Texas Holdem- Texas Rides - Cob House

A lot to catch up on from the weekend. Played poker Friday night with some "good ole Texas boys"...actually they were middle aged guys, mostly lawyers and other professionals. I had a great time.  The buy in was larger than my usual....$200 to play the tournament.  Because of this size buy in, I expected a different sort of game.  Usually the larger the buy in, the better the players.  Now don't get me wrong, there were a few good players there.  But for the most part, they were what I describe as weak.  Limping in, very rarely raising or re-raising, calling too much, playing out of position, playing too many hands.  These are the players you want sitting at your table.  But I had a few players at my table who were pretty good.

Latin Young Dude (LYD) directly to my right was very aggressive.  I took half his stack in the first 30 minutes of the game.  He was on a draw and kept raising to get me off my hand.  I would re-raise, and LYD didn't like getting re-raised by a girl, in front of all his buddies.  (did I mention I was the only girl playing in the tournament of 20 players?)  I knew he was on a draw, and figured re-raising would get him to fold. Finally on the river, when his draws didn't pan out, he folded. He showed his cards, but I never showed my aces and that really pissed him off.  After that, he was steaming for a good hour or so.  Never would talk to me, etc.  I had him right where I wanted him.

I had doubled my stack in the first 3 levels of the game, and was chip leader at my table.  Then everything kinda went to mush.  Completely card dead, not hitting any flops AT ALL when I had AK, AQ, suited connectors, etc.  In fact, I never once hit a flop, and had to fold to some high bets.  The thing was, I had a super tight image at the table because I was not playing many hands at all, so I was able to steal blinds against the weaker players, and bluffed a few pots.  This kept me alive for another 3 1/2 hours.   Finally towards the end, I got down to about 12 big blinds, which is very low.  There were several other short stacks at my table too.  These guys were also weak, would limp in and then fold to a raise. This is a huge mistake when you are short stacked (for those of you who don't play poker).  So I was on the button, had 1 weak limper, and looked down at A5os.  This is normally not a good hand to play, but from the button and when you are short stacked and the other player has folded to raises before, I thought it was a good opportunity to shove my stack all in.  I did so, got called by the BB and the limper.  Big blind woke up with AJ, and limper had AQ.  Flop came down AJx, and I'm out...good game though.  I was proud of my play.  When I got up to leave, I shook everyone's hand at the table, the first being LYD.  He did not want to shake my hand...it was so funny, but finally did so cause I insisted...everyone else was really cool and invited me back to play.

BTW, I played a tournament online last night (at one of the few online poker sites left for American players, Bodog), and took first place out of 25 players. $80 win, helped make up for my $200 loss Friday night.

So I rode the motorcycle over the weekend.  A few months ago, I got inspired by Ara and Spirit, a guy and his dog, who ride together in Terlingua, and  all over the US in fact.  Here is a cool video of them:

So I got inspired to set something up for Pogo, my three legged rescue poodle.  Pogo is a very cool dog.  He is always up for anything.  I ordered an expensive motorcycle dog carrier that fits on the back of the bike.  It came in last week, I tried it, and somehow he just didn't seem comfortable in the thing.  It is rated for dogs up to 30 lbs, and Pogo is 16 pounds, but the way the opening for the head is placed in the middle of the thing, just didn't work for Pogo because he was kinda twisted to get his head out.  Here is a pic of it, you can see that it would work great for a very small dog, but how is a big dog gonna get his head curled around to the middle?

Had to go to plan B, the "ghetto" plan. A few years back at a motorcycle rally, I saw a guy  with a milk crate bungied to the back of his bike, with his dog in the milk crate. It looked pretty ghetto, but worked great.  So I went to Target, found a black milk crate (matches the Harley), and this is what we came up with, and this is our first ride together yesterday !

Just so you know, he has a harness on and is tied down so he can't jump out.  We started out slow around the neighborhood,  stopped often and got lots of treats along the way.  He seemed to really be enjoying it.  My pipes are pretty loud, so I was more concerned about that scaring him, but it didn't seem to phase him the slightest.

Since this went over so well, it was time to get some "doggles"  to protect his eyes.  After a trip to Petsmart, this is what we found:

He seemed to tolerate those really well too!  OMG, this has been too easy.  I always say, rescue dogs are the best!  Today we are going to go out and ride again, and the hubster is going to film a little video of us on the road. I'll post it later.  Who knows, maybe we'll become as famous as Ara and Spirit some day !

I also spent more time this weekend on looking up info for building my "green" cottage down in Terlingua.  I have found some interesting info on cob (house made of dirt), and am considering attending a workshop in California to learn how to build using cob.  Here is a very cool video from the guy who I plan on taking the class with: