Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Casino Run

     We made a trip to the sovereign nations in Oklahoma on Sunday. I never plan ahead on these trips because I never know how I will feel on any given day. I picked up the phone and called for a room. The person on the other end answered and I knew immediately who she was, so I started flirting with her. Joyce and I always spend time talking to her when we stay there; she is a real sweetheart. She was getting off work before we would arrive, so we agreed to visit on Monday morning. Sunday night Joyce had a nice sized win at a card table and was paid in green $25 chips. She was very happy over that. About 20 minutes later, the pit boss came over and told the dealer to give Joyce another $25 because the dealer had underpaid her on her win. The eyes in the skies doing surveillance had been rolling tape and noted she had been underpaid. That was a first for us.
     When we checked in at the hotel and went to our room, we found out our friend had booked us with an upgrade to a suite rather than a regular room, another pleasant first.
     On Monday morning our friend was there so we thanked her profusely for the nice gesture. She explained that the suites were never booked except on Fridays and Saturdays and she knew we never left a messy or damaged room and that we were nice folks and she thought we deserved a perk. Sometimes I wonder just how much the casinos do know about us.
     We left that casino and went to our other favorite casino to play for an hour or so before heading home. we had just sat down when the pit boss there came over and gave Joyce another $3 because she had been underpaid that much on a bet the last time she was there. We are usually pretty good at checking our payouts as are the dealers, but sometimes things happen and to get money back two times in two days was indeed another first. It would appear that the eyes in the skies are there not only to protect the casino but also to protect the players.
     During the day we were treated to a free beer two times by another friend there. Which is another lucky and rare treat. That got the ball rolling and I was delivered a straight flush for a nice payout just as my stack of chips was waning and I had just made the statement that in that game all it takes is one good hand to bring a man back to health. A half hour later I was dealt three of a kind (in a three card poker game) another rarity. We ended up staying not just an hour or so, but six hours and had a great time.
     All great things must come to an end though, so we headed home. I was driving down the interstate and I was being passed by a parade of cars most of the time. They were just flying by me; I thought maybe I had slowed down to perhaps 60 mph, but each time I looked at my speedometer, I was actually doing 80 without knowing, and yet they were still passing me like I was crawling along. It was just after dark when we were getting close to home and Joyce had been concerned about driving the back roads after dark because of deer. We were just 1/4 mile from home and breathing a sigh of relief over not seeing any deer on the road when I topped a hill with a big stand of trees on both sides and there was a doe standing in the road. I hit the brakes hard and luckily she took off for the other side of the road. Had we been in our old van (which took the notion of me standing on the brakes as a sign that I might want to stop if it was willing do do so) we would not have stopped in time. The new smaller car has a much better braking system.
     All in all we had a great time with many very lucky things that happened, making this trip a memorable one.