Moose and Grails Epic TR Sept 2013
My wife and I and Seekthegrail and the Grail leave Wed on an epic trip.
Flying from Detroit to Oakland
Sept. 4-8 Oakland/San Francisco
Thurs relaxo/tour around/possible Oaks Card Club - Play It Smart, Play At Oaks.
Fri Alcatraz, San Fran Aquarium, Giants
Sat USS Hornet, Athletics
Sun drive to Lake Tahoe
Sept. 8-10
Lake Tahoe, comped at Harveys
Tues drive to Reno
Sept. 10-11
Reno, comped at Harrahs
Wed drive to Las Vegas
Sept. 11-14
Vegas, comped at Harrahs
O, Aria Buffet, Bellagio buffet all comped from MyVegas on Facebook.
Also booked into the spa at Golden Nugget which gives access to the shark tank waterslide. Another item off the Vegas bucket list!
Sat fly from Vegas to Detroit
Flying from Detroit to Oakland
Sept. 4-8 Oakland/San Francisco
Thurs relaxo/tour around/possible Oaks Card Club - Play It Smart, Play At Oaks.
Fri Alcatraz, San Fran Aquarium, Giants
Sat USS Hornet, Athletics
Sun drive to Lake Tahoe
Sept. 8-10
Lake Tahoe, comped at Harveys
Tues drive to Reno
Sept. 10-11
Reno, comped at Harrahs
Wed drive to Las Vegas
Sept. 11-14
Vegas, comped at Harrahs
O, Aria Buffet, Bellagio buffet all comped from MyVegas on Facebook.
Also booked into the spa at Golden Nugget which gives access to the shark tank waterslide. Another item off the Vegas bucket list!
Sat fly from Vegas to Detroit
Comments
Otherwise no problems with the trip so far. Started at Caesar's Windsor and spun a $10 free slot play into $30 profit.
Made it to the hotel in Oakland just after midnight West Coast time. Today we drove through San Fran, across the Golden Gate bridge and up the coast. Jumped in the Pacific and played in the breakers for a while this afternoon. Amazing drive and scenery. It must be the road where they keep filming car commercials. Anyways, headed back around in a loop to Oakland for dinner and then played at the Oaks Card club. We all finished up at the Oaks. Fantastically horrible play. Max rake $4, no jackpot drop, even though they have various bad beat jackpots. mmoose took home the most, winning $111 at 3-6 limit. Busy room, over 20 tables going with a separate tourney area. They just spread cards there, some BJ, baccarat, Pai Gow, 3 card poker in addition to limit HE, Omaha, stud and some crazy $100 max and $200 max nl, ie that is the max bet you can make. Kind of a sketchy area but the inside was nice, dealing competent and it didn't have that depressing air of desperation that I kind of expected for the area. All in all great day.
Also, I can't log into chiptalk.net there with the hotel computers so if someone could find my thread there and make a post for me, letting them know my issues, it would be great.
Also forgot the battery to my camera so unless I can recover my Playbook, sadly may not have pics for the rest of the trip, though I did get some today before the Playbook locked up again.
Into San Fran tomorrow for Alcatraz, Aquarium by the Bay and SF Giants game.
Just win lots and buy another camera, playbook, battery...
We want pixs!
Milton Slim
Then back on the streetcars to AT&T park. Saw a near perfect game, one strike away from the perfecto and a weak single to right field. Crushing.
Tomorrow touring the USS Hornet then Athletics game in the afternoon. Hopefully will have enough energy for more cards but man am I bagged today. Must still be jet lagged.
Sat there was no pokerz other than getting killed at Chinese in the hotel room. In the am we started at BevMo and loaded up on a ton of beer and wine. Great selection.
Then we toured the USS Hornet. Amazing piece of WWII history. Never damaged in battle, destroyed the most enemy planes of any ship. Also selected to be the recovery vessel for the first men to walk on the moon.
Next we went to the Oakland Athletics baseball game. Biggest shithole stadium I have ever been in. 1st place team and they draw like 14k to a game.
Sun we checked out and drove through the mountains to Lake Tahoe and checked into Harveys. After dinner we sat in a 3-6 game. The moose's won and STG finished down, with me picking up $140.
Scored this cool chip. 48mm I believe. Post if you want one. I might be able to get a few more. $10.
So as I said before we landed in Oakland Wed. Sept. 4, sans camera battery
We were staying in the Executive Inn, Alameda CA. I highly recommend. Free shuttle to/from the airport, great hot breakfast everyday and very helpful staff. They would also shuttle you anywhere within a 3 mi radius and come get you when you called. The BART transit was close by and convenient for getting into San Fran.
So the first day we get shuttled back to the airport to pick up our rental. Again, I highly recommend using costcotravel.com for renting cars. You can cancel and rebook anytime the offers get better and your card never gets charged until you show up to pick up your car. We scored a Camry, which proved comfy because we did a lot of driving.
So on this trip was the Grails and the Mooses.
We headed into San Francisco. People kept commenting how lucky we were to get there, two days after the new bridge into San Fran had opened. Middle of the day and it only took us 40 min to get on the bridge, which was "good".
Old bridge on left and we are heading over the fancy new bridge. This bridge led to an island and then to another bridge into San Fran.
Looking back from San Fran to the island, behind which, in the distance, is Oakland.
Down near the piers of San Fran. You can see the 1950s era streetcars the transit system operates. They bought all the streetcars they could find in North America, restored them and keep them in service using the original colours from whatever transit system they came from including the TTC.
Driving up these roads reminded me of the great Bullitt car chase. Somewhat less fast in a rental Camry and four people.
So the goal was to stop at Golden Gate bridge and then drive up the coast of California before looping back around to Oakland.
California highway 1 is a super twisty fun drive, better in sports car, not so much in a Camry.
We stopped at this little scenic lookout which was also a WWII spotting station. You can see the road in the distance.
We stopped at this kickass beach. The water was cold but no way was I going to pass up the chance to get into the Pacific. Seekthegrail, not so much.
The ladies, not at all.
We continued along to coast for a bit and then headed inland across a redwood forest.
Still kinda twisty.
Then back across our fourth bridge of the day into the north end of Oakland.
We stopped for a great meal in Oakland and then went to the Oaks Card Club and played poker for a couple hours. Nice room, kind of sketchy area. Unfortunately did not end up with any room shots because I didn't really want to be carrying my tablet through the parking lot.
Don't even know why they bother with a ticket booth, since it sells out weeks in advance. Lots of places 'claim' to sell tickets but only alcatrazcruises.com is permitted to stop at the island and everyone else are just resellers.
So heading out into the bay to Alcatraz.
Isolation
So now you can see the bridges and island into San Fran from Oakland.
Then Golden Gate at the opening into San Francisco bay.
If you've watched Escape from Alcatraz, they never bothered to repair the cells that the prisoners escaped from. That vent has been enlarged about 2x.
After the tour we walked a couple piers over to the San Francisco Aquarium.
I got to be an idiot and try to kiss a fish.
They also had these cool tunnels running right through the tanks.
At this point my tablet died. But we caught the streetcar to the Giants game. Beautiful park, awesome food and beer, though pricey. We saw a near perfect game - 9th inning, 2 outs, 3-2 on the batter and he singles. Crushing. Managed to get one shot out of the tablet with no outs in the 9th inning.
After the game, back on the streetcar, then BART, then the hotel shuttle came to pick us up. Perfect day.
The access you are given to the ship is amazing. We raced through as much as possible in two hours but you could easily spend all day. We went on two tours, one through the Captain and Admirals quarters then another through the engine room, but really you have free access to the majority of the ship. Really awesome.
Next we raced over to watch the Oakland Athletics. Sad really. 1st place team and only 20,340 came to the game on a Saturday. We got there late, and parked right at the stadium, about a 2 minute walk from the gate.
Of course with the sad ticket sales, our seats were great. Super hot day and the beer was great.
20 oz draft for $11 and good beer to boot. Awesome.
Hey, how did that Blue Jays fan get in there?
Earlier in the day we had stopped into BevMo - the supermarket of alcohol and made off with some choice selections. So after the game we went back to the room to drink before dinner.
We wrapped up the day with drunken chinese poker in our room.
6200 feet up and aha - Lake Tahoe!
Nice view of the lake from our room.
Harvey's was really great. Awesome rooms and super huge bathrooms. It also has the busiest poker room in Tahoe. Mostly we played 3-6 limit but there is 1-3nl as well. It is raked $5+1, with high hand bonuses paid out as a percentage of the BBJ. eg. quads 1% of BBJ, str8 flush 3%, royal 5%.
Scored this awesome 48 mm chip from another player but he didn't speak english well and I never really understood how he got it. Tried like hell to get one from the cage the next day but no dice.
Mon we booked a cruise of the lake. $39 for 1.5 hours, which was more than enough. The lake is incredibly deep (ave over 1000', deepest point like 1900' or so) so there really aren't a lot of interesting coves and islands etc to look at because about 40-50' out from the shore, it just drops off.
Anyways, wasn't going to pass up the chance to take a swim, though the water stays pretty cold year round, due to the depth and never freezes over during winter. You can see how super clear the water is though. Typically you can see 60' down.
It's off season now so there were only 8 of us on a boat than can hold 50.
The one and only island in the lake, with some ruins of an old house on the top.
This is an old sunken barge about 40-50' down.
The casinos start right on the Nevada side of the border. Literally walk out the door and you can step into California. Because Tahoe averages 18' feet of snow in the winter there is a tunnel from Harvey's to Harrahs, so you never have to walk outside.
So after two nights in Tahoe we drive over the mountains to Reno.
Yay, more super twisty roads.
We check into Harrahs and then drive to Peppermill, which is one of the busiest rooms in Reno. We play some O8 there before dinner at the former Riverside Hotel and Casino.
View from our room.
I start on a card rush but the cards died and I finished down on the session.
Seekthegrail gets involved in a massive pot, which he ends up with none of unfortunately.
We head back to the Peppermill but the O8 game folded when we left for dinner and didn't restart. The 3-6 action dies out and we cash out by 11 pm. A hopping room in the afternoon has only 3 tables running when we leave. WTF?
Seekthegrail and I tour around downtown Reno for a bit but there isn't much action and we head for bed.
http://www.pokerforum.ca/f12/my-newest-oldest-cash-set-old-school-reno-chips-made-tr-king-31041/
So we head out of town for the brutal 7 hour drive from Reno, to Las Vegas. Really don't recommend this drive. It's dead boring and there are almost no towns of any size inbetween.
Best shot I got on the drive and it got super boring after this.
We had free dinner buffet passes to the Aria buffet, courtesy of the MyVegas app on facebook. The buffet was pretty good, especially so for free, however the service kind of sucked.
The next morning we head to Terrible's for our traditional Vegas cheapo breakfast, which is now the Silver Seven's Casino. Sadly they slightly reno'd the cafe and changed the menu so not as great as before.
The giant wheel is coming along nicely.
There is so little left of Bill's that I wonder why they didn't just knock the whole thing down and start again.
If you look closely you can actually make out Barbary Coast underneath Bills.
The Linq is nearing completion and of course nothing is recognizable of IP (now The Quad) anymore.
You can see how the wheel is going to tower over the Vegas skyline when it is finished.
Thursday, we knocked the shark tank at Golden Nugget off the bucket list. After a bucket of beers and some sunshine, we went upstairs where I had booked a spa for the wife and I. Then we met up with the Grails at Ballys steakhouse for a great meal. The steakhouse is going to be reno'd into a BLT steak so it was nice to go again before it closes.
Riding the slide through the shark tank was tons of fun.
Afterwards we have free tickets to O, again courtesy of MyVegas. Great show but the combo of the earlier sun and spa, dreamy music, heavy dinner and alcohol makes it a struggle to stay awake.
We total up all the wins and losses and with one day left in the trip, we are down a whopping $5. Ok a good final day and we walk away winners.
Friday we again have free passes, this time for the Bellagio lunch buffet, courtesy of MyVegas. An outstanding Vegas classic buffet. Great service, with linen napkins, class all the way.
Afterwards we go to The Quad, to use a free $5 slot play coupon we received when we checked into Harrahs. Hey I spin a $7.75 win. Victory is ours! $2.75 profit gambling on the trip! Then we head to the car museum, with free passes the Total Rewards desk gives us when we cash in the $5 slot play coupon. Another item off the bucket list.
It is an amazing collection of cars.
We briefly consider quitting gambling to book our $2.75 profit but that wouldn't be any fun. We head over to the Venetian. My wife sits in the 4-8 game and I play 4-8 O8. Unfortunately my playbook dies again. I get stuck $300 early but go on a sick card rush at the end of the session and cash out 4 racks. I had someone email me an awesome picture of my mighty tower but unfortunately it doesn't look like it made it. So now we are up a couple hundred.
Then we head to my favourite place for craps - Joker's Wild in Henderson, for $1 craps, but mostly because they have quarters and I need to finish out my rack that I have been slowly collecting over many trips. We start badly but at one point a guy rolls, I kid you not - five 10 points in a row. Unbelievable. I get the quarters I need and we book a mighty $2 win overall.
We wrap up Vegas with a trip to the Mirage for more 3-6 and also to get some of their new chips. Night ends badly for me and I drop $128 but we wrap Vegas up after 10 days, with about a $40 profit. Sweet!
Considering all we ate on this trip, my wife says someone should make this into a t-shirt and make a mint of money.
Yeah pretty much this.
yep..
I agree.