Calvin's Weblog

Yet another early Sunday morning

Yup, it's Sunday again - I've been at work for an hour now, and the sun has finally come up, so I can see that damned gas station's sign now and it says $1.141 per liter. But, while this is the highest it's ever been, I'm not terribly upset because I filled up yesterday at $0.984 (well, that's the posted price for regular - I actually paid $1.074 for premium... but at today's prices, I would've paid $1.251!!!)

Yesterday was my day off, and we made the most of it. We were up and out of the house early, heading north of Hope where we were to meet a friend's family at a campsite for a few hours of dirt-biking. Unfortunately, after a two hour drive through th crazy Abbotsford Airshow traffic, we made it to within 2 kilometers of the campground, but had to turn around. Just one small section of the "access" road (read: logging road) required a truck, and my little beamer wasn't makin' it. I was close, but with big boulders and ruts in the road, I knew I was going to bottom out at the crest, and we opted to back out and go back to the highway. Yeah, I supposed we could have parked and walked the rest of the way in, but it was already 33 degrees, and that was a HOT, dry, dusty, steep logging road - we would have been drenched in sweat and caked with mud before we even got to the campsite.

Instead, we opted to head back into Hope, get a Subway sandwich to eat in the park, then we headed to Kawkawa lake for a bit to put our feet in the water, catch some sun, and to look at some of the property that's for sale around the lake. After that, we went to the Othello tunnels for a nice walk and scenic diversion. As many times as I've been here in my life, Carole swears I've NEVER taken her here before... amazing! I got to tell all my old childhood stories about experiences at the tunnels again, oh joy!

We started to head back home at 3:30, as we had a poker night to attend at 7PM. Back through the airshow traffic, and at least three accidents, and we made it home with exactly enough time for a really quick shower before heading out.

It was a really strange poker night... everyone at the table took a turn at being the chip leader at least once, and after I had knocked out the first person (Carole's dad) with my pocket aces, I had a huge stack and thought for sure that I had the first place pot in the bag. But over the next hour or two, my stack dwindled, and dwindled and dwindled. I lost three big hands (one to each of my remaining opponents) and each one ened with my two-pair being sucked-out on the river by a chased flush or straight. When I was finally down to my last $700 in chips, Carole put me all in. I had a pair of kings with a jack kicker. Any jack would make me two pair, any queen would make a 9-K straight, any king would make trips, and there was a flush draw as well... it wasn't going to get any better than this, so I went all in on the turn. It turns out Carole had the queen, and an ace on the river sewed up her win with a nut straight. She was on a draw! And I was out. At this point Carole took the lead, and yet she was out soon afterward. Her final hand played out almost exactly like mine, except she was up against a habitual bluffer who just happened to turn trip kings that hand. After that, the two remaining players were practically even, and agreed to all-in each hand until someone won. It was only two hand later that Carole's sister in law walked away with the night's $100 prize. Good game! There were a lot of great hands that night - especially Bron's four sevens on the flop!

After driving all the way back from Kits, I had exactly 6 hours before I had to be at work. Thankfully Carole drove - I was TIRED. Yawn, so here I am - hard at work (cough, cough) on Sunday morning - but thankful for a really full day off!

PS - did I mention it was 33 degrees yesterday? That was another new record for that day.. previous high was 29 in 1977.

Posted by Calvin at August 14, 2005 06:55 AM