European Poker Tour Part IV - Now we Drink

The second day started early Thursday morning with me being the only one awake in the flat. I made myself a nice bowl of cereal and got right on the grind. I kept with the losing 5 BI (buy-ins) immediately trend but couldn’t manage a win. I was frustrated with the 3 BI loss but if I had only known what online pain was waiting for me I would have thrown a huge party in celebration of only losing 3 BI.

When Tony woke up we went for lunch at a nice place down the street. Everything on the menu looked so good so we ordered a bunch of things and split them all. We hung out on the terrace enjoying the absurdly warm weather in London sipping on our Oranginas. Tony and I discussed how much fun the next Friday at Fabric was going to be. Fabric is a crazy night club and over 30 of our friends were all going together see Jack Beats. It’s at least 34 percent of the reason I came to England.

I had made plans with Rob, my old Australian roommate, to meet up at 4 p.m. so I grinded some more hands. For some reason I just had the grind switch turned on and it was all I wanted to do. This session would turn out to be super depressing. I dropped my 5 BIs as usual. Made a little bit back and then dropped down to 9 BIs. It was around 2.30 when things started to turn around with me shipping two 500BB pots simultaneously. By 3.20 I was up $20 according to HEM. I lost a pot to put me down $5 and stupidly tried to “get into the green”. Don’t do this to yourself. This led to 9 BIs straight down over 15 minutes. I lost three 500-700BB within the next 3 minutes. I called it quits down loads and headed to Robs to drink. Just before I left Gavin and Olivia walked in. Olivia and I had never met and we only had time for a quick conversation. They had errands to run so we agreed to have a proper meeting the next day.

I hopped on the Tube to meet Rob at Angel station. We stocked up on some food and drinks for dinner. He made us a great pasta dish and I contributed by figuring out how to get the shot glasses made of ice out of the plastic mould. If you can find frozen shot glass moulds I suggest picking some up. We ate our dinner while catching up on the newest “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia” waiting for his roommate Ed to get home. Ed is a British army paratrooper veteran a few years younger than me. Apparently they had some couch to dispose of and Ed quickly rigged a rope up to lower it from their fifth floor apartment. Rob said he’s a very handy guy to have around.

During our wait for Ed, Rob made a cocktail that will blow your mind. If you want to get drunk without any bad taste this drink is for you. He took a pint glass and mashed up fresh raspberries and pear slices with ice. He poured 3oz of gin and filled the glass with a 7% pear cider. It had no burn to it but did it ever pack a punch. After the second pint a tall guy with a big white guy fro walked in the door. I instantly liked Ed as he has the same totally unacceptable sense of humour as Rob and I. He shared a few stories of his missions in Africa and Afghanistan including him almost getting eaten by a hippopotamus. Apparently he was on a boat and decided to go for a swim. His fellow soldiers thought it would be funny not to tell him it was hippo-inhabited waters. They waited until he was in line of sight of two hippos before letting him know. Great friends!

I told Ed of my pact with my roommate to learn one new survival skill a month for no good reason. I’m just going to say it’s for the Zombie Apocalypse but it’s really just skills you shouldn’t ever need but would be handy in the one-in-a-million situation. I plan on learning how to pick police issue handcuffs with random items. I have no idea how hard this will be but I assume I should pick it up quickly as I can pick most regular locks with the right tools. Ed told me to wait for a moment so he could find his lock-picking set. He came back with a green military box and pulled out his “lock pick”. It was a six-inch hunting knife with an antler handle he got in Africa. He then pulled out an even bigger knife from Afghanistan and said that “take these hand cuffs off of me” would suffice in any situation with his lock picks.

Eventually the three of us headed out on the town. We stopped at some random bar for shots then got on the Tube heading to central London. Ed tried talking up three girls on the train but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. It wasn’t until I said something and they realized I wasn’t British but Canadian that their interests got perked. Another little tip would be that Canadians and British people are naturally attracted to each other. For example, take me I’m dating a British girl. I would suggest that if you’re single go to the opposite country and things will work out. The girls joined us to some bar but didn’t want to pay cover. Conversations had run dry, I didn’t really want them sticking around, so this worked out great.

A few bars later we ended up at O’Neil’s for many, many drinks. This bar was fun but there weren’t any British people there. The bar was full of American exchange students and people from eastern Europe on vacation. I saw some guy wearing an Oklahoma Sooners shirt so I gave him the obligatory “your school sucks” as any real Texas Long Horns fan would. We left the bar with plans to head back to Rob’s around 2 a.m. but before we could find a taxi we got approached by some coked up Irishman asking if we wanted hookers. We said no but he was very insistent that we take a look and have a free drink. He wanted us to go into some random red door with No. 6 above it. Again we said no. He continued to list the various race and nationalities available to us before we literally took off away from him. Being drunk around coked up pimps at 2 a.m. in a foreign country isn’t located anywhere on my list of things to do.