My trip last week to Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit and Windsor Canada turned out to be a real adventure. I left on Monday afternoon the 16th and returned on Monday the 23nd. After spending the night in Monroeville, PA, I went to the ANA Convention in Pittsburgh on Tuesday morning to set up my Exhibit of Atlantic City Tokens. When I got to the Convention I was a little upset to find that I was the only one who had an Exhibit in the Casino Chip and Token Category. I was hoping to have some competition like I had at the 2003 ANA Convention.
I am planning to have another Exhibit at the 2005 ANA Convention in San Jose, California next year. The ANA is the week before our CC>CC Convention in Las Vegas in August. Hopefully there will be more than one Exhibit in the Chip and Token category. After I left Pittsburgh I headed for Chicago to do some chip hunting. On the way thru Indiana I ran thru a severe thunderstorm and at one point a lighting bolt hit the ground only about 20 feet from my car as I was traveling along Interstate 80. It was a little scary, but I pressed on to Chicago. I spent two nights at Harrahs in Joilet and I visited the Casinos in the surrounding area – Joilet, Elgin and Aurora. On Thursday I stopped at the four Casinos in the Hammond-Gary Indiana area. I spent Thursday night in Michigan City, Indiana and visited the Blue Chip Casino. On Friday night I went to two Casinos in Detroit and the Casino Windsor in Canada. I got back to my motel in Monroe, Michigan about 35 miles South of Detroit and when I finally got to bed it was about 2:00 A.M. in the morning. About two hours later I woke up because I could not breathe - my nose and throat were totally clogged up. I had to go outside in order to breathe. There must have been an excessive amount of dust or mold in the room. I went down to the office and checked out of the motel at about 4:30 A.M. and had to go find another motel. Luckily I found another motel about a half mile away. It was 6:00 A.M. by the time I got settled in the second motel. I ate the Continental breakfast and went to bed. I got up at about 2:00 P.M. I hung around the motel the rest of the day and finally headed back to Detroit around 8:00 P.M. to visit the MGM Casino. This is when things took a turn for the worse!!! As I pulled into the parking garage at the MGM, the parking attendant told me I had a FLAT TIRE. I pulled over to a corner of the garage and changed the flat and put on the “donut” spare tire. After I changed the tire I called around to several places in the Monroe area to see about getting my flat tire repaired. The only place open was a “Truckstop of America” but the only mechanic on duty was out on a service call and wouldn’t be back for about an hour. I figured I might as well go up to the Casino and gamble for awhile since I couldn’t get my tire fixed. I got lucky and found a good slot machine and ended up winning $400.00. That would be my high point of the evening. I got to the Truckstop at around 1:30 A.M. and the mechanic tried to fix my tire but could not get the tire off the rim because he did not have equipment to work on car tires only stuff for extra large truck tires. In the process he bent the edge of the rim on my tire. When I left the truck stop I decided to locate a place that might be open in the morning to fix my tire. I drove about five miles and I noticed that my “engine” light had come on and a few seconds later the heat gauge went all the way to HOT. Luckily I spotted a convenience store that was open all night. I pulled my van up in front of the store and opened the front hood and water was spraying everywhere. I called AAA and a tow truck came in about a half hour and towed my disabled van back to the motel. I got to bed at about 4:30 A.M. and got a wake up call for 8:30 A.M. When I got up I called a Firestone store that was luckily open on Sunday morning and they said they would look at the van if I could bring it in. I filled the radiator up with water and headed for the Firestone store which was about five miles away. The temperature gauge slowly inched up as I drove to the Firestone store and just as I pulled into the driveway of the store all of the water in the radiator spewed out on the ground – it was about 9:30 A.M. After checking out the van, fixing the rim and the flat tire and replacing the thermostat at 11:45 A.M. I was on my way back to Pittsburgh to pick up my Exhibit which had to be removed before 4:00 P.M. I drove 75 miles an hour the entire way to Pittsburgh and got to the Convention center at 3:45 P.M. I picked up my first place ribbon, certificate and Exhibitor’s medal, but they had given me the wrong medal for the chip category. All the medals were already packed up for shipping back to ANA headquarters in Colorado, so they will send MY medal to me in a couple of weeks. I left Pittsburgh around 5:15 P.M. and got home to Delaware at 12:30 A.M. Monday morning. WHAT A TRIP !!!! The attached roulettes are new ones I picked up on this trip – they are $4.00 each delivered or I will trade for other Roulette chips I need. The purple chip in the center of the 3rd row is from the Majestic Star. If you are interested in any of these chips please email me.
Till later,
“Mr. Roulette”