FRIDAY:4am and something is making an awful noise next to my head, as the reality of the alarm sinks in, I shake my fist angrily and head for the shower.
After cramming my pillow in to my suit case (I call it AMEX, I never leave home without it!), I head out in to the darkness to await Bennymacca and his lille biddy brother Russ (Jackoffasaurus or some such gumpf).
Bleary eyed we head to Dave Murrin’s place (Locker101) where Russ will leave his car for the weekend and step 2 stakes place, waiting eagerly for Dave’s dear old dad to arrive. We don’t have to wait long, seriously, not long at all, 26 maybe 27 seconds and he arrives. It’s airport bound for us and the GF excitement escalates!
Our check in at the airport is delayed by about 10 minutes due to a breakdown with the conveyor that loads the bags. Apart from that our airport stay was pretty much uneventful. We did have a few bumpy moments going through the clouds both leaving Adelaide and arriving in Melbourne. Turbulence never really used to bother me, I have one dose when I returned home from Hawaii a few years back that I seriously thought I was going to die in, I have never been so scared in my life. This lot though was ok, but I’ll be honest, the Hawaii/Sydney turbulence combined with age and watching too much “Air Crash Investigations” gets me a little anxious when it gets bumpy these days. But I put on a brave face and make sure no-one asks me to shake hands!
We arrived safely in Melbourne (after more bumps and sweaty hands!) and jumped in a cab driven by…. (insert racially profiled terrorist joke here). We arrived at the “Bat Cave” unexploded in reasonable time. We were staying at place called the Batman apartments or hotel or something similar, hence it was referred to as the Bat Cave.
We had 3 single beds and one double. Since there was 4 of us and we don’t like to create any unnecessary work for anybody, we all slept in the double bed.
OK we had separate beds, but only because the other guys are homophobes, I was merely trying to help out the cleaning staff.
I might add, my suggestion to save water by showering together also got shot down…..
Our hotel was situated a nice 5 minute walk straight down to Crown, no side streets, no bends in the road, no turns. Perfect if you over indulge on the adult bevvies!
We went for a stroll down to Crown as our room wasn’t ready yet, with the guys keen to get their poker on. I wasn’t as keen to blow my weekend’s money in the first 10 minutes so I elected to watch.
It was cool to see the 888pl degens start to filter in. And seeings as it was a boy’s weekend I decided the bar should open at 11am, so I ordered a beer. Damn it was good. Caught up with a few people, shook a few hands, kissed a few babies and pretty much sealed my votes for Presidential re-election. (Wait, wrong trip report).
We then decided it was time for some fun and headed across skywalk to Galactic Circus, where the Galactic Circus Decathlon was born. We had decided to play 10 games and award points for how we finished that game. The point structure is below:
• 1st - 5pts
• 2nd – 3pts
• 3rd – 2pts
• 4th – 1pts
We started with 10 Pin Bowling and an awesome display was put on by everyone except Dave and Russ! A thrilling end was to come when Ben needed to spare the last frame to seal the win. His 1st bowl saw him destroy 9 pins, all he needed to do was pick up the last pin to seal the win. Being quite crap at bowling, he missed it and drew level with me on 131. We chopped the points and moved on to the next event.
We moved on to basketball where, I can only work it out to be computer error and cheating, but Russ seemed to dominate the 3 or 4 games we played. He also managed to skip ahead to commanding lead of the tournament.
Next up was my pet event, Skeeball. More cheating and broken machines, meant I couldn’t dominate. I got up for a couple of wins, but was saddened that I couldn’t pull off a huge lead here. I did however manage to pick up some valuable points on a “shooting range” game, once I knew where the big scores were to be had, I blitzed my chump opponents.
At the end of that day’s events the scores stood at:
• Dave – 18.5pts
• old-man daryl – 27pts
• Ben – 27pts
• Rus – 27.5pts
So it was pretty close and would make for an exciting final round.
Finally we decided it was time to head back to the room and freshen up. As luck would have it, the hotel positioned itself conveniently after a bottle shop. So Russ and I stopped in to pick up a few beers for the weekend. We were just after something generic, so we ordered a slab of Carlton Draught. The guy scans it and the register shows a price of $72. Obviously he’s scanned it twice by mistake we think. He calls someone over, he clears the screen and scans it again, $51 this time. Something is still wrong we let this guy know. He then informs us that is the correct price. I’m thinking he’s an idiot. The guy behind me in the line confirms this guy is an idiot, by letting us know we can get it $15 cheaper from the IGA, down the road. We bid our rip off merchants good day and head for the hotel room. We explain to the boys what happened and they can’t believe their ears. Luckily Russell needs hair curlers and pantyhose, so he says he’ll head down and grab it from the IGA while he’s there. 30 minutes, 20 hair curlers and 2 pairs of panty hose later, Russ returns with a $53 slab! Melbourne, you suck at pricing beer!
After some light refreshments, a lie down and a shower, it was time for this bunch of poker pros to head down for Event 1 of this Grand Final series, the $70 Terminator. I didn’t fair so well, but it was great fun. My recollection of that whole night is fuzzy, not due to alcohol as I took it fairly easy that night, probably due to age if you ask the other boys in the crew. All I do know is that Bennymacca started his awesome GF run, by shipping that event and taking down a nice shiny bracelet and nice clump of Crown chips for that.
After a couple of celebratory beverages and some $1 roulette, we decided to head back to our temporary castle for some more quite bevvies and some much needed sleep, for as you see, the 888PL Grand Final was rapidly approaching!
To be continued.....
