Travel and First Impressions

I love flying. We move such huge distances in negligible time. The moment just before the plane lifts off causes an array of emotions to flicker through me. A crippling wave of nostalgia and a slight note of sadness are quickly replaced by a blooming peace and wonder. The unknown has never been a thing that frightens me, it exhilarates.

I flew out of La Guardia on a plane that was supposed to leave at 3pm around 3:45. It was a connecting flight to Philadelphia from where I caught my main flight to Miami. Kind of interesting, the flight to Philadelphia was aboard a small plane that had propellers on the front of the engine and only sat about 60 people. I make small talk with the guy next to me until he talks about how small the plane is and how his agent made this flight. He tells me that he is an NBA player. I am suitably impressed. I tell him I am a poker player; he is suitably impressed. If anyone follows this kind of thing (I don't) he was the 30th pick of the first round by the Bulls.

The flight to Miami was fairly uneventful. I did, for some reason, become fascinated at the way cloud cover looks 30,000 feet above the ground. I took a bunch of pictures of those infinite floors of smoke. We also passed by an enormous black thundercloud with lightning regularly flashing through it. That was cool, I'm glad we went around it though.

I'm sitting in a hostel in South Beach right now which actually isn't part of Miami. South Beach is gorgeous. Everything about it. The architecture in particular with the Art Deco buildings. It is always alive with partiers and the beach is never more than a few blocks away while the streets are lined with boutiques, coffee shops and palm trees.

I also really like some of the areas of Miami. Having really only experienced the northeastern cities I am shocked at the sprawl of it all. It goes on for a very long while. The parts by the Bay that are across the bridge from South Beach/Miami Beach like Brickell and Downtown are awesome. Then you get further out towards the west and it...really isn't that nice.

The casino. Umm wow I didn't know people race dogs. It was extremely surreal to watch dogs run by even if those dogs look like mini horses. The Action was extremely soft. I'm very satisfied with my decision even if it does suck that it takes me an hour or so to travel each way although I am only going 10 miles since I take the bus. Don't have too much to say about poker at the moment because I basically just arrived in town and I have been thinking a bunch about where I can find a place to live...it is not going well so far but I'm not really worried. It's pretty easy to argue that I should be but it's just not in my nature.