Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

actually I had Sushi for dinner.
















Golden Gate Fields for Daphne's birthday (and free St. Patrick's Day flashing mug FTW!)
















It was really interesting. I always enjoy peering into these weird segments of American life that normally stay hidden from the everyday man. Horse racing is a mysterious subculture that is both very high end in the star athlete jockeys, the million dollar purses, famous horse breeders, horse lineage, horse trainers, ridiculously wealthy owners, etc. And then on the other end of the spectrum you've a lot of poor people just trying to get lucky playing the horses. And then you get the weird rich people. I saw a Chrysler 300 pimped out to be made to look like it was a Bentley. It had a Bentley logo on the front hood. Hahaha. And someone made a $1000 bet in front of us at the wager booth. Oh yeah, and there are schmoes like us hooting and hollering having a sponsored by alcohol good time.
















These are like a bunch of scrubs wandering on the track. By the way, the Jockey Club in Hong Kong is like 7000 times nicer than this place.
































































Here I am, picking up a trifecta bet (you have to pick the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place horse). I wasn't so excited when I found out that I only won ~$5. The previous race, the trifecta paid out $33. It almost was a spectacular finish for me. Race 8, I bet $8 on the long shot to show. You can bet to win, place, or show. Win is obvious. Place means 1st or 2nd place. You win less. Show means 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. The race started with my horse at 20:1 odds. Those are based on the track estimates. As beats are made, the money pots affect those odds. When the race started, I was getting 50:1 odds on my horse so if I had bet to win and won, it would have probably would have won $500. Since I bet to show, I can only guess around $200-300. Horse 5 (sadly there was no horse 8) ran in FIRST place for about 75% of the race but didn't have the staying power in that last furlong and ended up finishing 5th. For the first 5 furlongs though, I was jumping around like an idiot.









St. Patricks Day + Bay Bridge = traffic.