A week after Derby, my friend offered me her extra ticket to the Sunday races at Churchill Downs. And thinking about it now, I can't believe I hesitated a few hours before responding with a mighty "YES!"
All summer long there is horse racing at the historical race track here in Louisville, mostly on weekends and Thursdays nights. Best of all, they offer a similar experience as derby weekend but for a fraction of the price and just a pinch of the traffic and crowds that clog up the place every first week of May.
The outside of the venue looked unremarkable, but once our tickets were scanned, we walked into the inner courtyard and saw the place's famous twin spires and also the paddocks where the horses are kept just prior to their race.
Our tickets were for Millionaire's Row, which takes you up a few escalators, past several uniformed employees whose polite gestures do make you feel a little more uppity each time you ascend and flash your tickets.
Millionaire's Row means you get a place at the table in what feels like a banquet hall. One wall is lined with a lunch buffet, another with bank-teller style counters for placing bets, and a third is all windows and doors leading out onto a tiered balcony overlooking the tracks.
So you sit inside munching on the herb-roasted chicken and rosemary potatoes, sipping the sweet tea, the white table cloth tickling your legs - and then you hear the bugle sound. That's your cue to drop your utensils and walk out to the balcony for the next race is about to begin. The horses do a warm up lap around the track, and within just a few minutes the race is started and through. Everyone files back inside to resume sitting and sipping and chatting.
The whole process repeats, with races staggered out about every 40 minutes. A booklet handed to us at the door had tons of details about each of the day's races (more information about horses, their histories, their jockies - even their birthdays - then we knew what to do with!) as well as a handy guide about placing bets and the associated terminology. The booklet also came in handy since I didn't wear a derby hat - keeping my face out of the bright sun and reminding me of the ridiculous name of whichever horse we arbitrarily chose to cheer for in the upcoming race.
And the basic bet for a race - where you pick the winner - is $2. It's such a small amount, making it easy to part with - no big loss if you lose, lots of excitement if you win.
It was a lot of fun. Now I think I truly start to see why horse racing is so popular here. It is technically a sport, but it's also just an enjoyable past time. An hour at the tracks means about 10 minutes of focusing on the races and 50 minutes relaxing and chatting and indulging in food and drink. This is the kind of sport all types can enjoy.
I came home gushing with enthusiasm about the event, sharing everything I just wrote here and some of the silliest horse names that slip my mind now. I hope that before summer is done, we get the chance to venture out to Churchill Downs for another day of races.
Besides that fancy outing at the tracks, the past month has been full of good times because Isaac's brother is in town. And there's nothing like company to get you out of a rut and off your butt! We went for the 40 minute drive across the river, through rural Indiana to Huber's Farms.
We picked around five pounds of strawberries - which were savored plain over the next week, and also transformed into strawberry milk, smoothies and our new favorite dessert - strawberry cobbler!
Plucking strawberries was a sweet start to our summer, and really whet my appetite to cross a few more of those "oh, I heard that was good" places off of our bucket list.
We also celebrated my last day of school/work this Monday (with generous helpings of strawberry cobbler of course) which means I should definitely be able to pick up the slack and resume posting monthly!
