You’re not going to be seeing me in the World Series of Poker anytime soon. I’m just not aggressive enough. But that’s actually what keeps me interested. It’s not the hours at a poker table waiting around for a pair of aces that intrigues me. In fact, if I do any more poker playing, I’m going to have to take up knitting in order to justify the time spent in a chair. The psychology of the game is what fascinates me. There are hundreds of variables in a poker game. The cards will fall where they will, but it’s the human element that makes the game exciting. To see someone play fearlessly is fascinating and I’m willing to bet that the way someone plays poker is the way he or she does everything. I’m easy-going to a fault and I let people walk all over me at the poker table. I’m using the practice at the table to hone some of that killer instinct that the lesbians from Whitehorse who came first and second in the tournament so obviously possess.

I won the very first hand at my table yesterday with pocket jacks and a third on the flop. It was a nice pot and I doubled my twenty dollars' worth of chips. I thought that was a good omen. I was chip leader at my table with 1350 when we broke for lunch. The stakes had only gone up to 25/50 by then and everyone was still in the game with extra buy-ins.

After lunch things heated up quickly with the blinds and bet limits going up every half hour. With the bets at 100/200, eight or nine hundred bucks in chips doesn't last very long... We had a table shuffle when three players at ours went out and I lost my edge. I'd spent the morning feeling everyone out and getting to know my table. With new players in the mix every ten or fifteen minutes, I was quickly out-bluffed, out-bet, and out-handed. I went out just before they made the final two tables--"on the bubble" as John says, which I think means just before the money. Things got very quiet and very serious after that.

Alberta, who wore a t-shirt that said "I've got the nuts," and played two seats to my right until I went out, dominated until the end with a mountain of chips. Everyone was glad to see her win as opposed to the cocky Carla who won last year and, according to the women at my table, went around bragging for a year. She was, in fact, my demise. I went up against her all-in with an ace/six or something pathetic. She had two pairs and looked with great pride through her sunglasses at my remaining two or three hundred she was adding to her pile. Ah yes. Knitting is a nice idea, isn't it?

Every rider who sees Henk’s mangled rear tire tells me to take it easy. “Sounds scary,” said Blaine at Yukon Harley when I told him the cord was just starting to show through down the center. “I wouldn’t even do the trip to Whitehorse on that.” Seeing as how the road from Whitehorse to Dawson is what mangled it in the first place, I’m going to take everyone’s advice and get a lift in a truck on Thursday with Sue, forth place finisher in the tournament. Maybe I’ll pick up some of her aggression by osmosis over the course of the five-hour drive.

Thanks to Lightning Bolt Pete, aka “Captain 90” of the X-Riders, I managed to find a tire that’ll work for Henk at the Honda parts place in Whitehorse. It’s 10mm thicker than what he’s got now, but it’ll fit. Yukon Harley was out of stock, as was their supplier in Toronto, and they said it would take a couple of weeks. I panicked and went crying to Pete, who has a wallet full of numbers for parts suppliers all over the Yukon and BC because of the predicament he’s in with his dented 1800 from the accident. He’s now working demonstrating panning for gold to the German tourists out at Claim 33. Says the sifting action is good for his broken collarbone and the Germans love him cause he speaks their language—sure looks the part of a grizzly old gold prospector too. You’d never know it was just a few weeks ago he was struck by lightning and thrown from his bike. He’s out dancing at The Pit every night (so he tells me: “My equilibrium is off a bit today. Late night at The Pit again. Think I need another cigarette…”) he’s got a job, and he’s actually riding his motorbike around town. Crazy.

Dawson has been good for me. It’s been a great end of the road resting place; a good place to sit still and sift through the muck. I’ve had a lot of unwanted emotional residue floating on the surface in need of a thorough sluicing. I’m still trying to distill the gritty sands into something useful and precious. I’m hopeful... As evidenced by gold nuggets found in muddy rivers, or brilliant colors erupting from rocky rolling tundra, or Lightning Bolt Pete still walking around smiling his electric toothless smile for all the world to witness, miracles happen every day.