Day 1 - Travel Day

27th July 2010
I wake up at a friends house in Sydney. Feeling pretty clean and healthy at the moment. I have been under the rules of Dry July for the best part of a month now, and have only lapsed once. I get the feeling all my hard work maybe undone over the next 2 months, but we will see.....
Packed and ready i head to the airport for the flight to Launceston. Joe & Phil are on the same flight as me to Melbourne where we will meet up with Kris and get on a 40 minute Virgin flight to the Apple Isle.. (you like that?).
Don't see anyone till we get to Melbourne but its good to see the guys when we all get together. The jokes are the same....but there still funny!
The flight is easy and we arrive in Launceston around 5pm. We grab our bags and our hire Tarago and head into town. We are staying at the Hotel Grand Chancellor hotel. We have stayed here a lot before, and its affectionately known to us as the Shihad hotel, due to a night we had in the lobby bar with those guys a few years back. That night ended with me trying to pass out in the wrong hotel room (i was drunk, it was dark)...but that's a story for Phil to tell, i don't really remember it, but it affected him quite badly.....
Back to the present & Phil has found a pub which is running a poker night! The 4 of us get back in the car and head off to the TRC, which we think is an acronym for Total Retard Club!
This place is kinda cool. A happy bloke named Mark registers us to play in the tournament, and asks a lot of questions, wondering who these strangers are, "Oh you guys! I've heard of you dudes!" Pretty soon everyone in the place knows the poker kings have arrived!
We grab some food then make our way to our table to get the game on.
I have played a little, as has Kris. Phil has played heaps but Joe not much at all so the first few hands were about relearning the rules. Apart from the 4 of us we had 4 more locals on our table. They went buy the names of Beefy, Leroy, Chow and Damo. These guys were hilarious, and i think they were pretty happy to be playing with us. The game was going along nicely, lots of dangerous betting from Krisso, and plenty of mum and wife jokes being thrown around. Then just before the half time break some wanna be Paul Gallen lookalike sits down at the vacant spot left by Damo, and places down his short stack of chips. Hmmmmm...
We play out the last hand and have 20 minutes to stretch our legs.
Back to the game and this Paul Gallen muthafucker is the terminator! He takes out me and Kris with ease, then sets his sights on the rest of the table.
Joe and Phil both survive the onslaught and get moved to separate tables to fight it out with the rest of the players for a spot on the final table. Joe has the terminator sitting across from him and they are locked in battle. The terminator takes Joe out, much to everyones' disgust!
Phil has been calling himself "final table Phil" since we arrived, and he duly makes it there, but so does the Paul Gallen lookalike wannabe muthafuckin terminator! We are really hating this guy now...
Boom! The terminator is knocked out! Followed with much laughter and applause!
But Phil is under pressure now...he goes all in!.....and loses.

Fun night. I drive home (it's still July) and head up to my room to crash. Those guys go to the lobby bar. As i'm drifting off i can hear them stumbling around outside my room and goes a little something like this..
"come on Davvo ya f__king pussy .....hahahahah ....f__king whatever ........pussy .....hahahaha .... f__k this i'm going to bed...."
Rehearsals tomorrow.