Crash Sato!

Sunday Day 9

For me, the third Sunday in May marks the beginning of summer. That's when I watch the Monaco Grand Prix in the morning, and eat Indy Dogs, and watch the 500 in the afternoon.

That's today!

I get up quite early (5:30) feeling great, having slept the deep sleep of the minus one hundred forty six dollar degenerate.

The reliable Little Giant is poised to make me a great cup of Indy Coffee. Water in the hopper? Check. Carefully measured (shake shake shake shake shake shake shake shake) grounds for a cup of my java in the reusable filter? Check. Coffee cup?

Shit. All I have on hand are the flimsy plastic room cups they give you. I always feel weird taking a plastic cup out of plastic wrapping, but that's of no concern right now - my concern is my veins which are screaming for Little Giant caffeine.

To me, those little flimsy plastic room cups they give you are not appropriate receptacles for my Joe.

Putting that problem aside, I solve another one, easily - the Grand Prix race is coming in on the hotel TV - one of the US networks is conveniently carrying it, without ads nonetheless, for some reason.

Monaco is about three things. The start. Reliability. Weather. If you start more than 4th on the grid, you have only a faint hope of winning. If you get out of the start unscathed, in first or second, you are in great shape. The race has been won by the driver on pole 45% of the time. The furthest position that coughed up a winner is 14th on the grid - Olivier Panis, in 1996, and that's only because all but three cars crashed on a track wet and slippery from rain.

But the start is when all the cars are as close as they are going to be in the race, bunched up, and everyone trying to get ahead. This equals drama and flying carbon fiber.

So, I watch the start and the first eight or ten laps, until Monaco gets into a rhythm. Then I go downstairs and eat breakfast.

My keno ticket from the night before yields a 'win' of $13.80 on a $39 ticket. No six out of sixes for me - that gravy train has sailed. Speaking of gravy - after throwing $10 at Ultra Bonus (nothing), I eat the Market Street breakfast buffet, which rivals the food of many penal institutions. It has a hot and cold running supply of CTUG, and taters, so I make the best of it. On the way out, I get a couple of styrofoam cups for the Little Giant.

The Grand Prix finishes (Daniel Ricciardo, winning from pole, I rest my case) and I'm ready to gamble.


I go over to Main Street Station and I play some nickel multiplay Slutty Times Pay, on which I never get quads with a multiplier.

It looked better in person.

Before long, I get a quad. With a multiplier. A premium quad, too. AND I get the kicker.

The multiplier comes up - 5x, kinda nice. I just have a pair of fours, so I hold them, and I'm not really paying a lot of attention. But something catches my eye (the machine isn't making sound) and I see the credits rolling up and rolling up. Then I see the little banner across my hand. So yeah, that's a nice surprise. And a shitload of nickels. 4000 of them. I am firing on all Indy cylinders.

I think 'hey, a quick $100, great!' and at 4400 credits or so I cash out. Well, it's over $200, math boi.

I put in a sloppy seconds twenty, you know, just in case. Rewarded!

Thanks, nickels! I move on. A quick stop at the Loose Doose yields nothing.

My hazy barely gelled plan is to hang around the Boar's Head bar, play some VP, and maybe the Indy 500 will be on a nearby TV. It is indeed, with all the pomp and pageantry of the great race, including wheeling out a replica of Jim Nabors' carcass to pump "Back Home Again in Indiana" at the gathered masses through a miked up Alexa speak embedded in its tummy.

As I'm finding a stool, I spy McGoo, who is thinking along the same lines as I. So I pull up and we have a good chinwag for a couple of hours while playing VP and keeping track of the race. My 30-1 ticket on Sato to win goes down the drain when he rear-ends somebody. Sato is out of the race. Sato did not disappoint. ("Why did you crash, Sato? I believed in you! I bought a ticket on you!" "You knew I was a snake crasher when you picked up my ticket to carry across the river on the log.")

After about $1000 coin in, I head up to the room to watch the last 50 laps of the race. It's looking pretty good, and two of my guys, with not many laps to go, are running 1 and 2.

It's an exciting finish, with Kanaan out with 11 laps left. Will Power, one of the drivers Tony B. recommended (and which I also thought was a good bet) wins the race and wins me money! How can you not bet on a guy named willpower?

It's fun cashing in my sports bet ticket - not something I do often, and the man gives me $80. That's my kind of fun.

The Merry Go Round of Twenties happens again, as I hop from machine to slot to machine to slot. Burning Itching Sevens, which seems to dole out jackpots to Hawaiians regularly (see what I did there?) ignores me.

I take a flyer on Triple Double Bonus and I get a hit, but it's kind of annoying - yes I win $100, but there's No. Damn. Kicker. Give me a kicker, and it's $500. These kickers... they annoy me, which is why I cottoned on to Boner Deluxe in the first place all those years back. Every quad is 400 credits, no kicker involved.

Later, I get dealt three 4s with a deuce - so I have to hold the kicker. Of course I don't get the quad. It's fate.

At lunch, even though I do get a table with a view of the keno board, I confirm that my karma is swinging the wrong way - I lose my Snickers. I get this over-zealous waiter who is hyped up, keeps telling me things I already know in an effort to appear helpful, and generally talks too much.

Soup and half a sandwich comes with a little mini Snickers bar which is a nice touch. It's quite diminuative - it should really just be called a Snicker. I always enjoy the one bite of peanutty sweetness at the end of my meal. I add the salad bar to the meal. The waiter tells me that when I go back to the salad bar, not to take my plate with me - use a new one each time.

Do I look that inexperienced at linear trough eating protocols? Do I????

I'm finishing the last three bites of salad and the over-zealous waiter snaffles away my sandwich plate.

As I get up to leave, I realize that my little fun size Snicker bar has also been whisked away. For some reason, this annoys me incredibly, particularly since I have such a beautiful photo of the Snicker that got away. This is a loss that can never be made whole, like the time I lost my Caesars hat. (See Whither the Hat?)

The recording I made of this tragedy transcribes thus: "So he fucks off with my plate and I never got to eat my little mini Snickers. And now I'm looking at a picture of it. It makes me sad. I miss my Snickers."

Do all world travellers have these kind of disasters? Probably.