By Bond18 on May 13th, 2009 (more posts by author)

May 3rd, Madison: I wake up at 11am. I have made plans to go to lunch with my dad and some of his old coworkers from before he retired last year. We’re to meet them as well as my little brother in the city but as I’m getting ready I get the sense that I have probably woken up slightly too late.

We drive into the city and park near the capitol. We walk over to the Japanese restaurant we’re supposed to meet at and find it closed and ourselves about 10 minutes late. Neither of us brought a phone and neither the coworkers nor my brother are anywhere to be seen. We get a coffee next door and wait around a while but nobody shows. We get lunch elsewhere, then stop by and visit my dad’s old place of work.

My dad has been playing a lot of tennis lately and I played competitively until I was 16. I used to play for my high school but when I was busted by my mom at my very first drinking party during homecoming of my sophomore year she insisted that I turn myself into the athletic department, who were a notorious bunch of overzealous rule Nazis. They suspended me for 25% of the season for having been at the party, and when I showed up that year to practice all the coaches treated me like shit due to my suspension. By the time I became eligible I was so sick of taking their crap that I just quit and never played competitively again. I think one of the most appealing aspects of poker is that there are no real authority figures in the game.
We go home to get changed then drive over to some very nice courts in Edgewood. I played quite often before I left Melbourne so my stroke is pretty sharp save my backhand which is especially difficult given that I mashed up my hand working a boxing bag with no gloves in Vegas last week. My dad is a good opponent for me skill wise at tennis as we’re roughly at the same skill level though I have a 40 year age and mobility advantage. The other factor is his competitiveness, which has him exploding at himself when he misses shots and claiming he wants to quit playing for the afternoon. I did not inherit this competitiveness, and after six years in poker I would describe my temper as something between comatose and nonexistent.

When we finish we head home and eat dinner. Then I suggest we go to the gym because I haven’t done any weight lifting in a few days and I intend on using my time in Wisconsin to try and get as physically fit as possible before the grind that is the WSOP. At the gym I spend the first half hour of my work out texting girls to set up dates and get one sorted with Isabelle for Wednesday. I will be cooking. I do a leg lift work out then hit the stationary bike for 20 minutes on level eight.

After the work out we return home and I take a shower. I get into decent clothes, pack up my computer, and go to do some work at the book store, which will give me the opportunity to both concentrate on getting some writing done and also perhaps chat up some women. When I arrive I am disappointed the only women around seem to be in high school, and I’m not Matthew McConaughey. I find a seat and start writing. I’m online talking to my friend Mike Graham that I grew up with, who has since joined the marines and done two tours in Iraq and I haven’t seen him in at least three years. He tells me he’s free for the night and it’s cool if I swing by. I do a bit of writing work then the stores speaker comes on and says they’ll be closing in 10 minutes. Shit, I barely got anything done.

I drive into the city to meet Mike. He’s got a nice apartment near the university and looks to be in very good shape. He tells me he’s been doing MMA for two years now, and having finished the active part of his service in the Marines is now back at school in Madison, which is being paid for by the military. He spends much of our conversation lamenting that since I’ve left most people have just settled into some shit routine where they have a job they hate, a girlfriend they tolerate, and the diet and exercise habits of Homer Simpson. Whenever we ever so rarely catch up I always enjoy asking him about war, as it is something I’m fairly positive I’ll never experience and so totally out of the ordinary. He tells me that his more recent tour was pretty quiet and boring, not unlike the last where he’s moderately certain he filled some guy with a string of bullets from a machine gun on top of a jeep, though he’ll never be certain. We are drinking Miller Lite.

When I get home I try to get a little more writing work in, but it’s getting late so I set the computer away and lie down. Hopefully with all the exercise sleep should come easy. It does, I drift off.