Camptown Races

So...there was no camp, and no town. But there were some races. I was thinking more of the line, "Somebody bet on the bobtailed nag, somebody bet on the grey."

Here we are in front of the Emerald Downs sign. (JT, me, EC.) Yay! I wore a dress and a hat in honor of my first time at the races. They actually sold frou frou hats inside and I would have bought one but they all had sequins on them or feathers and I don't "do" sequins or feathers. Much. (As a side note, I suppose the best time TO "do" them would be with a hat, but alas, I did not capitalize on the "opportunity."



Top right: My open faced sandwich (interesting...it doesn't look much like a sandwich to me). The lady "did me a solid" and gave me a side of pickles.

1 (a)The trainers and jockeys get the horses ready. (See left.)
1 (b) Concurrently, the track managers do dust control with water trucks (right). It's kind of needed.

There are only about 20 minutes between races for everything that follows to happen, so they have to be kinda quick. (PS, I chose the grey to win. I'm a sucker for greys...but they never win.)

2 (a) The horses parade by, left. Look closely. (Past me.) Listen to the announcer in his half-British, half-New York twang. Choose which one you think is going to win. (I picked two winners, in a row, by the way. Tribaltikque and Quinette, icywi.)  I'm standing in the grandstands...I thought they'd would be less bleachers and more seats, but maybe I've watched too many horse-y movies where the stakes were high to be in horse race reality.

3. The first race we saw was 1 mile. A mile is eight furlongs, in case you were interested. The reason why this is important is because the different race lengths mean they have to move the gate. To do so, they get the huge truck (see?!?) and attach the gate to it. Then they move the gate with said big truck and then they do this awesome backing up thing. (Look at the perpendicular status. Those are some trailer-backing skillz.)

4. Then they get on their trusty John Deere tractors to remedy the damage done by said monster truck wheels. They play funky music and have a real life bugle/trumpeter thing that is the perfect size for the BFG. PS, when they played songs I knew before the race, I picked winners. Maybe there's a corollary there.)

5. Then they somehow convince the horses to get boxed in.

6. Then they're off!

The whole thing took less than 1:38 for a full mile, and less than 1:10 for the six and a half furlongs. Unless you were the grey. Then it took more like 1:11.

Here they are at the finish.

Here's the winner!