Ski trip report

Dave P and I flew into SLC on saturday after a short layover in denver. Neither of us have flown frontier before so we were pleasantly suprised when we got on the plane and we had more than normal coach leg room + every seat has a TV that you can watch 1 of 25 or so stations of live tv for $5. The channel selection is pretty decent so we took advantage of it. Frontier is now my second choice to sun country. We stayed at the Cliff Lodge at snowbird which I also would reccomend as it was nice and the ski in ski out was great.

Sunday's skiing was just a normal old day of skiing and nothing worth talking about. We were sleeping by 10pm sunday night as it had started snowing and monday was looking to be really good early. I was up naturally monday by 5:45am and we were in the lift line by 8:30 (the lifts open at 9). It had snowed about 15" and We got the 2nd tram and were able to make some awesome first tracks on some great runs. The runs were the type of runs you pray and pray for. Sick powder and my new skis handle it wayyyy better than my old ones. By like 1pm everything had been tracked out/was bumpy and our legs were giving in due to the high water content snow so we decided to call it an afternoon.

It was supposed to snow another 6" or so after the lifts shut down monday turning to partly cloudy for tuesday so we were hoping it was going to be a good day. We woke up early again on tuesday but the snow report only reported 4" new so we were a little heasatant to get up, but convinced ourselves after a couple of minutes. Little did we know how huge of a mistake not getting up early would have been. We opened the drapes and it was a complete bluebird day. Not a cloud in site. We made it out a little later than the previous day...845 or so but still were able to grab the 3rd tram which didn't matter as we found a couple of perfect virgin snow lines. It was "only" 6 or so inches, but it was super buttery on top of a soft snow base. If the day would have ended there, I would have said it was the best run of the trip. Little did we know what was in store.

We grabbed another 2 sweet powder runs and were riding up the lift when we noticed a 10 or so person pile-up at the closed gate of an area that hadn't opened in 3 days...road to provo. As we were getting off the lift it surely seemed like it was going to open so we went over to it. Literally as soon as dave strapped into his board they dropped the rope and the race was on. As we rushed to get moving we agreed to just meet at the bottom and gogoogogo and not wait up as runs like this don't happen very often. The 20 inches from the previous 2 days hadn't been touched. It was a perfect run in the making: bluebird, 2 feet of snow, a decently long run with a nice pitch to boot. It was by far the best run I've had in years. I had fresh tracks from top to bottom. I guess I did cross one other persons tracks once when I had to exit a chute. Finally. I've been dreaming of runs like that forever and have been having horrible luck. Now I ran good on being at the top for the drop. We did a few more laps before it got pretty tracked and then I took a couple laps on a farther out line that required a little bit of sidestep/hiking up. These runs were all very unreal and better than anything I've had in probably 3 years, but still nothing compaired to that first run. Smiles from ear to ear. Everyone in the liftline kept saying how epic it was. It was sick. On our last run of the day we stopped mid-bowl and just hung out and took it all in for like 10 minutes. Just sitting in the middle of nowhere in the mountains and all this snow and perfect sun is sooo beautiful and peaceful.

Dave hadn't snowboarded in like 5 years and is now officially hooked again. It would be hard not to be after this trip. Simply amazing.

A couple vids:

frustrating sleep and off to utah

The past week has been ridiculously frustrating trying to get sleep. My body was just sooooooooo messed up from LA that it just couldn't sleep for more than 4-5 hours per night. The last few nights have gone like this:

5am-9am
2am-6am
8pm-130am
10pm-6am but toss and turn most of the night not sleeping

I'm so worn out and I hope I can get a good nights sleep tonight before heading to Utah with Dave P tomorrow for some skiing. There's a sick storm coming in that could drop 2 feet of snow. It could be super nasty though with winds gusting to 90mph. Wish us luck with the snow!

As far as poker goes I've just been playing LHE since LA and it's been goin well, minus busting my AP account playing mark seif 200/400. I'm not sure if I'll play there again...it all just seems to sketchy. Losing to him makes me down dollars but up bets and I'm feeling pretty good about everything these days so I'm content.

2nd in tourney

I decided semi-last minute to play the 2500 LHE tourney and got 2nd place for 30k. First was supposed to pay 42 and 2nd 23 but men the master and I decided to each take 30 and play for 6.5 for first. He ran super hot and got real lucky to beat me but that's heads up limit holdem for ya. I definitely ran hot myself in the tourney.

I wasn't able to wire money out before coming out so I didn't have a ton of money and was starting to really feel short which I think makes me play worse so before the tourney I took a cab to Wells fargo to get a cashiers check. Good thing I wasted time and energy with that.

The $400/800 games have been sick good the last few days. I broke evenish the first night and picked up a nice win last night, playing one of my longest live sessions ever of 17 hours.

Given that session I don't really feel like playing anything meaningful today and right now I just started watching Jerico on Itunes. I'll probably go down and play some 10/20nl and get some food cause I don't get to play live NL very often and no matter what happens it can't hurt bad. I heard there's another good 400/800 game but I'm not feelin it right now.

I'm going back tomorrow night and get back into MN monday morning. Kels is in town for some training so that'll be nice then I think towards the end of the week Dave P and I are going to Snowbird in utah. Man I'm pumped, the weather is looking great!

Off to LA

Sun Country decided a 7am flight was better than their11pm flight they used to fly to LAX and 7am is a semi-annoying time for anyone on a poker-player schedule to have to leave the house at 530. A couple hours earlier or later would make a good difference. As is, it still doesn't really make sense to go to sleep for 2 or 3 hours because it makes more sense to just stay up all night and sleep at the hotel and you'll instantly be on a good live poker schedule (almost completely backwards)...but if it was a few hours later you could definitely get 5 or 6 hours sleep and be able to play when you get there...which I'm always excited to do.

I got back from a great weekend in duluth at about 1030pm and worked for a number of hours. I've really been playing more LHE the last few days with like 2 well table selected NL tables on the side.

Winter is just so busy. I don't think I've been in the cities at home for more than 5 days in a row since the beginning of december. I feel like I always get home and then by the time I've taken care of different details that don't get taken care of while I'm gone it's time to go again. I know I know rough life always being gone and traveling but not having very much structure to count on from day to day wears on me I think. I feel like this is why being a poker pro while in college was actually easier. I always had tons of other stuff with specific schedules that basically ran my life with poker thrown in. I didn't realize this until right now. I'm sure a number of people are thinking now...why don't I go back to school and get my masters or something. I bet I will at some point but it wont be the same as living on campus and I'm not quite ready yet.

I was planning on brining my skis to LA and going from there to Colorado to Brad's place but all the weather models are strongly showing warm and sunny which isn't my idea of good ski conditions in February so that trip will have to wait another week or something.

Kelsey got promoted at work today to be the manager of a new department at Best Buy stores -the mobile department! This is great news and should be the stepping stone to being an assistant store manager which is her short term goal. Congrats baby!

I better go finish packing.

no good title

So far so good as far as the month goes. I've been putting in my 2k hands of NL per day and doing well and playing some limit on the side because the games have been good and I've been in the mood (for fun and frustration). The lhe has been treating me more good than bad, but at the same time getting runner runnered for a half hour in a row HU made me more frustrated that I've been in forever so it's not ALL good.

I tried playing HU nl again and ran super bad and have had about enough of that for a bit as well.

I've been playing sooooooooo much this month. About 40 hours through 6 days. I've just been really focussed and feeling great and I want the success ($) that comes along with putting the hours in. I just don't feel like settling for "decent enough" money this month. I want to crush. Even though I've had many bigger days than how much I'm up so far, EV wise it seems about right and I'll take that all day any day especially considering I feel like I've ran kinda bad.

I got some new skis yesterday and I absolutely can't wait to try them out. They are Line Prophet 100's. I have to get some bindings still but that wont be hard. I think I'm going to LA on monday and I'll be in cali for about a week and then go skiing as the long range forcast is predicting a good pattern for that time. I'm dyingggggg. Whitefish (where I was in montana) got 76" the week we left and the snow reporter guy said it was the best week he's ever had. Argh. Utah also got like 100" and had a phenominal week. I want to cry.

Forever I had a real hard time getting money off cake...and by real hard I mean I couldn't get it off other than about 5k per month but finally now I can get wire transfers from Epassporte so I finally get to 'realize/appreciate' some of the money I've won over the past 6 months. Time for some more investing. There are many things worse...but having 6 figures on a foreign poker site where you can't access your money for a long time sucks real hard.

I have been reading tommy Angelo's book "elements of poker" and realllly liking it. I definitely recommend it and I think all poker players will benefit from reading it.

Kelsey and I celebrated 2 years of dating yesterday...what a great 2 years it's been! She's amazing I love her I love her I love her.