What a week. I spent the last 9 days on the road for business and personal reasons. It started with a 6 am flight down to California where I visited my grandparents from both sides. My grandma on my mom’s side was recently in a car accident and my grandpa on my dad’s side recently had a stroke. He will be going into surgery soon and so I wanted to spend some time with everyone. We made sure to catch Monday Night Football while eating my Grandma’s meatballs which are incredible (as both Greg and Steve can attest to). I also went running on the coast of Santa Monica (I included a picture below).
Santa Monica Beach
From California I went to Bethlehem, PA to visit my sister attending Lehigh University. There are two distinctive things about Lehigh. It is on the side of a mountain and a pain to carry three bags up, and everyone there is rich. I have never seen so many college students driving Beamers and Audis. While there my sister and I went to a couple of parties with the girls in her hall. Being that my sister lives on a floor full of girls, it was quite easy getting into the parties.
After Lehigh, I took the bus over to Atlantic City. On the way over I sat next to an older gentlemen at 83 who used to be the main judge in the area. On one hand, it was incredibly interesting, but on the other I never realized how incredibly screwed up our legal system is. To make it simple, money controls everything. He was the judge when Bethlehem Steel was still in operation (which employed 30,000 people) and half of their property was in his county. It was definitely an educational experience.
Upon arriving in Atlantic City, I went to my hotel which I paid $250 for, which was one of the cheaper hotels around. It had a pretty nice view from the 29th floor which you can see below.
Atlantic City
My friend Rich, who also works on the magazine, showed up soon after and we went to hit up the casinos. We first visited the Taj Mahal, owned by Donald Trump. Apparently he was in town but I didn’t see him. Below is a picture of me in front of the Taj.
Taj Mahal
After the Taj we headed over to The Borgata. Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more attractive group of people all in one place ever before. Being a big fan of Texas Hold’Em, we signed up to play poker at 9 pm. Because of the wait, it was 5 hours before I got to the table, meanwhile I suffered through the 22-21 loss by Oregon State University to LSU because of 3 missed extra points. When I got to the table I bought in for $200 playing $3-$6 fixed. I wasn’t doing too well and went down to about $50. Then, on one hand 3 eights came out, and I had the 4th 8. The other guy still in had a full house and kept re-raising, and of course, so did I. When he saw I had the 4th 8, I thought he was going to die. I cleaned him out and he left the table. My luck was incredible after that hand, cleaning out several other players and I got up to $500. I finally cashed out with $400 at 8 am. Yes, I played from 2 am to 8 am. We came back to the hotel and left without having spent the night. Lesson learned, next time in Atlantic City I’m not getting a hotel.
From New Jersey I caught the train up to New York City and crashed on Josh Newman’s couch. We previously did a story on him in our February issue. Lately he’s been filming a documentary in Israel (among about a thousand other things) while preparing the release of I Love Your Work. While there I got to see some of the unfinished versions of I Love Your Work which was pretty tight.
The next day I had a couple meetings, and then went to LaGuardia airport at midnight, and spent the night (I actually stayed up all night) at the airport due to a 6 am flight. I just can’t justify spending $150 for a hotel I’ll stay in for 4 hours. I did feel a strong bond with Tom Hanks in his latest film The Terminal.
I hopped a plane over to Chicago, where I oversaw the photo shoot for our next cover. It was the first time I’ve been in downtown Chicago, which was pretty neat. I didn’t get to go up to the top of the Sears tower, but I did get a picture of it.
Sears Tower
On the way over to the photo shoot, the person I was getting a ride with got in a minor car accident. The unfortunate part of it was that the car he hit was a nice Lexus. Ouch. Definitely not the best thing to have happen 30 minutes before a photo shoot, but he came through like a champ.
I finally got a full night of sleep, and am now on the plane back to Oregon for a whole 3 days. I’m in Oregon for 7 days in September, that’s it.
Next week I’m headed to Seattle and then Maui. Should be pretty crazy. I’ll keep everyone posted.
Bryan
