Don't worry, we're not kicking off with a big bag of negativity...I just decided I liked the title, and it's my blog... so you can all live with it. I'm sure cheerier ones are only just over the horizon.
The initial few days of the trip were less than stellar, this being before we've even turned a playing card. The journey out from the UK was a tad horriffic. Firstly the delays aforementioned in the earlier post pushed the arrival time in America right back. To compound this, once on the plane there was an extremely loud and crass bunch of lads on board, on a stag party to Las Vega. Fine, stuff like this goes on, and boys will be boys, etc. However, a few of this lot were less than considerate of anyone else around them. They had sneaked on their own booze, f*** and c*** was flying out every other word, much to the dismay of a couple of people sitting nearby with very young kids. I tuned it all out for the most part, assuming that Darwinism will take care of most of them eventually. The upshot was the police were called, and a few of them were removed from the flight before we left the runway at Gatwick. Ironically what started out as a few of them being big and brave and loud ("bruv"), ended up in one of them crying his eyes out as he finally had to leave the plane. I make no judgement, but there you have it. Anyway, more importantly, this now made our departure form London even later still, and when I arrived in Nevada, I was now well over three hours later than I normally would have been, meaning....
I arrive at my rental car office at 5.03 pm, after a driving scene in a taxi cab that would have made the director of the French Connection proud. Sadly, the office closed at 5 pm, and no-one was there, meaning no rental car for me for the day, and no way to go and collect all my stuff which was in storage with a pal, and also no way for me to get to my new accommodation. The domino effect. Great.
The initial few days of the trip were less than stellar, this being before we've even turned a playing card. The journey out from the UK was a tad horriffic. Firstly the delays aforementioned in the earlier post pushed the arrival time in America right back. To compound this, once on the plane there was an extremely loud and crass bunch of lads on board, on a stag party to Las Vega. Fine, stuff like this goes on, and boys will be boys, etc. However, a few of this lot were less than considerate of anyone else around them. They had sneaked on their own booze, f*** and c*** was flying out every other word, much to the dismay of a couple of people sitting nearby with very young kids. I tuned it all out for the most part, assuming that Darwinism will take care of most of them eventually. The upshot was the police were called, and a few of them were removed from the flight before we left the runway at Gatwick. Ironically what started out as a few of them being big and brave and loud ("bruv"), ended up in one of them crying his eyes out as he finally had to leave the plane. I make no judgement, but there you have it. Anyway, more importantly, this now made our departure form London even later still, and when I arrived in Nevada, I was now well over three hours later than I normally would have been, meaning....
I arrive at my rental car office at 5.03 pm, after a driving scene in a taxi cab that would have made the director of the French Connection proud. Sadly, the office closed at 5 pm, and no-one was there, meaning no rental car for me for the day, and no way to go and collect all my stuff which was in storage with a pal, and also no way for me to get to my new accommodation. The domino effect. Great.
I don't think my attitude in these spots necessarily puts me in a higher place than anyone else, but realistically I always feel that you can stamp and get upset and wring your hands about how the whole universe is against you, or you can just accept what's happening and sodding well get past it. The latter is the way to go. I rescheduled my pick up of all my things (which I always leave here stored in boxes so that my travelling luggage is minimal) for the next day, a good then pal gave me a ride to my bed for the night, and I took a shower and just got some rest. It would all be there again tomorrow for me, and getting pissed off would not help.
Tomorrow came, and threw another slice of muck at me when it transpired that since my rental car wasn't picked up on my arrival the previous day, rather than simply letting me collect the next day, the brain trust at RentalCars.com had decided that cancelling my entire booking was in fact a far better idea, meaning I now had to rebook the entire rental car allocation for my trip. Of course booking it now would be about the same price or maybe cheaper, right?
Yeah, sure. Err, no,that'll be more money please Mr O'Leary.
As before, no point stressing. Fork it over, have the conversation with Virgin Atlantic later on about the delay on the flight, extra money needed for cabs etc. It's ostensibly their fault and I'll take it up with them as and when. No point letting any of that clog things up right now.
Finally I collect my rental early the next day. If I was going to be critical, I'd say for the amount of stuff that I needed to collect and transport, it's not entirely practical...however they always look after me at the office, so I'm going to find it in my heart to forgive them since so many people are creaking around Nevada driving a Chevy Aveo or a Kia Rio....
Tomorrow came, and threw another slice of muck at me when it transpired that since my rental car wasn't picked up on my arrival the previous day, rather than simply letting me collect the next day, the brain trust at RentalCars.com had decided that cancelling my entire booking was in fact a far better idea, meaning I now had to rebook the entire rental car allocation for my trip. Of course booking it now would be about the same price or maybe cheaper, right?
Yeah, sure. Err, no,that'll be more money please Mr O'Leary.
As before, no point stressing. Fork it over, have the conversation with Virgin Atlantic later on about the delay on the flight, extra money needed for cabs etc. It's ostensibly their fault and I'll take it up with them as and when. No point letting any of that clog things up right now.
Finally I collect my rental early the next day. If I was going to be critical, I'd say for the amount of stuff that I needed to collect and transport, it's not entirely practical...however they always look after me at the office, so I'm going to find it in my heart to forgive them since so many people are creaking around Nevada driving a Chevy Aveo or a Kia Rio....
My first full day in Las Vegas was supposedly going to be acclimatising, and dipping my toe into event number one, which was a $250 buy-in at PH. I decided with all the running round to collect the car, getting my stuff (thank you Gary for being a good friend and storage facility), and carting it all over to my new digs and unloading, that trying to squeeze poker in as well was just going to be a bad idea that day, especially with plenty on the agenda still to play upcoming. I got some stuff done, no small part of this was also to pop over to the Rio, and give them ten grand in exchange for this scrap of paper...
Plenty early of course, but the fact is, though I've never had a truly "bad" Las Vegas experience with losing money (not like that anyway...) it's just bad business to leave $10k laying around anywhere but inside a bank, when you can simply get the buy in sorted out, and then just forget about it until you actually play. Handing that over was as natural as anything for me, and now it's done, the money's safe and my day one in the main is good to go, and I can concentrate on winning other things in the run up. The rest of the day, I unpacked, saw a few friends, had an agreeable meal, and took it easy. The work starts in earnest tomorrow.