On the Road with Carlos, Part 1: Favorite Thing Crash

If you’re in or around Atlantic City this weekend, don’t forget to join Carlos, Sean, and me in the Borgata cafeteria tomorrow. We’ll be there 10AM – Noon: https://www.thinkingpoker.net/2013/10/atlantic-city-nitcast-meet-up-november-23/

I picked Carlos up at the airport, and with a few hours to kill before dinner, we decided to play some poker. I never really know what to do with tourists in Pittsburgh anyway, so the casino was probably more interesting for him than anything else we could have done.

On his third hand at the table, Carlos flatted a raise with KK and saw a K66 flop against what turned out to be 66. “Welcome to Pittsburgh,” I told him with a smile. His opponent didn’t have a full stack, and Carlos took the loss well until someone pointed out that drilling his one-outer would have been worth about $50,000 from the Bad Beat Jackpot. That’s still stuck in his craw a few days later.

After dinner, I had some packing to do, so Carlos played the $25 nightly tournament on America’s Card Room. He was still in it when I went to sleep, and still in it when I got up a few hours later to use the bathroom. He ended up taking third for about $1100 and a good start to the trip.

The one thing Carlos did want to do in Pittsburgh was visit a placed called Blue Slide Park, which is apparently the name of a hip hop album that he likes by Pittsburgh artist Mac Miller. I hadn’t heard of this place and feared it would be some sort of drug dealer hang-out, but it’s actually just in a corner of a park I go to quite often. I’d even been there before without realizing what it was. Our hip-hop tour of Pittsburgh began and ended at Blue Slide Park, then we hit the road:

On our way out of town, we passed an Aldi, a discount grocery store where Carlo usually does his shopping. He grabbed two bags of spinach, a few cans of pineapples, and a few cans of chicken and declared that he had all the good he’d need for the week. The four hour drive to my cousin’s house passed uneventfully, with the soundtrack provided primarily by Carlos and some of the less-well-known hip hop music he wanted to share with me.

When we arrived at the house, we were greeted with some sad news: the middle son, Ollie, apparently dropped and broke the Little Mole teacup that Miklos brought for him from Hungary. Like many great artists, Ollie was creatively inspired by his pain:

There was just enough time for a tour of the place before it was time to pick the oldest boy up from school. Carlos and I walked with them.

It soon became clear that Carlos, who hails from the Atlanta area, was not adequately prepared for a brisk November day in the mid-Atlantic. He survived the walk to and from school, but headed inside when we got back to the house when the boys and I stayed outside to play. I felt a little bad abandoning him, but it turned out that after staying up most of the night final tabling his tournament, he had no trouble falling asleep on their sofa and even slept through a wailing baby and two little boys with cap guns. My cousin came home from work to find a stranger asleep on his sofa, and thankfully he remembered that I was bringing a friend to stay with him.

I brought vegetarian chili with me to share for dinner, and my cousin made some corn bread to have with it as well as baked apples for dessert. It was a great meal and gave Carlos a better chance to get comfortable with everyone.

After dinner, I helped the boys build a fort and then read to Ollie while his older brother did his homework. As their father ushered them off to bed, the Ollie ordered him, “Don’t take down our fort.”

“I’ll try not to,” my cousin said.

“Don’t. And keep an eye on mama, too,” the boy warned.

“OK, I’ll watch her,” he smiled.

Initially satisfied with that response, Ollie proceeded up the stairs, then paused at the top and turned back around. “Don’t let Andrew or that other guy mess it up either!” he shouted.