My luck held out on my afternoon hike yesterday:

Things can be a little dicey here sometimes. I took this photo before I crossed over the bridge, just in case. It turned out to be sturdier than it appears. Although it is probably lucky I no longer weigh 270 pounds. You can also see the littering issue I sometimes rail about. Folks will literally sweep the dirt in the yard surrounding their shack. And then think nothing of throwing trash into the creek behind their house. All I can do is shake my head and walk on.

I also had some good luck in darts last night. It was an annual tournament played in honor of the now-deceased former owner of Alley Cats. So there was a good turnout, the entry fee was doubled to P200, and the payout was higher. Oh, and they served some snacks. I even practiced for the second day in a row! I guess all that hard work paid off because I drew Steve, the Englishman who doesn’t drink, as my partner.

Okay, you could almost hear the groans. Steve is the best player around and my game, such as it is, it also pretty well respected. On some nights I might even be the second-best player in the tourney. So, in a lot of minds, it was a foregone conclusion that Steve and I were going to win even before the first dart was thrown. Except you’ve got to play to find out and there were some other solid teams standing between us and victory.

Here’s the thing, there’s a lot more pressure when you are expected to win. And as Steve noted, everyone in the bar was pulling against us. I get that, no one was rooting for Goliath either. Well, Steve threw his usual solid game and I was typically inconsistent with moments of brilliance, especially hitting the out shots better than usual. But Alan and Rica took us to the third leg in a hard-fought battle before we prevailed. We then met Christie and Jocelyn in the finals and they could have (should have) beat us. Christie was on fire and I’ve never seen Jo throw such strong games. In the end, we came out on top as expected, but it was no walk in the park.

Back in my previous life, I had started a singles dart league in Seoul and in Columbia. It proved to be quite popular. I’m thinking of doing the league here in Barretto but no longer have any of the files (rules, scoresheets, etc) I used. Emailed an old friend back in Korea and asked if he might still have them. His response: “You got lucky” and sent me a link to dropbox. Heh, let’s see if I’m lucky enough to figure out how to access files from dropbox.

In other news, I see that President Trump regrets his hasty decision to jump into the recent anti-vaping hysteria. Which got me thinking. I haven’t vaped since around Christmas time. I’m pretty much over what had been ailing me and there is really no reason not to resume my habit. Except I don’t think I will. In fact, I put all my vape gear away this morning and decided to move on to the next vice. Whatever that may prove to be. I never thought vaping hurt my lungs, but why push my luck?