The trip day 2 went through Minnesota along I 94 east towards Minneapolis. Like I saw on the old interwebs the Twins were out of town, the Saints were sold out (still baffles me how a Triple A baseball team can sell out of 8-9000 seats just because their homeboys across the river are out of town) so it was on to another sport old guys seem to like. Horse racing, specifically harness racing at some track 25 miles out of Minneapolis called Running Aces.
Hotel secured with a track view and a casino right downstairs. Now Minnesota apparently hasnt grasped the 21st century quite yet because the "casino" has nothing but poker games and electronic blackjack which forces you to deal with a bunch of men who all looked like they were there on January 6th. I have no idea how to play poker nor do I want to (that whole agoraphobia thing again) and electronic blackjack, well counting to 21 is way too taxing for me compared to reading the 10 lines of information on a racing form.
Running Aces draws a lot of families for its 10 races. I haven't seen harness racing live since I was at some dump called Quad Cities Downs back in the 80s or maybe Sportsman Park in Chicago who knows. But I was in a bit of a shock at a lot of stuff. The number of children and the number of young teens. They were all over the place. Hey kid, if you find a girl who wants to hang out with you at a track, keep her forever. Thats my worthless advice for the day. Now I used to drag Max over to a dog track, yes I have a bit of Uncle Buck in me, and felt ashamed about it but the number of children, some of whom seemed to know what they were doing in recommending Number 3 to their Dad, was kind of heartening in a way as the dying sports of my youth try to hang on.
The races themselves are so different as a horse trotting like yeah yeah look at me I'm so pretty while hauling a guy in a cart with wheels around a track. Something about perfect balance if a horse trots and keeps trotting they feel no weight behind it. But as I learned in the first race I bet, if a horse suddenly turns back into a horse and begins to gallop like a normal horse the weight takes them back so fast you think they've had some sort of medical emergency. My horse, the pretty trotting one with the old guy driving, suddenly turned back into Secretariat and jetted backwards so fast before the driver got him back on stride he was 50 lengths behind. But to his credit, IWannaBeARaceHorse (his real name yes) finished the race about 30 seconds after everybody else to the derisive sarcastic cheers of the crowd.
Minnesota also has some strange laws, or maybe just track rules. Drink a beer or whatever but dammit stay away from the families and kiddies. I was stuck in a day care setting like existence because as I attempted to exit the area, Grain Belt in hand, to wander off to the rail, a security guard who looked a lot like the old rassler Hillbilly Jim stopped me and said nope. So I stayed, like the real little kid, and drank my local beer with my fellow drunks.
The night was not bad. I broke even, I had fun, I petted a horse with a bunch of kids when the "horse lady" as they called her (probably 18 years old) sauntered by on Old Paint. I drank a couple of Grain Belts, I was good friends with the two mutual clerks, yeah two, stationed outside by the end of the night, I ate food from a food truck and made the finals of the handicapping contest which of course I lost right away.
Running Aces was cool. Really.
The hotel is a casino/hotel and my room was right off the elevators,and the ice machine, and right next door to an obviously drunken couple who were fighting all night because at some point in the night he apparently called her fat. Or at least she thought so. The yelling went on so long I feared a gunshot might end it. How many times can a guy listen to "Am I fat?" and "Do you think Im fat?" before he heads back to poker or whatever? Well for this guy it was a lot.
PS--The good old GOP got hoodwinked, ya know the thing that Moscow Mitch has been doing for 40 years, and a climate bill seems passable now. But ya dont pull one over on the Senate GOP because they are stuck together like gummy bears in the sun. So they held up the contraception bill (thanks Joni the Cackler Ernst) and actually changed votes to go from 84-15 to 59- to whatever on a bill benefiting veterans who are fucked up by burn pits ghat emitted toxic chemicals and gave a bunch of them cancer. The sight of these creeps celebrating the denial of benefits to vets made me sick. Fist bumping bastards. And Fuck You chief fist bumper Ted Cruz. Disgusting and proof there is no low for these sons of bitches. STOP voting for them !!!
No comments:
Post a Comment