night at the track

My friend Linda and I went to Hastings Park last night. We had intended to bring our husbands, but tickets sold out so fast for our CUPE 23 Night at The Races that we had only 2 tickets, and our husbands really didn't mind.

We drove to the park and found seats in Silks Buffet. The supper was gorgeous - a great salad bar, prime rib, lovely seafood and pecan pie as my choice for dessert. mmmmm While we ate, we studied the racing form and tried to figure out how to bet.

Our first betting aid was the form itself, which contains a "picks" section - one horse race expert's guesses about which horses will win. There was also a man who walked around and gave us a sheet with his picks listed. There's lots of information there to help the uninformed know how to place bets and how to decide which bets to place. Linda and I paid careful attention to this good information then we followed our hearts:

• bet on the grey horse - of course!
• roll the dice - we put stickers on a pair of dice and rolled them to decide by using the colour of the jockey's uniform. The dice also told us whether to bet win, place or show.
• cootie catcher - Linda made a paper fortune teller. We used it to pick the number of the winning horse, and whether to bet win, place or show
• my favourite number - at one point I loaned my racing form to somebody so I had no idea who to bet on in the next race, so I bet on number 5, which is my favourite. Number 5 won.

We enjoyed seeing a bunch of friends from work, and noting that our bets were modest and cautious compared to how most people bet. We did not bet any "exotics," like exactor, triactor, X-factor, pterodactylactor etc. We just chose horses to win, place or show.

At the end of the evening, Linda reported that we bet $22 on 5 races. While she kept track of our expenditures, I kept the winning tickets safe, so we could cash them all in at the end. What suspense! the cashier fed the tickets into her machine, and our winning amount increased and increased. We got up to $20 on the display, with one winner left - could we make it to $22????? Then we saw it, $24.60!!!! Woo Hoo! The cashier gave us our money so we could easily count it out and split our $2.60 winnings! We were euphoric. We could retire and live the life of luxury - maybe even buy our own racehorse! We drove home happy for a fun evening.

Then I woke up in the morning and remembered that one of the bets we had placed for our friend Diane, who sent us with $11 to bet on the first 3 races. One of her horses won, and we owed her $3.30. So Linda and I actually won $1.30 between us. I texted Linda the news. She replied. "You mean we can't retire?" Nope. I guess I'll see her Monday morning at work.

question: do you like the pretty horses?

mompoet - we left the dice and the cootie catcher on the table for someone else to use to win big like us