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| June 29, 2014 |
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Ignoring
Clint Eastwood's advice in "Dirty Harry" that
opinions, like certain body parts, are best kept to
yourself.
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| My son Andy
played in this tournament in 2007 (and lost). |
This week my wife and I noted the 48th anniversary
of our wedding on June 25, 1966, the 90th anniversary of
Custer's Last Stand, which somehow seemed appropriate to me
at the time. So, we celebrated by driving our 30' Class A
motorhome up to the RV Park at
Grand
Casino in Hinckley, Minnesota. This is a great
destination, the park is on the
"top
100" list with the "Good Sam Club",
with a great swimming pool, WiFi, cable television, all the
hookups, and a shuttle bus that comes by every 15 minutes to
whisk you to the casino, two blocks away.
With a
Grand Casino Players Card, the park charges $25 a day Sunday
through Thursday, an extra $10 bucks on weekends. $85 bucks,
not a bad deal for 3 nights.
 Our
retired friends Don and Sandee came up from St. Paul with
their compact Class B motorhome, and we all headed to the
casino to try our luck. I've had a one hundred dollar bill
burning a hole in my wallet, ready to put down on the
blackjack table with my player's card, which I did,
receiving a stack of $5 chips in return, and the game began.
While
the ladies wandered around the one-arm-bandits, Don and I
were in the serious stages of planning our financial future
on that green felt table. Don bought in for $40, mentioning
to me that he hadn't played blackjack in about 30 years, but
I reminded him that it was just like riding a bicycle.
Don
started to win, I started to lose. When you play this game,
you start with the grand idea of "doubling your money",
but at some point the goal of the game is to make a 50%
profit, later replaced with a real desire to leave with as
much as you came with, and finally with the hope not to lose
too much. Two hours later, Don and I cashed-out, Don with
$90, fifty bucks more than he started with, me with exactly
$100 bucks, leaving even and feeling darn good about it.
 That
evening, we all went to a restaurant in the casino to enjoy
a good meal. My wife noticed that if she ordered the broiled
shrimp dinner, a 6 ounce sirloin steak could be added for
six bucks. "Ron", she said, "Why don't I
order this and we can split the meal?" A great idea,
Don and his wife agreed, and so we had two shrimp and steak
dinners with four plates. The bill, including a $10 tip,
came to $60 for four people.
 The
next morning, Don and Sandee headed back to the Twin Cities,
Hazel and I stuck around for another day.
That
night I walked over to the casino, slapped my $100 bill
down, and started to play cards. A few minutes later a man
sat down next to me, bought in with $100, and almost
immediately, we both started to make money. He was betting
$10 a hand, I was hanging at five.
Up and down the
stack of chips went, mine just hung in there quite a while
without moving much, but the fellow next to me, a retired
meat cutter for a Minneapolis supermarket, was making some
real advances. When I cashed out a couple of hours later,
I'd made $85 after tipping the dealer, and glancing over to
my new friend's stack, it appeared that he was about $400
ahead.
The bill at the RV park was exactly what I'd
won at the tables. So the cost of our 3 day anniversary trip
was motorhome gas for the 120 mile round-trip (about $50 at
8 to 9 mpg), and our half of a $60 restaurant tab.
Not
bad.
Global
Air Aviation Referral Service
I welcome
responses, and will be glad to post them here. Email your
remarks to
ron@global-air.com |
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