises weren’t especially large.  Thus, I thought it might be good to try one thing that I don’t usually do.  Back in Vegas, I had seen my buddy Don limp in late position or even call raises on the button with pretty questionable hands, like low, offsuit connectors.  One time he stacked a guy with Aces (and also took my small stack, but then, I only had pocket Kings) by calling with something like 6-5 offsuit.  Don’t quote me on that, I haven’t played back my tape.  Anyway, he hit a straight I think and put the guy who had Aces on tilt (and won a big pot).  We were talking about it and he’s trying things like that now, and is being encouraged to do so by his unofficial poker coach.

I guess that’s why, after a few limpers, I limped in from the button with 7-5 diamonds. In position, I suppose you could also consider raising, but unless you take it down there, you are playing a big pot with a pretty lousy hand.  The idea is to try to hit something with a minimal investment. It’s easy to fold unless you flop a monster (or a monster draw). I hit something….I flopped both a straight and a flush draw.  I called $5 and then $5 on the turn when I actually hit my flush on the turn.  That’s the downside of playing this way….you’re kind of afraid of bigger flush when you do make the hand, that’s why I only called.  A fourth diamond hit the river and no one bet, I was really afraid of the bigger flush.  But the only other flush was a guy with the 6 of diamonds and I took the pot.

I limped in with Ace-8 of clubs.  A guy shoved his last $15.  A lady with a big stack called, so I took a shot and called.  The flop was 4-3-3, one club.  No one bet.  The turn was a blank, still no bet.  No bet on the river, an 8.  Everyone had suited Aces.  The 8 on the river gave me the only pair and I took the pot.

I called $6 from late position with King-Jack of spades.  It was three-way.  Two spades on the flop and I called $6, still three ways.  Another spade on the turn, this time the preflop raiser checked, I bet $20 and only the preflop raiser called.  Another spade hit the river. I checked behind, wary of the naked Ace of spades.  But all he had was pocket Queens.  I was up more than a few bucks and it felt good to actually be catching some cards and being up, even if it wasn’t a lot of money.

I limped in from late position with Queen-10 of spades, it was five-ways.  Two spades on the flop, no one bet.  I caught the flush on the turn and called $5, we were heads up. Yeah, I was worried about a bigger flush.  She checked the blank river and I did as well.  But she didn’t have a flush, she actually had turned a straight.  I tried to be mad at myself for playing so wimpy, but I couldn’t really be upset; it was just so refreshing to be taking down pots, even if they weren’t exactly making me rich.

I limped in with Ace-2 of hearts from late position. At least five of us saw a flop of Jack-5-4.  The two low cards were hearts, giving me not only the flush draw but a gutshot to the steel wheel.  Perhaps in a different mental state, I would have played the draw more aggressively.  But I just called the $15 bet made by the youngest guy at the table (was wearing a backwards baseball cap too).  He checked a blank turn and so did I.  The river was an Ace, so I called his $10 bet.  But he had flopped a set of 5’s.

On the button I limped in with 5-4 offsuit. Then called $5 when one of the blinds raised—it was five way. The flop was 3-2-2.  I called $6, still multi-way.  A blank on the turn and I called another $6. The Ace of spades on the river gave me the wheel but also put three spades out there.  I just called the $10 bet.  She had just an Ace, and I took down the pot.

An orbit later, with the same dealer, I limped in with 5-4 off again. Five-way This time the flop came 3-3-2.  I called $6 and it was just the two of us.  This turn the turn gave me the wheel when an Ace hit.  I called her $15 bet. Yeah, I was a bit afraid of a full house.  We checked down a blank river.  She just had an Ace.  The dealer remembered the earlier hand where my 5-4 had also made a wheel and commented that 5-4 was good for me.  I owe those pots to my buddy Don.

But yeah, you can see I’m not getting value for hitting these hands.  The other thing you will note is that the betting at this table was pretty timid.  I should have been taking down much bigger pots for the hands I was catching.  I know that.  But….I couldn’t be upset.  After what I’d gone thru in Vegas, it was feeling real good to be taking down these pots, as I said.  It was…well…kind of therapeutic.  

Finally got the dreaded pocket Kings.  Two players had limped in ahead of me, so I made it $11.  No one called.  Winning with pocket Kings?  This was my lucky day!

I limped in with pocket 3’s and it was seven-ways.  The flop had two hearts on it, one of which was a 3.  A lady bet $5, another called and so I raised to $20.  Too much?  No one called.

I raised to $7 under-the-gun with Ace-King off.  Only one call.  The flop was Ace-high, I bet $12, he called.  Blank on the turn, I checked, he bet $20, I called.  Blank on the river, we both checked.  He had Ace-King.  Only the house made any money on that one.

I was now up over $90.  And it felt good, real good.  The rain had stopped for the moment and I was thinking of leaving.  I really would have liked to somehow gotten that profit over $100 so I could book the double-up, but I knew I would have been rather upset if I ended up losing the profit chasing that.  I decided I was on my last orbit.  I was thisclose to booking that win.

Under the gun plus one (or maybe plus two), I looked down at pocket 9’s.  This was my second or third to last hand, for sure.  So I just limped in.  Then a guy made it $10.  Two players called in front of me (the blinds), as did I.  The flop came 9-8-5, two hearts.  It checked to me.  I figured the flop probably didn’t hit anyone but had some draws out there. I couldn’t count on the preflop raiser making a c-bet so I bet $30.  The preflop raiser announced all in for $53.  Really?  The two ladies both took their time before they folded.  Of course I snap called.  I really thought I was ahead.  I figured he was trying to protect his overpair from the draws.  Or maybe he had the flush draw himself.  I couldn’t put him on 7-6, he had given no indication he was a player who would raise with a hand like that.  We didn’t show.

Still, I sure wouldn’t have minded the board pairing.  But it did not.  There were no more hearts, just a black Queen, followed by a black Jack.  Shit, he didn’t have a 10, did he?  Nah, I was still absolutely convinced I had the best hand when I turned over cards.  The dealer announced my set of 9’s.

The guy stared at the board for a few seconds….maybe more than a few.  The delay convinced me even more that I was taking down a nice pot.  And then he said, “I have a straight,” and showed 7-6 of diamonds.  WTF?  I was disappointed before I was pissed.  I counted out the chips I owed him.  At least he was short stacked and I still had a bit of profit left.  But I sure as hell didn’t like the slow roll.  What was that all about?  He surely knew he had flopped the straight.  And the dealer loudly and clearly called out my set of 9’s.  I sure didn’t appreciate that, but I said nothing.

I played one more hand and then called it a day.  I ended up $30 ahead.  I tried to focus on finally being able to book a much need win—much need for my psyche.  But I know I left money at the table and I was annoyed by the last hand.  But that’s poker, right?  You flop a set and someone makes a straight. At least I had a hand good enough to be coolered with.

I resolved though to try real hard to be happy with the win, however small it was.  It was an important part of my recovery process.  The next win will be bigger.

Trying a New Venue--Player's Casino

Last weekend I played in a Southern California poker room I’d never played in before.

The weekend before I played at the Bike, as usual (see here).  As I reported, they no longer offer free food for the game I play (or any game, as far as I can tell).  Now, I don’t want to say that the only reason I tried a different venue was that they no longer feed me for free at the Bike, but….I suppose with all the other issues I have with the Bike, that may just have been the final bit of encouragement I needed to try something new.

For awhile now, I was aware of another poker room in a totally different area, a little bit farther away from where I live (as the crow flies) but in a totally different direction from where the Bike is.

The name is Player’s Casino.  It’s in Ventura.  It’s about 15-20 miles farther by car than the Bike.  But I felt it might be faster to get to in most situations than the Bike.  You see to get to the Bike, I have to drive through the heart of downtown Los Angeles.  That’s one of the reasons I avoid the Bike during the week and prefer going there on Saturday or Sunday afternoons.  Even in the middle of the day, traffic thru downtown L.A. figures to be nightmarish about 98.6% of the time.

Weekends, during the day, are better, but never really great.  I almost always encounter some kind of traffic jam going thru downtown.  According to Google maps, it should take me 45 minutes to get there with no traffic—assuming I keep pretty close to the speed limit.  Typically, it takes me close to an hour.  On particularly bad days, it takes more than an hour.

But heading out to Ventura, I figured that the traffic would normally be fairly light (on a weekend afternoon), and more than make up for the extra distance.  I figured I could make to Player’s Casino in 55-60 minutes most of the time.  So basically, the same commute time as the Bike even if I’d be driving a few extra miles. 

Just that conjecturing would have made me try the place in Ventura a long time ago.  But I knew that Player’s Casino was a much, much smaller venue than the Bike, and I was concerned that they might not have enough action.  I’d hate to drive all that way out there and find out they only have one (if that) short-handed 1/2 NL game (or whatever game they spread that I would play).  Once I went out there, I’d be stuck.  There’s no other poker room anywhere nearby.  The day would be shot.  In fact, it is the only poker room in all of Ventura County.  Doubling back to the Bike at that point would be out of the question (and I’d be out of gas). 

Unfortunately, the room isn’t on the Bravo app, and they don’t use the even better Table Captain software marketed by my employer, PokerAtlas (see here).  But I did a little more research and discovered they show their actual waitlist live on their website.  I think most poker rooms would be doing that now if it hadn’t been for the Bravo app.  Anyway, I started checking it out and they always seem to have a decent number of games going.  The main game seemed to be 1/2 NL but they also spread 2/3 NL, which is what I play at the Bike.  Checking online, they always seemed to have several 1/2 games going and a couple of 2/3 games.

And of course I checked out PokerAtlas and learned that the buy-in for the 1/2 game is $50-$100 and the buy-in for the 2/3 game is $100-$300 (same as at the Bike).  The 1/2 game was different though.  At the Bike, and at Commerce, the max buy-ins for 1/2 are like $40 or $60.  They are a joke.  I tried it once and hated it.  They play smaller than a 2/4 limit game—and then every now and then somebody shoves.  It’s the worst poker playing experience I’ve ever had.  I would never play that again.  $100 buy-in for a 1/2 game isn’t ideal, it’s half what it should be, but it’s better than $40!  At least you can play a little bit of poker before you get to all fold-or-shove mode.

It was my understanding that the Bike was the only L.A.-area room that had a game as small as 2/3 where you could buy in for 100 big blinds, which always made me reluctant to play somewhere else. So if that 2/3 game was running at Player’s Casino, I’d be able to start with a full stack.  And if I had to play 1/2, I’d still be able to start with a bigger stack than any other 1/2 game I could find in L.A.

So what the heck?  I decided to give it a shot.  If nothing else, I’d get a blog post out of it, describing a different venue.  So I headed out to Ventura on Saturday. Now, my first assumption proved wrong when I ran into some heavy traffic in route.  I never encountered any accidents but traffic became slow-and-go for about a 10 mile stretch.  Might have been weather related.  It was gloomy, windy and it even started drizzling as I was driving. The drizzling shouldn’t have affected traffic, but as I was driving I could tell from the wet roads that I was entering an area where it had gotten some significant rain. Whatever, even with that slowdown, it didn’t really take me more than an hour to get there.  So hopefully the traffic was just a fluke and I can make it there next time in less time than it usually takes to get to the Bike.

I had checked their site before leaving to see that they were busy.  They had a bunch of 1/2 games going and I think one 2/3 gaming, and both games had waitlists.  They were spreading other games as well.  So I was confident I’d be able to play.  I was a bit disappointed with the parking lot, it was pretty full, and I had difficulty finding a place to park, not something I’m used to—for a casino, that is.  In L.A., having trouble parking at most shopping centers or businesses is a common as finding a would-be actress with fake boobs.  But park I did and I proceeded to head around to the entrance.

It is a rather unusually looking poker room, at least to me.  It appears that the room took over the location of a defunct car dealership—it’s surrounded by car dealers and the address is on “Auto Center Drive.”  The front “wall” is glass and you can look out and see outside—not something you can do from a Vegas poker room (or an L.A. one, for that matter) unless it’s near an open door.  The room you enter is all poker tables, about 16, and although it’s pretty crowded, there is room to walk around.  It really is a vibe I’ve never experienced before in a poker room, I dunno if I can adequately convey this.  But it’s sort of like something you’d see in a old movie, just a relatively small room filled with absolutely nothing but poker tables. 

What I’m getting at is, the front room is just really small to be a big poker room, if that makes sense.  It’s small to be all poker.  The Bike and Commerce have areas that are all poker, but they are huge, really big, with poker tables galore.  In Vegas, there are small poker rooms to be sure, but when you’re in one, it’s a totally different feeling.  I played at the Linq when they had a five-table room.  But the feeling is totally different because even if you were in that small poker room, you were also in this huge casino, you couldn’t escape that.  And there’d be the noise from the rest of the casino and all the people from the rest of the casino all around you.  Here, it’s nothing but poker and it’s just different.

Behind the main room is a smaller room that has a bar and a few table games.  I didn’t even notice what they were—blackjack I assume and a few others maybe.  Since it’s not an Indian casino, there are no slot machines.  Beyond that is a restaurant.  You can eat there, or you can order food to be delivered to the table. 

And the place was packed!  This was about 1:30PM on Saturday. There were at least five or six 1/2 games going and two 2/3 games going.  They also had 3/5 and 5/10, at least one each.  There was a 1/3 PLO game and to my total surprise, a 3/6 Big O game.  All the games had lists, some of them very long. The lists for both the 1/2 and 2/3 were both so long I couldn’t see the bottom of them.  So I certainly didn’t have to worry about there not being enough action. No, I had to worry about how long it would take to get into a game.

My original thought was that I would try the 1/2 game first.  I figured it was a brand new venue for me, get a feel for the action and the players and all the little idiosyncrasies of the room at the lowest possible risk.  I anticipated moving up to the 2/3 after I got comfortable with everything.  But the long lists gave me pause.  I decided to get on the lists for both games and if I had to start with the bigger game, so be it. 

I found a seat at an empty poker table and waited.  There were only two tables not in use, and I think within an hour of my arrival they were using them all.  My name moved up pretty fast on that 1/2 list with all the tables of it they were spreading.  But then they called a new game of 2/3, and I was the first person on that list not called to it.  So a few minutes later I got called to a different 2/3 table and I bought some chips ($300) and took my seat. 

Ah, the chips, the chips.  A couple of things.  I had noticed that the 1/2 game used $1 chips, not $5 chips.  I guess that’s not surprising since that’s what they do at Bike and Commerce (Bike actually uses $1 chips even in its 1/3 game!).  But I thought that maybe they’d use the $5 chips there since the buy-in is bigger.  Nope.  Now, for the 2/3 game they used $5 chips but boy, I think someone made a blunder with those $5 chips. The $1 chips are not white, they are pale/medium blue (not unlike the $1 chips they use at the MGM (or the Bike).  But the $5 chips are not red, like in any Vegas poker room, nor are they the ugly puke yellow they use at the Bike.  They are green. Yes, green.  Not quite the shade of green you see on the Vegas $25 chips, more of a lime-green.  The problem is that they look incredibly similar to the $1 chips.  Honestly, you really have to look closely to tell them apart.  And when you put them both on the blue-green felt, they really, really look alike.

I couldn’t believe it.  When someone from across the table bet, it was nearly impossible for me to tell the difference.  Very bad design.  I realize that I had to make sure I asked whenever somebody made a bet exactly what it was, with no exceptions.  And when I bet myself, I was always extra careful to make sure I had the correct chips.

I tried to take a picture of the two chips together to give you an idea, but I couldn’t really capture it without standing up and hovering over them, something I didn’t want anyone to see me do.  I grabbed pics of the web of them, but I don’t think the separate pics I found really illustrate how similar they look.

That was really the only issue I had with the room.  It was at least as comfortable as the Bike, similar chairs, tables were fine (9-handed).  They had auto-shufflers, tho the one at my game was broken.  Chairs about the same as Bike.  No cup-holders, just plenty of portable carts for both food and beverages. No “hot” cocktail waitresses.  The food servers also brought drinks, alcoholic or otherwise.

Ah yes, beverages.  I’m sure my readers are all eagerly waiting for my report on how difficult it was to get a drink, and if they took it away before I was done with it.  Well, I did indeed order a diet Pepsi.  When the server brought it in one of those large paper Pepsi cups, she told me it was $1.50. She added that it was free refills all day.  OK, but now someone really had better not take my cup away before I was done with it!  I assume I could have gotten a glass of water for free, and I didn’t even notice if they were offering bottled water.  Fortunately my Pepsi cup remained untouched by the staff the entire day, and I even got my free refill once (note, it was the large size cup, so I got a lot more soda than I usual get, not really a bad deal).  

I was curious about the rake and the jackpot drop, was it similar to the Bike?  Actually, no, not at all.  There was no slot for a jackpot drop!  I vaguely remembered hearing or reading that they have a house funded bad beat jackpot, and don’t take a jackpot drop. 

As for the rake, that was weird.  I noticed that they always took exactly $5—when they took a rake.  There were a lot of pots, especially at the beginning, when they didn’t take anything.  Those were small pots of course.  I really couldn’t figure out what the deciding factor was, but finally, when I won a $21 pot, I saw the dealer count it before shoving it to me (and she took a $5 chip).  So I asked.  The break point is $18.  If the pot is less than $18, no rake.  At $19, they take $5, and it’s always $5, never more, never less.

Interesting.  If you’re used to the rake in Vegas, that sounds terrible, right?  My $21 pot was raked $5, in Vegas that would have been $3.  Worse, if it had been $19, Vegas would have taken out $2 and here it would still be $5.

But compared to the Bike, and the other L.A. rooms, it’s a bargain.  First of all, no jackpot drop.  Second, the Bike takes the rake right off the top.  Say there are three limpers who see a flop.  I bet $5 on the flop and no one calls.  I get my $3 back.  Six bucks is dropped ($5 for the rake, one for the jackpot).  So this is a lot better than the other L.A. rooms. Before $19 it’s better than the Bike, after, it’s the same (except for two things—no jackpot drop and no extra dollar that the Bike now takes when the hand goes to the river).

I was also curious to see if they allowed chopping of the blinds and if so, how they do it.  Recall that at the Bike, in the 2/3 game, if the blinds chop they still take $1 from the small blind for the rake.  So there’s no pure chop.  But here’s the funny thing.  In the the 3+ hours I played, it never came up. That’s right, there was never a situation where it folded to the small blind and there was a possibility of a chop.

I guess that should tell you something about the game itself, but not really.  I never could get a real feel for the game.  There were times when it came close to a Bike-style game, lots of loose action.  Other times, it played very tight.  There were quite a few hands that weren’t raked because they never got to $19.  I didn’t see any players who I thought were especially good—or especially tricky.  A few players seemed less than mediocre, but I couldn’t smell any outright fish.

And…..I’m going to stop here for now.  My usual succinctness has deserted me and I find myself with too much to say about this day.  So come back in a couple of days for the rest of the report, which will include the results of my poker session there. (EDITED TO ADD, THE WAIT IS OVER, SEE THE FOLLOW-UP POST HERE!)