Crazy People, Horse Races, Money, and Crazy People

This past weekend my father and I went to the Sonoma County horse races. The horse races are a fascinating place due to a variety of things. There is the obvious fun of betting on horses, studying the equestrians, and just being at the horse race. But the true fun of the horse races is in the combination of subtle characteristics that are flowing throughout the air.

There are not many places in this world where it is common place for the wealthy, the poor, the middle class, the lucky, the unlucky, the hopeful, the hopeless, the young, the old, the weekend warrior and the desperately depressed to all meet in one location. The horse races is one of these few places. Within 1 minute a man can go from faithfully hopeful to desperately depressed. Other people are simply there for a weekend getaway. The air is filled with so much energy one cannot help but be fascinated by the many personalities encompassed in such a small space.

This is one of those unique characters that the horse races pulls out of the cellar.

Now obviously this wide disparity of people can be found at other sporting events but due to the lack of popularity of horse races the amount of physical separation between the people is rather small. It is so much fun just looking from north to south to east to west. One never know s who their eyes and engagement will bump into.

The horse races themselves were a blast. My father had asked me earlier in the week if I was interested in going. I excitedly said "yes" (This pleased my mother immensely as it excused her from a undesired attendance at the horse races). In addition they were offering $1 beer and $1 hot dogs. You could stick me in a room with an empty wall and a chair and if you give me $1 beer and hot dogs I would have a blast… But this event included horse races. It would be impossible to not have fun.

One of the very enjoyable aspects to the horse races is the opportunity to make lots of money. My father loves studying the horses and the race sheets. His favorite type of bet is to choose one horse as a winner and then choose a combination of 3 horses to get an exacta. An exacta is when a person chooses 3 horses. These 3 horses must get first and second place in any order for the person to win the exacta bet.

We got there at about 1230 pm and left at 5 pm. At the end of the day I had lost 3 dollars. My father on the other hand had made a profit of $82. One of my father's favorite things to say is "they owe me money". Well today he was able to happily walk out of there stating "they still owe me money but at least they paid me some of it".

This is a picture of my dad studying the horse races so they can pay him his money.

While we were there we bumped into a good friend of mine and his family. They invited us to sit in their box with them. It only made the experience that much better.

This is my dad and me with the Stephens Family