Leaving Las Vegas (At Least For A While)

I’ve been living in the desert for about 3-1/2 years now and, to be honest, I didn’t expect to be here that long. I didn’t know where I might eventually land, but spending the rest of my days here in Vegas was never in the cards, so to speak.

Now, I’m preparing to leave town and, truth be told, I still don’t really know where I’m going to end up. I have some hope that I may, before too long, find myself back in California, but I can’t guarantee that will happen as I write this. In the meantime, I’m taking some time and heading back east to catch up with friends and family that I haven’t seen in too long a time. Will I stay on the East Coast? I don’t know, but at this point, anything is possible.

There’s plenty that I miss about the New York/New England area where I grew up and there’s a certain appeal to returning to the area. Green trees in the Summer. The leaves changing in the Fall. Cities where you can actually walk from one place to another. Culture that isn’t all manufactured by Guy Laliberte and the strangely flexible people who star in the myriad of Cirque De Soleil shows you can find on the Strip. Really good pizza, deli, and bagels. You get the picture.

What don’t I miss? Winter. It’s not that I mind the cold all that much, but rather, what comes along with it… shoveling driveways, digging cars out of snowbanks, digging parking spaces out of snowbanks…. Basically, I don’t miss snowbanks. I like snow, however, especially in the city. There’s a certain peacefulness you’ll find during a snow storm in New York or Boston that you won’t really find anywhere else. It’s special and almost magical, at least for the few hours before the sanders and snowplows come out to play. Or before the snow inevitably becomes rain, turning all that fluffy white powder into large, gray hunks of ice and huge, frozen snowbanks, which, trust me, are even more annoying than regular snowbanks. Still, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a real Winter, and a change of pace may not be the worst thing in the world for me.

What about poker?, You might ask.

I will certainly miss having more than 20 poker rooms within a 15-minute drive of my couch, but since I haven’t been playing much over the past few months, the withdrawal shouldn’t be that bad. That said, when I do get the urge to play seriously, I’m going to have to think ahead and schedule two to three hours in order for me to get to Foxwoods or Atlantic City, depending on where I’m staying at any given time. And yes, thoughts like this make me miss online poker even more keenly than I have over the past eight months.

Still, I’m playing the hand I’ve been dealt right now and that means, the East Coast is where I need to be for the next month or so. I’ll miss my friends here in town but, honestly, I not going to be heart-broken to put Vegas behind me. At least for a while.

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