Leaving the Village

I'm at the Starbucks in the Del Monte Center, Monterey, saying good-bye. I've spent a lot of time here over the last nine months. It's crowded as ever, being a Saturday. The weather is prime, just right, and people are enjoying sunning themselves as they walk their dogs and children along the outdoor retail shops. Seagulls land here and there, reminding me I'm near the ocean.

I'll miss the Monterey Peninsula's beauty and wonderful weather. But it's time for me to move on. The road is calling me back like an old friend. I'll travel to Las Vegas next week.

I travel light, so packing is really no big deal. I usually purchase what I need when staying in a place for more than a week or two. The nine months I've spent here is the longest period of time I've stayed in any one place. I've got art supplies and a few odds and ends I'll keep, but most of the junk I've collected threw the winter I'm donating to Goodwill.

The photo at left was taken just before I began packing. My small art studio served me just fine, though there were some drawbacks. Occasionally a rock band renting space down the hall would rehearse and drive me nuts. And once a week the cook in the market located downstairs would smoke meats out in the alley outside my window, blowing smoke into my office. But for the most part it was a pleasant nine months of concentrating on my art and my writing.

Fear and Loathing on the Way to Las Vegas

I'm about ready to leave the Monterey Peninsula. After 275 days enjoying paradise, it's time to get back to the real world. I'll be heading east toward Las Vegas, and should be there next week if all goes according to plan.

I've enjoyed my time here. But California just has too many problems. The state is all but broke, and they figure to get back in the black by adding more taxes on top of the mountain of taxes they've already heaped on the consumer. This is probably (since I'm not going to waste the time to try to prove it) the most taxed citizenry in the country. A recent "temporary" sales tax increase is just another example of a state government gone wild.

And it's no comfort that many of President Obama's advisers are from California. If you want to yourself in a few years, visit someone living in California. Overtaxed, underpaid, stressed and not able to afford the highest cost of living in the country. Unless, of course, your Paris Hilton.

I really want to spend some time in Las Vegas. After reading a lot of Hunter Thompson lately, I want to experience "Sin City" as an observer, an outsider looking in on the mayhem and weirdness of the city that never sleeps, and write about what I see. Plus I want to play some poker.

So, I'm packing up my small art studio, Sola Sendero, and taking my palette to Nevada.

The Wild Goose is crowded this morning. I can barely move my hands to work the keyboard on my laptop, kids running amuck like rats in a maze. One thing I love in life is a morning cup of coffee and a muffin, with some peace and quiet if I can find it. Not today. At times like this I'll stick the iPod in my ear, which helps.

I've arisen from three days of hell fighting one of the worst colds in recent memory. Luckily I had no nausea, just severe sinus pressure, runny nose, fever, and the usual body aches. No sleep and around-the-clock doses of NyQuil have made me a little cranky. I suppose that's one reason all these people at the Wild Goose are driving me nuts.

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Top 10 Goalies Gone Wild.

Thanks to Wil Wheaton (via puckdaddy) for the clip below. It seemed appropriate for describing the the way I've been feeling the last couple of days. I feel like I've been beaten by a hockey stick, thrown against the boards, and hit in the face by a puck or two.

A Visit to the Bay 101 and the WPT

Last week I drove to San Jose to check out the Bay 101 Casino. The final table of the World Poker Tour was to begin Friday afternoon, so I made sure to drop in to check it out. After leaving the Bay 1o1 I drove across town to the Garden City Casino and watched a final table there from a daily tournament.

The Bay 101 is a nice enough place, and certainly one of the larger card rooms you will see in California. The WPT Shooting Stars tournament was wrapping up that evening with the taping of the the final table for the GSN Network. Kathy Liebert was the only name I recognized on the final table list of players, so I decided it was not worth hanging around to see the taping. I'm glad I didn't stay. It turned out to be one of the longest final table matches in WPT history...I would have been there all night. Instead I walked around for a bit and then left. Kathy finished second, by the way, but still took home a nice $550,000.

The Garden City Casino is located in a retail shopping area of north San Jose. The building itself looks like it was built in the 1980s. Inside the decor was right out of 1985, heavily paneled with wood, comfortable soft lighting placed throughout. I was thinking it looked like a steak house that had been converted into a gaming establishment. A tournament was finishing up when I arrived, with three players left at the final table. I watched the match for a few minutes, then it quickly ended when the low stack went all in, the other two players called, and the low stack sucked out a win. Since this put all three players relatively even in chips, they decided to chop the prize. They each received about $3,000. I later read that professional Gabriel Thaler cut his chops there before moving on to Los Angeles, then Las Vegas.

On my way back to Monterey I stopped off at Mortimer's Card Room in Marina. I was disappointed. The room was very small, only four to six tables. Two tables were running spread games and the rest of the room was cluttered and messy. The room is actually a backroom attached to Mortimer's Bar. The neighborhood is old downtown Marina, a little scary, and probably not the safest place to be at midnight on a Saturday.

Fighting a Cold

I've been fighting a cold and flu-like symptoms for the last couple of days. I hate being sick. The weather has been great and I can't see missing it by staying in bed all day. I've not been sick, really sick, in years. This is probably the worst cold I've had since I left Texas back in the summer of 2007. I bought some NyQuil, however, so tonight at least I'll get some rest.

A person really can't afford to get sick. The cost of health care is so ridiculous it hardly seems worth debating. I had a tooth ache on Memorial Day weekend last year while I was in Las Vegas. I visited a local emergency room on Saturday, realizing that the pain was too severe for me to last until Tuesday when a dentist office would reopen after the three-day holiday. I had lost one night's sleep and tried some over-the-counter pain medication, but it was obvious I needed a dentist. No offices were open of course, so I ran into a hospital for some pain pills so I could at least sleep for a couple of days.

After a round of required handshakes from nurses and the attending doctors, I was subjected to some tests...evidently required before any pills are given out. Hear the cash register "ca-ching." The attending doctor visited with me for all of 5 mintues ("ca-ching", "ca-ching") and finally wrote me out a prescription for some pain medication. The final bill? Well...I paid them immediately $375 before walking out the door. Then about two months later I received a bill for the lab tests: $1695. Ca-ching.

I made it to the dentist on Tuesday and had the tooth pulled for $275. Adding it all up, it appears my tooth ache on Memorial Day weekend last year cost me a total of $2,345.

It's In the Cards

One thing I've sorely missed the last few months is a good card game. I've asked around and no one has invited me to a local game, so I guess I'm not speaking to the right people. California and various local laws concerning card rooms and poker are difficult to figure out, but I'm learning.

The closest public card rooms are in Marina, just up the coast from Monterey. Mortimer's Card Room and the Marina Club are across the street from each other, though I can't personally prove it since I've never been there. According to PokerWiki, the rooms were there six months ago. Mortimer's is the largest of the two rooms and seems to cater to a higher stakes game.

If I want a larger room at a casino I'll have to drive to San Jose. The Garden City Casino and Bay 101 Casino have large poker rooms spreading numerous games and have enough tables to keep things moving along. It may be worth the extra drive to play in a larger room.

I suppose I'll have to visit all four locations and report on my experiences. There is no way to know where the best games are. Keeping in mind I'm near the ocean, I'm looking for juicy fish.

I'm sitting at the Starbucks in the Del Monte Center watching a steady stream of latte drinkers basking in the glow of all the goodies in the display counter. This particular Starbucks is among the busiest I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of Starbucks locations around the Southwest (see the sidebar at left). Whenever I have visited this location it's always been busy.

It's easy to get a glimpse of the people of Monterey County at the Del Monte Center, particularly here at the Starbucks. In line I see military personnel (probably from the post-graduate naval academy), young children hanging on young moms out for a day of shopping, elderly women with books in hand (mystery novels seem to be popular with them), Asians, Mexicans, mostly Caucasions, and very few Blacks. Three young men in blue jeans are busy typing away at laptop computers at various tables around the room (me, too, but I'm no longer young). Tourists are in town today. You can spot them right away by the new cameras hanging around their necks. By my calculation, today's most popular customer at Starbucks is a young woman, perhaps between 20 and 40 years old. At the risk of sounding sexists, my guess is most men are at work. Thus the only men I see are elderly, working on Suduko or Crossword puzzles, and a few young ones working online.

Outisde the window I see the many tables and chairs available for patio-dwellers. This area of the Del Monte Center has restaurants and fast food places, though you will not see a McDonald's or Burger King. Chipolte's and Chinese Express are directly across from the Starbucks, and a Subway Sandwich and pizza joint are nearby. Most of the lunching crowd sits outside. Monterey has one of the best year-round climates in the country.

The locals refer to this place as a mall, and I suppose it is. It's really an outdoor mall, since entrances to the retail stores and eateries are all outside. Since many indoor malls around the country are closing due to the economic crisis, maybe outdoor malls will survive. I would think an outdoor mall saves a fortune in utility costs, air conditioning and heating provided by Nature.