My Coin Bucket List

Saturday - Day 15 - continued

Sometimes you just have a feeling. Like when I played the $25 match play at the D. I had the losie-floozies.

"I dunno..." I'd said to Casey, followed by "Dammit! Damn, I knew that was coming!"

Casey took a pull of his beer and raised one eyebrow a little. It's a train engineer thing.

"So... you can see into the future... just not soon enough."

I had the same kind of feeling about the day. I'd had a $500 hit and after some post-Mr. Bigshot recovery keno in the room with my friend Mr. Evan Williams, I was ready for the evening - $200 and if I lost it all, I'd actually be down on the day.

My plan - and I'm developing a long-term coin bucket list item for this - was to play the Aces No Faces coin-dropper at Main Street Station and be dealt four Pointies with no Faces for a total of 7500 quarters. And I had $200 I was willing to put to the cause.

I just want to be able to sit for a few hours, watch some coins drop automatically when I get an Ace with no Face card, have some beer, and have a bit of a nice time. And win 7500 quarters.

I make my way over the bridge to Main Street, and find a machine.


Saturday night. It's busy. I have a good view of other players.

Most often I will pick the end machine, for various reasons. I like a bit more legroom, and I like to be able to see stuff going on.

I start playing and it's going okay - lots of coins are going in the hopper from Aces - and after a while I kind of have something creep into my consciousness - the thought bubbles to the surface that holy sweet mother of ass, the guy one row up and one row in is hitting a lot of quads.

He's playing double double, and every few minutes, it seems, his light goes on - he's got another one and it's scratchcard time.

I get a few too, giving me lots of coins to play on with.

See him over there on the left? That's the quad run guy.

After he's hit four or five quads, I take a little peek - he's up over 1400 credits.

He's not done, either. A little while later, I take a peek and he's up to 2,545 credits. It's mammoth! It's gargantuan! It's NOT ON MY MACHINE, DAMMIT.

I do okay but over the next half hour or so, he hits 2s3s4s with kicker a couple of times, and a set of Aces, no kicker. The guy is on fire. Literally. I have to pull a big red canister off the wall and spray him with white powder to contain the flames.

I have to be honest, at this point in the trip, I wasn't taking notes anymore, and stopped doing the 19 or 20 detailed recordings of what I did, thought, ate, and what everyone was wearing. And it's been a while since this transpired. I was just ready to get home to where I ought to be.

Day: -$90

Yes, I pulled degenerate from the jaws of savvy once again.

Let's skip forward to Sunday morning, shall we?

Sunday - Day 16

I'm all packed up, the Little Giant is stuffed with dirty socks and the last of the coffee pods, and I'm ready to go home. I have a nice comfortable noon-ish flight, so I can have a leisurely breakfast, button everything up, and maybe even have time for a small bit of casinoing.

I get this nice little message, pointing out that I will probably not make the last flight from Philadelphia to Watertown tomorrow.

What the flying fuck?

I have the worst flying luck there is, short of being sucked out of the airplane balls first in a terrible toilet tank breach. I shouldn't even write that, it hasn't been thought of yet - now it will probably happen to me for reals.

Instead of being Mr. Leisure Gentleman Traveller, I spend two hours on the internet and phone, trying to figure it all out.

My choices are as follows:

• take the flight out of Vegas to Philadelphia and hope I make the flight to Watertown - which I will probably not, and thus spend the night in Philadelphia, or possibly Syracuse if I book through there.
• rebook through Phoenix on a redeye overnight route.
• rebook for the next day, stay in Vegas one more night.

What would you do?

Oh don't be stupid, of course I opt for staying in Syracuse.

NOT.

And here's where Sir Flushiepants turns out to be frighteningly savvy and wise... yes I get on the horn and get rebooked. There's a mo' when the American Sheila tries to charge me for the change - uh uh no way no how, and I do the sideways head thing back and forth while wagging my finger at the phone - once again, I prevail, and the change goes through no charge, as it should.

I even manage to snag a flight out of Vegas two hours earlier than my original one. If there are no Irishmen on the flight, I should be good to go to get to Watertown.

But after getting the flight sorted... the next thing on my list is... to go and talk to my host - the one I almost fired. The one I used the Flushi Mind Meld (TM) on. ('It's all your fault.) "It's all my fault..." ('You'll pick up the room charges.') "I'll pick up the charges, right away!".

Now, how would it have been if I had torn three or four strips off of my host? Not comfy.

But having showed the self-control, restraint and longevity (not to mention shooting for accuracy and distance) of Rocco Siffredi, I am now poised to enjoy the fruits of my niceness.

I go downstairs and explain the situation. ('You can arrange another night...') "I can arrange another night - I'll call the desk."

So there you go. And this is the weird wang wing, if you will, I have with my host. I take care of her - vigorously - and she screws everything up. I get mad, have to ride herd, but in the end, I get more of the good things I want - and in this case, need. 

It's sorted. I have my room. I have my flights. And another day in Vegas that I don't want. 

But then I remember something.

Dr. Raoul Shiboubou!