May 4th, Madison: I wake up a little before noon. I immediately throw on some shorts, socks, and tennis shoes and go running around my neighborhood. Then I come home, eat breakfast, and challenge my dad to some more tennis. This time he beats me pretty solidly, and I’m feeling more sluggish today than in our previous match and he’s beating me soundly
“My legs are tired from the working out and running. That’s going to be my excuse for the day.”

We don’t get to play long because I need to be dropped off at the bus station. When we finish I grab a quick sandwich then take a shower and get changed into a suit. My dad drives me over to the bus station in the city and I purchase a return ticket for Milwaukee and back. The ride to from Madison to the center of Milwaukee is only about 100 minutes, which I mostly use to write or occasionally stare out the window while listening to music. May is a very nice month in Wisconsin.

When we arrive in Milwaukee I get off the bus at the city station and make the five block walk over to Uhle’s cigar shop on Wisconsin street. They are having an Ashton tasting today, which is one of my favorite lines of cigars. The place is quite packed compared to normal, and Tamara gives me the ticket she reserved for me. The tasting is $10 and you get an excellent cigar, walnuts, chocolate, and scotch, which I pass on because the slightest contact with brown liquor leads to instant vomiting no matter my sobriety level (so when I refuse whatever brown drink or shot you offer me in Vegas don’t get too offended.)

I hang around smoking my giant cigar flirting with Tamara and chatting to her coworker Dave, who is a movie enthusiast like me. We run down what promises to kick ass this summer, with both of us expecting Public Enemy with Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and directed by Michael Mann to kick major ass. It’s about John Dillinger, who if you know your history was one of the most inventive and stylish bank robbers of all time that once cut a bar of soap into the shape of a gun, put black shoe polish all over it, and escaped from jail by mugging the guard with it. He was the kind of guy who was always going to get himself killed thanks to a woman. If you’ve ever heard stories of women in red being dangerous, it’s because of Dillinger.

Late into the tasting my friends Rob and Joe come to meet me at the store. Rob was my very first backer in poker, a friend I met through propping online when we both realized we were on the North East Side of Milwaukee. We hit it off very well and the last semester I ever did at Milwaukee I was living at his apartment. He and Joe now own and operate www.rakebacknation.com and www.neverbeg.com, the latter of which they have turned into the second largest poker forum on the internet in terms of traffic, a huge accomplishment. I buy them both a tasting ticket and we hang around the store catching up and giving ourselves and each other cancer. They have bought season tickets to the Brewers home games right behind third base and they offer to take me whenever’s convenient. I offer to wear a patch for their staking site throughout the WSOP for free. We all get along very well.

Once we finish our cigar we take a drive over near Brady Street for a burger at an Irish pub and restaurant. I am disappointed there’s not a town drunk inside. The burger kicks serious ass, as do the Brewers who are on TV. I have missed baseball and American sports culture in general. It’s not that Australia doesn’t have a great sports culture, it’s simply that they’re not the sports I grew up with and therefore I feel no legitimate alliance to any team or franchise. I’ve been to a few Australian footy games, but my most enthusiastic moments during those were shouting “COVER THE SPREAD!!!” near the end of the game. They did.

After the Irish pub we drive over to a bar next to Uhle’s where I’m supposed to meet Tamara to get the bag I obviously left in the store back. When we get there I find that I’ve missed her and the bartender is holding it waiting for me. We sit down to have a drink and my friends start rattling off names of big name poker players and asking if they’re a nice guy, scumbag, or douchebag in my experience. Not surprisingly, the scumbag/douchebag list winds up being considerably longer than the nice guy list.

They drop me at my friend Jenson’s apartment after the drink. Jenson and I decide to take a night walk like we used to and just chat about things. He discusses the difficulty of trying to figure out whether he should continue to pursue his film career or instead go back to school to do accounting. I’ve found this in a lot of my friends since returning home; they’ve finished college and entered a career path only to find it to be fairly lackluster compared to what they’d hoped or imagined. As a guy with no experience in the legitimate world since he was 18 I feel odd offering them any advice, though I normally state that “You should do whatever the fuck you feel like. If you hate your shit quit and find something else to do while you’re still young and don’t have any major responsibilities.” Easy for me to say I suppose.

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