So far my travels has been an exercise in extremes. On one hand, we've had a very low key trip, doing virtually nothing besides some mountain walking, eating, and just hanging out in the living room together. On the other hand, it's been a fucking crazy poker ride. The goal was to come to the mountains, get de-tilted, get some fresh air, and make a graph that steadily inclines like good ol' grandfather mountain. Instead what I've got is the valley of death.

Before I get to the poker though, I'll rewind back to last monday and tuesday, which were crazy days of all day playing and coaching. I coached like 5 hours on tuesday, as I've received an influx of students in the last 2 weeks and everyone wants to get started. I've even got 3 more students that I'll be starting with this week, so that will keep me plenty busy. Everyone wanted to get a session in before I left for my trip where I'd have unknown-internet status. Thankfully we got the high speed internet and wireless set up so that hasn't been a problem here in our mountain house.

So after all my coaching and playing on Mon/Tues, Wednesday I went for my weekly volunteering and then got home to run a ridiculous amount of errands (including submitting my taxes to the CPA, big relief there... now just waiting for the dreaded bill to see how much i owe... ugh), among other tasks such as packing up and loading the SUV for our ride out. Our first stop on our 16 hour drive from KC was going to be in memphis, tennessee where I had my final doctor's appointment at St Jude Children's Research Hospital.

It's been a little over 11 years since I was diagnosed with cancer (Hodgkin's Lymphoma to be exact) and since I was a teenager when it happened, I was treated with chemotherapy and radiation through the St Jude program. It's an amazing program (all treatment, travel, lodging, meals provided for kids/family through donations), and my doctor is literally the world's expert on the disease (her publications are basically the "industry standard" on hodgkin's disease). Her name is Dr. Melissa Hudson and she saved my life and hundreds of other kids with varying other forms of cancer.

It was a bittersweet final visit as I had been off treatment for over 10 years, but as part of the program I still had to go back each year for a health checkup. I'm mostly free of any sort of side effects from the treatment (slightly underactive thyroid gland is all) and there are no signs of cancer which is always a good thing. Definitely ran hot in terms of cancer treatment :-)



I'd encourage all of you to donate to this wonderful cause,
specially if you're making a bunch of money at poker.
Click the image or here to donate.

Once the final tests were done and I met with the doctor for the last time, it was time to hit the road again to head to Crossnore, NC where we'd spend a week. It took another 8 hours to drive and Missy did a good chunk of the driving so that helped. Since we got here we haven't done much except eat, sleep, play poker, and just enjoy the mountain air.

Here's Roscoe trying to help me get de-tilted.



Here's one view of the living room in our mountain house. Out the window on the right you can see Grandfather Mountain (during the daytime).



Here's another view of the living room. You can see Roscoe chillin' and my designated poker chair with the laptop fired up.



So after all the pokering I've done, it's been a pretty wild ride. I still can't seem to break through and run well at 10/20 like evarrrr... I'm down like 20k at 10/20nl hu. At least I'm doing OK at the other stakes which makes me about even on the month right now. Here's a graph of my results since I got to North Carolina. Where's the new internet boomswitch when i need it?