Scottsdale Family Reunion

Memorial Day weekend 2024 was a great time for us to converge in Scottsdale, AZ for a Gupta side family reunion.  The stars aligned and the Bhavsars were able to join from Austin and the Tilatis were able to join from Glen Rock, NJ.  My Mom flew in from Memphis and was truly the inspiration for this entire trip.  With one grandchild in college and one in diapers it is hard to travel and have everybody available.

Saturday (25th) - Fly into Phoenix airport on a short 1.5 hour flight from Denver.  Check into the Camelback Resort.  Dinner out that night at Barrio Queen.  I had two tacos that were ok, but nothing too exciting.

Sunday (26th) - Tennis in the morning with Priya, Vikram and Simi.  Hang out at the pool (split a sandwich and smoothie).  Dinner out that night at Spiga Ristorante.  I had the grouper special which was pretty good.  Tennis with Nisha, Diya and Rohan in the evening.

Monday (27th) - Pickleball in the morning with nearly everybody rotating in for pickleball or tennis.  Hang out at the pool.  Sandwiches for lunch and Indian food for dinner that my mom prepped in Memphis and brought frozen.  We played a poker tournament that night and Vikram bested the 8 of us to win.

Tuesday (28th) - I skipped tennis in the morning and headed to Talking Stick Resort for the 11:15 poker tournament.  The girls ran some errands in Phoenix and then we all left for the airport for the flight back to Denver which was uneventful.

Camelback Resort - Comfortable rooms, great facilities and reasonable staff.  We really took advantage of all of the crafts.  One of my personal favorites was paracord bracelets.  In addition to pickleball and tennis, we also played volleyball and badminton.  I did not take advantage of the gym, miniature golf or movie screening room.  The gym was a typical hotel gym.

Rental Car was the all electric Ford Mustang which was comfortable inside, handled well and had good acceleration.  Speed control was a little tough as letting off the accelerator quickly dropped speed as energy was likely reclaimed from the wheels.  We got around town fine and returned the vehicle with half a charge and no fuel costs.

Waymo driverless taxis were all over town.  I downloaded the app, but Talking Stick was outside of the service area.  I would have loved to take a driverless taxi.

Phoenix Centurion Lounge was OK.  They were serving lunch of chicken fingers, macaroni and cheese and a salad. 

Nisha had a chance to try some different tennis racquets and liked the Volkl V-Cell 8 285 gram that Priya plays with.  Once I verify her grip, I will likely purchase from Game-Set-Match.

Poker Tournament - Buy in was $125.  There were between 50 and 60 players and with rebuys there were 86 "entrants."  Starting with 10K in chips and blinds at 100-100, the blinds escalated every 20 minutes with breaks every 80 minutes.  I made it to the first break (L5) with my chip stack relatively flat, avoiding any big hands.  The second break (L9) had some more swings with some tough losses that cut my stack in half and some all ins that held.  I busted out during L10 with a chip stack of 61K, with 12 players remaining and the blinds at 4000-8000.  6 handed, Under the gun, I raised to 20,000 with 10-10.  It folded around to the big blind who shoved with a similar size stack to mine.  I hesitated and then called.  Coming into the blinds with 40k would have been tough to cover.  Worst case, he had a bigger pocket pair, best case he had two over cards and I was of course there to gamble.  He turned over K-K which held.  9th place would have paid $280, but there was no guarantee of me getting there.