Weekend in the Sun, Part 2

I got home late on Saturday night after a full day of picnicking and rock & roll. Then I had to drag myself out of bed on Sunday, because I had to get out to the track. That's the horse track, not the dog track.

I didn't just up and decide to go to the track for no reason. For one thing, being a grammatically-minded young man, I almost never "up and" anything. I either decide or I don't. But what I'm trying to get at is that I didn't go alone, probably because I never worked up the energy.

The track in question is Emerald Downs, just south of Seattle. What's odd about that is that I too am just south of Seattle. In fact, I live about fifteen minutes away from the track. But in all the years I've lived here, I've never once said "Hey! I need to go bet on horse-racing!" It's just laziness, I expect.

Luckily for me, though, there was a group of people going and I got invited. It was neat, not just because going outside represents a daring departure from my normal book-intensive behavior, but because I got to meet people. In fact, I got to meet Gael of Pop Culture Junk Mail! She's on Damn Hell Ass Kings! Okay, I realize that so am I, but DHAK is not the closely-knit incestuous community you may be imagining. In fact, this is the first time I've actually met any of the other people, if you don't count TeeVee. So that was neat, although we didn't talk about DHAK at all.

Actually, I'd met Gael once before at a party, which is what led to me being included in the racing party. I think this is getting unnecessarily complicated, possibly as a result of my determination to keep writing in this convoluted style. Perhaps a flowchart would help. Here's the order of events.

1. The Earth's crust cools
2. William Howard Taft elected President
3. Montykins and Pop Culture Junk Mail are both sites on Damn Hell Ass Kings
4. Gael (of PCJM) moves to Seattle and invited me to a party which features board games
5. One of the other people at that party invites a bunch of people to go to the track

Okay, got all that? I think I've covered all the relevant details, and we're almost ready for the part where I'm actually watching horses race. The group of people was largely composed of people with some degree of online presence, so a lot of the introductions featured people's real names and their screen name on various forums. Or, if you insist, fora. Oh, and the person who organized the racing trip was a very pretty woman. May I continue now?

I've bet on horses before. I think the last time was, um, about seventeen years ago. Possibly a little more. I don't remember much, but I think I stuck with the wussy bets, like "two dollars on half the horses in the race to show" and "I'd just like to bet that all the horses have a good time". This time out, I wanted to seem more like I belonged. I went to the website of the Daily Racing Form and downloaded a PDF that alleged that it would teach me all I needed to know about racing. But the first few pages were full of racing trivia and attempts to justify the claim that racing is the "sport of kings", so I never quite got down to the definitions of "exacta", "perfecta", and "Cuban Supremo".

I did read some Damon Runyon to get myself in the mood, but it turns out that racetracks are no longer infested by touts in cheap suits sporting cool names like "The Lemon Drop Kid". I find this very disappointing, because it seems like all the old bastions of sleaze are gone. I'm almost afraid to go to the carnival these days, in case I find out that it's being run by fine upstanding people with no tattoos and all their teeth. Instead, someone has turned horse-racing into a wholesome activity to be enjoyed by the whole family. There were kids' games and pony rides and a really horrifying musical act that herded children and forced them to dance along to kiddified versions of vaguely country songs.

I did not make money. In fact, I lost about thirty dollars. Luckily, I happen to believe that "losing money at the track" is one of the coolest ways to lose your money, so I'm not that broken up about it. By the end of the day, I was boxing the exacta and betting across the board and generally losing my money with as much jargon as possible. It's like playing craps: you may lose your money, but you get to yell things like "Baby needs a new pair of everything!" And when you lose at the track, you get to rip up your ticket theatrically and fling the pieces to the ground. The first time I tried that, I accidentally disposed of the ticket pieces in a convenient trash receptacle, but I managed to get with the program.

We spent a lot of time at the paddock, checking out the horses that were going to be in the upcoming race. Before Race 2, one of the horses was very edgy and reared up during the all-important walking-around phase. I was of the opinion that it was a sign that the horse's mind wasn't in the right place. Everyone else felt that it meant the horse was raring to go. Incidentally, that's where the phrase "raring to go" comes from. I mention that because everyone else was right to bet on that horse.

Later on, there was a horse which appeared to be blind in one eye. Seriously! From twenty feet away, we could tell that the eyeball was completely opaque, and the horse got fit with a special protective blinder. Naturally, we were sure to avoid betting on that horse. And equally naturally, that horse proceeded to win with a great effort down the home stretch, presumably while unable to see the other horses. So what I've learned is that I'm not very good at assessing horses and their racing ability just by eyeballing the horseflesh. Unfortunately, I'm also not good at looking through the Racing Form and making a reasoned judgment based on the horse's racing history in different weathers and on different tracks.

One of the group brought technology to apply to the problem. He had a fancy gadget into which he was supposed to enter all the arcane information, and it would tell him which horses had the best chance of winning. Except that the gadget dated from 1979, which is before the words "user-friendly" were invented. So he had to start entering data during Race 4 if he wanted to place a bet on Race 8. And then, after spending hours pushing buttons on this thing (made, incidentally, by Mattel Electronics), he discovered that the best bet in Race 8 was a 12-1 shot named "Cowboy Jazz". Naturally, the horse was scratched right before the race, because it had been "spooked". We figured that the racetrack officials ordered the horse scratched when they realized that somebody had found a thirteen-year-old device for picking winners.

The only other scratch came just before one of the races when a horse threw its jockey and ran all the way around the track on its own. It looked like it wanted to keep running, but apparently there are "rules" or something, so it didn't get to participate in the actual race.

Overall, I had a good time, despite the aforementioned loss of thirty bones. I'd been outside about four hours before I gave up and begged some suntan lotion. I'd been facing away from the sun most of the time, so now I'm not that burnt on my face, but the back of my neck is so red I could be in a Jeff Foxworthy routine. I've picked up some aloe vera gel, which is doing a pretty good job of lessening the pain, but it's weird stuff. Although it's a gel, it's in a spray bottle, which just doesn't seem right, you know?

That about wraps up the epic weekend of activity. I've got a little less money, a new They Might Be Giants shirt, and a sunburn. Whee!