I took Lydia to the Fairmount Park Race Track to see the horse races Tuesday. I thought it would be a nice way to actually see a horse, in contrast to the hellish Kentucky Derby. Fairmount Park is pretty much the opposite of Churchhill Downs, in a good way. First off, on Horse Hooky Tuesdays it costs $1.50 to get in. Boom. Smallish (12oz?) draught beers are $1.50 and that covers the fancier stuff too. Blue Moons for me. And the little hot dogs they were selling were a dollar. The betting lines are short, and there's several air-conditioned indoor and outdoor places to sit and watch. The best part was not even one drunken stranger puked on me. I'd say we saw four races, drank beers, ate hotdogs, and toured the damn grounds all in the time it took us to endure the line outside the Derby.
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I thought it was interesting how the mood changed in the different areas of the place. The more run-of-the-mill people present for entertainment were outside by the track's fence and inside sitting on bleachers. Exploring the building overlooking the track revealed those who are a bit more serious. There are lots of tables and even some private conference/meeting room looking places filled with people seriously scouring over a multitude of papers intent on finding betting secrets. Even more serious than that was a room full of little desks all lined up. Each desk had its own little TV with races continuously showing, and the desks were all facing a wall sized screen on one end of the room. It was a bit like a NASA mission control room for gambling addicts.
We lost the first two races, and then won it all back on the third.
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