Well, the Canada Day Long Weekend has come and gone and here's a run down on what happened... but from my (nelson's) POV.

I was on a Safeway bus tour the whole weekend, so all my stories will be about my trip. First of all, the trip was with my family and my parents had decided to go to Michigan, Casino hopping. I've never been to a casino where I was old enough to gamble, so I thought that his might be kinda fun, you know, new experience and all. But first, there was the bus ride up....
The first night we went up to Sault Ste. Marie, but more importantly, stopping off a big Outlet mall for shopping. I normally do most of my clothes shopping on vacations at large outlet malls (the kind where there's a bus to take you to different parts of the mall) with my sister, Grace, and this time was no different. Anyway, our target store was J.Crew, but it was all the way on the other side of the mall. So we eventually got there, stopping off at many stores along the way, so needless to say, we arrived there with not too much time left. We shopped there for a bit (btw, their winter stuff is much better than their summer stuff), but soon it was time to go... so as we were checking out, they had a discount - if you signed up for a credit card with them you can get 10% off your purchase. Well being chinese and all, I signed up right away just for the discount, but by this time, we were suppose to be back on the bus already! And the cashier was having trouble with my application b/c I'm Canadian so it was getting a little stressful... I know the bus isn't going to leave us behind or anything, but being the last people back on the bus is kind of embarrassing, so we tried running back. If you were outside this weekend you would understand how impossible that is. So we ran for a bit, gave up and walked all the way back…. late. Oh well… I can’t understand the snide comments from the passengers anyway since they are all in Cantonese. But the good thing is now I have a J.Crew credit card, which my sister says will be very helpful when you order off their website b/c they have a lot of sales that involve the credit card. Plus, when we got back, our dad had bought us lunch, which we hadn’t had yet, b/c my sister’s motto is “shop now, eat later.” (Actually, she wouldn’t use those exact words, but you get the point)
Anyway, I was glad to eat (as always) and my sister was happy too since she picked up $18 (US) CK jeans.

Onto the gambling: My cousin Robert went on the same trip last year and he has a gambling system. He won over $400 (US), so I figure I should give it a try. It works like this: bet the minimum after every time you win, but if you lose, double your bet until you win. Once you win, go back down to the minimum bet. As long as you don’t reach the table maximum on a long losing streak, you will continue winning money. So I sit down at the blackjack table with $100 and start playing. On the second deal I start a losing streak. I get up to my fourth straight loss, and that means I’m betting $24 on one hand. Fine, I have to stick with the system for it to work. BUT it was at this point my mom finds me and she thinks I’m crazy, b/c I’m betting so much. I proceed to lose that hand, which means I’m suppose to bet $48 (almost all I had left) on the next one, but since my mom is there, she objected, and so as to not make a scene, I bet the table minimum of $3. I lost two more and then start winning…. so I start off the night down almost $60. And good thing my mom showed up, otherwise I would have had to go to bed early. So for the rest of the night I bet small, and I made it back on the positive side by the end of the night.

The next night, I decide to keep the bets small again. This time I lost a bunch of money at the $5 blackjack table, but not a whole lot. I counted my longest losing streak, and it was 8!!! I think I lost about $55 during that streak, so good thing I didn’t use that system that night. BTW, did I mention you get some free money in chips every night? So overall, I came back from the casinos with $30 more bucks then I came in with. So technically, I did lose money at the casino, but in the bigger picture, I came out on top. Although, if I just cashed in my chips right away, I would have come out with more money, but that’s no fun.

Casinos are actually a kind of depressing place actually... I was watching this one lady bet $100 each round of blackjack... and I saw her lose about $1000 in about 20 min. And the people that inhabit casinos aren't exactly the greatest either... plus all that smoke. Oh well, fun for an occasional thing.

Overall it was a pretty fun trip, quite possibly one of my last family ones for a while at least. Plus when I got back, I got to play some Ultimate and hang out with the guys, which is always fun. Anyway, looking forward to the camping trip this weekend!

Nels