Barcelona Bound

Another airport, another game of high stakes poker, another fabulous destination: Barcelona, City of Culture. I should be capable of pulling off an affectation of ennui about the rich-and-famous lifestyle as I've led this summer but I just can't bring myself to fake boredom. I'm as infected with excitement as ever, even if it *is* 5:30am. (one of these days I'll book a flight that leaves at a civilised time of the morning, say... 4pm).

Booking into the flight was like a reunion. Standing in line I can hear a very soft "Tom. Tom!" emanating from somewhere. I look up and see Oscar and Marq checking in on the far side, they spot me and we exchange waves. "Tom!" There it is again, its like a very very loud whisper. I look behind me and spot Neil doing his level best to shout!

I managed to make it past security relatively unmolested this time despite their increasingly bizarre requirements. I fully expect the next time I travel by air, everyone will be required to strip to the buff and go arse first into that damned x-ray machine! I've taken to smuggling something past them each time, anything from their list that strikes me as ridiculous. This time I go for the classic nail-clippers and put it in with my laptop case. It amuses me to carry such innocuous items on board through millions of pounds of security equipment.

I buy a coffee and work out which gate I have to trudge to. The coffee is roughly the temperature of the sun. Its wrapped in deeply corrugated cardboard to protect the hard skin of my hands from being burned by coffee already separated from me by a cardboard cup. And I'm supposed to drink this?!

Laptop, various bits of reporting equipment, duty free, scalding hot coffee all hinder me getting to the gate which is inconveniently the furthest gate on the end of the furthest wing. As you'd expect.

Breakfast sees us run into Willow, Christie Smith and number of the Dublin poker community at the gate and we munch a poker player's breakfast, which is to say whatever pastry thing they've put nearest the cash register this week. Some twisted, flattened chocolate and custard thing (which looks like its run over by a fleet of steam rollers). Everyone looks shattered but we're buzzing about Barcelona, anticipating a week of poker and more importantly a license to have a bloody good time for 6 days! Its the last of the summer and everyone knows it!

After ten minutes I take a sip of the coffee and immediately burn my lip. I wonder if somehow the energy this liquid has been charged with wouldn't have been better used, oh I dunno, to power a small town perhaps? By the time we have queued to board, the coffee is just bearable to drink. Actually... its not, its an utterly foul concoction of Dantean proportions. Luckily for me and just as I think I'm about make one trip without something bizarre and moronic happening to me, the barmy army of airport rules lawyers fail me not. I'm stopped at the gate and told I can't take my coffee on board. I can't *begin* to imagine why this is? Perhaps they are concerned that I'll scald fellow travelers in the name of Allah or something. I dunno.... For once I don't argue and hand the irritatingly happy "air steward" my coffee. Oh, by the way, you're not fooling anyone mate, its a sissy's job and stop being so god damned happy at 7am. Got it?

Dave O'Callaghan and Dave Callaghan (we should really nick name the former DOC or something, for ease) group up with us on the plane. Marq and I reckon that this could be the Munich disaster for Irish poker in the making.

I'm fairly shattered as we board the plane, I've been up all night having played in the €100 freezeout last night. The best I can say for my night was that I outlasted Joe O'Neill with whom I have a running "last longest" bet. Every tournament we both play in automatically counts and when one gets 5 wins ahead the other owes him €100. After I took a swift lead last year Joe had pulled it back to level and then went 2 ahead. Now I've dragged it back to level again in the last two weeks. Rather meanly as I saw Joe taking the long walk I called to him and picked up about 400 of my 2500 chips, shrugged at him with a grin on my face pretending that that was all I had had left. Serves him right for all the times he's pushed me off pots!

So we're on the plane, we're in the air and another poker adventure is about to start! Whats the first thing the air hostess gives me? A coffee. Scaldingly hot.

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