I’ve been playing a lot of poker the past two days. Yesterday I played almost forty $215 Sit n Gos. I started off insanely hot but cooled down toward the end, finishing my session with 6 straight non-cashes. Today I played most of the big Sunday tournaments. I blew a chance at good money on BoDog when I was the chipleader and made a move against the the guy who was 2nd in chips with 55 left. I figured he wouldn’t call without the nuts and I was wrong…he called with the 2nd nuts. I opened in middle position with KTs and he called from the big blind. The flop was Q73 rainbow and he check-raised my continuation bet. I figured he could fold a Queen and I’m still pretty sure he would have but he wasn’t folding a set of 7s and I crippled myself. Oh well, I live and die by these plays. I’m just pissed that I didn’t get a running straight. It seems like I always build a big stack by playing like this then go down in flames. One day I’ll find the happy medium. The winner in this tourney got $25K and I had to settle for $250. That was my only cash for the day which means I lost about 1K. Oh well.

I tried for a while to find a good program to host my World Cup and Baseball Roadtrip schedules online and I think I found one. Let me know how easy it is to get these files, provided they even work:

World Cup

Road Trippin'

If you have to register first, just do it and stop being a sissy. It's free and takes half a second. The URL contained in the body of the World Cup file is a map of the sites where the games are going to be played. I'm hoping to find tickets to 1 or 2 games but for the most part I just want to party with fans in the city that their game is being played. I think just being there and watching the games from one of the local bars will be great fun. I have a friend in Munich with a couch to sleep on and possibly a shower to get clean. Maybe the plan will be returning to Munich every 4 or 5 days to shower then leaving and partying for 5 days straight. Who needs a hotel/hostel during the World Cup? Do you know who I am? I'm really looking forward to checking out all of Germany's fine cities. We passed through last Spring but the whole stay was 2 days in Cologne, one day floating the Rhine, then spending 5 hours in Frankfurt's train station. I think there's more to Germany than that and this time I'm going to do it right. I'm still exploring the possibility of renting a car but I don't know how feasible that'll be. I don't know the exact dimensions but the country looks like it's about 400 miles x 400 miles so I won't ever have to travel ridiculously far. I planned my schedule based on the best games on each day but I also adjusted a bit for ease of travel. If you look at the map and try to follow my path, you'll see that I never travel cross-sountry and rarely even go halfway. I can drive 200 miles in my sleep, especially when I get to go 150 mph! Anyway, the trip would be more fun with a partner so if any of you are interested let me know. July 8-23 there's nowhere in the world you'd rather be and YOU KNOW IT! If someone came along I'd definitely get the car. If I'm by myself(likely) I'll just take the train. A lot of people think that I must be a soccer fanatic but I'm really just a casual fan who's obsessed with sports and has some money and free time. An addiction to travel doesn't hurt either.

I'm really stoked for the baseball trip and tickets are starting to go on sale. I don't want to pay Ticketmaster charges on 30 different tickets so I'll probably just pre-order the key tickets like Red Sox-Yankees, Mariners Opening Day and Cubs-White Sox. THe rest I'll try to buy at the door. I found out that the Giants game I was planning on attending is already sold out but I have a free day so I'll just go to the next one. If you live in a city with a MLB team and want to go to a game, let me know. I'll be looking you all up anyway but it'd be nice if you could holla back. I'm still trying to find a good van to buy. I want to go kinda cheap but I don't want it to break down, obviously. I guess I can pay a little more for a quality piece of machinery since I'm going to resell it. I just don't want to lose a ton of money in the deal since it's going to be a bastardized sort of 2-month rental. I found this on Craigslinst but it may be a little too nice. Maybe something with a few more miles and without the leather. Let me know if you're in Seattle and you know of a good deal on a minivan. I'm pretty set on driving a van since I might be sleeping in it from time-to-time and I'd just like a lot of room in general. I don't think I could handle living in the Prius for 2 months. I'd also like a legit minivan as opposed to an old Chevy molester van. The minivan is embarassing but the molester van would make me an outcast. It would be fun to sit on the side of the road and offer candy to little kids but I don't think I'm going to do it. This one might be right up my alley. Carl, can you run some cash over to this guy's house tomorrow? Thanks.

I decided to get a room on the Party Poker Million cruise even though I'm not going to play in the main event. I want to go on the cruise and I found a friend willing to share his room with me for a small price. I'm getting back from South America on March 8th then flying to Ft. Lauderdale on the 11th and returning on the 20th. I'll probably just pack my things and drive back to Seattle on the 23rd or 24th. Then the baseball trip starts on April 3rd.

I've been thinking of different things that I could do with the baseball road trip. I'd love to do it for a cause but I don't know how to do it. Maybe I could get people to pledge a certain amount of money for every thousand miles that I drive or something. I also think it would be fun to figure out some kind of sponsorship. Maybe this year I'll just do it by myself and make a little documentary and try to get more out of it if I want to do it again. Do any of you fine readers have ideas? I get ambitious ideas, like writing Toyota and getting them to give me a new white van that I could paint red "stitches" on and they could film me going to all the stadiums and make a commercial out of it. Major League Baseball could sponsor the trip since it's at the beginning of the season and have updates each week on Fox Saturday Baseball. But we all know that I'll never contact these people and I'll end up just doing it by myself and end up with 20 minutes of crappy footage. Oh well, at least I get to buy a camcorder.

Seriosuly, if you thik of something cool I can do with this trip, let me know. If you think I'm an idealist piece of crap then let me know that, too. It's 3 AM and I better get to bed. Laters.