The Travel Advice and Issues Thread

ANYWAY... They got in a little before me, picked up a rental car, and swung back to grab me from the airport.  We headed to Sycuan Casino Resort in El Cajon, CA, where we'd be staying for the weekend.  After checking in, BIL gave me $500 cash for some reason and told me to go have fun.  I told him he didn't have to pay for me to gamble, but he insisted he owes me way more than that for some combination of all the shit he stole from us years ago and the fact that I possibly saved his life by making/letting him detox at my house and then check into rehab.  That's all water under the bridge /31 but I let him give me the money anyway and gladly started gambling with it.  We stayed up way too late, and I think I lost like $200 playing blackjack.

On Friday BIL, Ryan, and I played golf at a shitty local course called Carlton Oaks Country Club (the other 2 don't golf).  The casino has a course that looks pretty decent, but rumor has it a lot of it is currently under repair, so Ryan picked out this other course based on good-looking pics from their website.  Turns out it looked nothing like the pics. pic?  The greens were fine, but there was barely any grass on the fairways, just a real shit show of a course.  I mostly played shitty; I think I shot like 104 or 105.  

After some delicious tacos from a random hole in the wall joint on the way back to the casino, we played some more blackjack for a while; I think I lost about $100.  Jose and Chop had Ubered into the city at some point, so we went in to meet up with them around 7:00.  They were in Pacific Beach.  We got there and it was fucking dead.  All the places along the boardwalk were closed; not sure if closed for the season, closed because of Covid or something, or it was just a super quiet night.  But after just wandering aimlessly for an hour or so, they just wanted to go gamble more.  I'd happily have settled in at whatever random bar we found in the area, but I wasn't driving and wasn't gonna push them to hang out at a bar since I can just drink at the casino.  Highlight of the brief journey was when Jose and Chop rented a couple of those scooter/bikes you see in cities, and Chop accidentlly hit the front brake instead of the back and went almost all the way over the handlebars.  High comedy; you prob had to be there.  On the way back I bought some Stone IPAs and a bottle of Jameson because I was mildly boycotting the retarded CA law that makes it illegal to give out free drinks in casinos.  I lost some more money playing blackjack; BIL gave me another $200 at some point so I still wasn't playing with my own money yet; and then he convined me to play slots with him late that night, and I hit for like $900, so that was nice.

Saturday was Torrey Pines day, which was the primary purpose of the trip.  Some guy named Don - I'm not totally sure who he is, and when I asked him how he knows BIL he simply said "Facebook" - drove down from L.A. to play with us.  He was a good dude, bought me a couple beers, paid for half of BIL's round, and shot 80 like some kind of asshole.  He apparently has a San Diego resident card (which allows you to play the course for like $80 instead of $265) and when we got to the starter they asked him "Mr. Alphonso, which one is your son?"  As a Filipino, he quickly assessed the 3 honkies playing in his group and said "My son couldn't make it, so my friend here took his spot."  Then they gave him shit about trying to sneak one of us in at the resident price, so he had to go back inside to straighten that out and his resident card is now deactivated until he speaks to a manager to get reinstead.  As it turns out, he doesn't even have a son.  Good job, good effort.

I got an 8 on the first hole, then shook off the rust with the help of an absolutely delightful Bloody Mary and went bogey-par-par on the next 3.  For a few minutes there I was thinking I might sorta know how to play this dumb game.  I played OKish for the rest of the front 9, with just one more disaster hole (I think i was either 5 6, but who can tell?).  On 9 I hit 3 perfect shots and then 3-putted for bogey, to finish with a 51.  The wheels completely fell off around 12, and I spent most of the back 9 trying unsuccessfully to advance the ball from the 8-inch deep rough.  They're getting ready for the Farmers Insurance Open the last weekend in January, so while it's not US Open conditions they're really letting shit grow to be ready for the pros.  The course doesn't seem like it would be THAT hard if you can hit the ball straight - no water to speak of, easy enough approach angles, and the bunkers were very soft and forgiving - but if you miss the fairway it's just impossible to do anything.  I ended up with a very generously scored 60 on the back 9.  Despite the bad score and the fact that it took 5 and a half fucking hours, it was a lot of fun and I'm glad we played.  The general atmosphere of the place was familiar, but I didn't recognize any of the holes so I'm thinking I may have played the North Course when I was there back in 06-07ish.

Jesus Christ Wolf, fucking wrap it up already; almost literally no one cares about any of this. For some reason Ryan stopped at a terrible-looking wing place that I think was a chain, rather than looking for halfway decent food.  It took like 30 minutes to get an order of meh-minus wings that made me feel like garbage for most of the night.  Totally worth it.  They all wanted to go to Tijuana that night.  I forgot my passport so I stayed at the casino by myself like a child.  I did legitimately forget to bring it, but was actually happy about that because I had no real interest in Tijuana and it gave me a convenient excuse.  They all insisted it was the most fun they've ever had, because they're children and think strip clubs are fun.  Balls knows what I mean.  The tacos they got from an authentic Mexican spot sounded awesome, but I regret absolutely nothing about not spending hundreds of dollars to have whores pretend to like me for a few hours.

I planned to play poker all night, but the wait list was ridiculously long so I went back to black jack again while waiting for a table.  I got hot at a table that was just me and this one lady that I discussed in the box earlier.  She was a 40ish divorcee with nice tits and a pretty face; I thought she was a white but after she told me her name I decided she was some type of Mexican.  Anyway, the table was real hot for a while when it was just the 2 of us; then 2 other chucklefucks showed up and ruined all the momentum.  They left and the 2 of us kept it going till maybe 12:30 or so, chit-chatting and buying each other a coupla four drinks while we played.  I feel like there was a better than even chance I could have evented a sex on her if I'd tried, but I was content to keep it casual.  When she left I was down to my final $100 (I had blown all of the prior day's slot winnings, plus an extra $300 ATM withdrawal).  But I kept playing by myself and eventually turned it back into $1500 before going to bed around 3:00.  That was fun; I have fun.

Sunday we had a really good breakfast in one of the casino restaurants.  I en-joyed a short rib hash, which was not unlike my patented exhaustion bowls, along with black coffee and a bloody mary (the one at Torrey Pines was way better).  I had earned enough points the prior night for a free meal, but still had to pay for the booze.  We kicked around the idea of going into the city for a while, but Ryan didn't feel good and Jose was depressed after losing like $6000.  So since they were being vaginas, we just hung around the casino and watched football most of the day, while gambling some more off and on throughout the afternoon and night.  We had a so-so meal in another casino restaurant that night (they had a steakhouse, but we just went to the burger joint instead). Combined we had played enough to get 5 entrees and 4 appetizers comped, so that was nice.  I had another good size slot machine win around lunch time, but gave back most of what I won after dinner.  In the end I made enough to give BIL back the $700 he'd fronted me plus an extra $300 for his trouble, and still came home with $200 more cash than I left with.  All's well that ends well, as PJ always says.

I arrived home around 10:00 last night to a balmy 18 degrees, and I really miss the weather there already.  When I told Wolfette we didn't really do anything yesterday besides watch football and gamble a little she replied, "A little? So did you come home with more or less than $300?"  Translation: "I saw you took $300 out of the ATM.  This is the first time in like 6 months that you've done anything remotely fun for yourself, so what makes you think it's OK to use an entire $300 for gambling?"  She's fun.