A Winning Weekend

Tom and I went to Hot Springs this weekend with my dad, brother, and uncle. The plan was pretty much booze, food and gambling...and that's about all we did. Not so much the booze part for me, which had to be played very carefully to avoid inquisitions. Friday we had my dad's delish grilled BBQ chicken with baked potato and salad, probably my favorite meal of all time, after dinner we had a Wii bowling tournament which I was the champion of with an average score of 220! It seems I'm just as good at the Wii bowling as I am in real life (J/K)

Saturday we had bloody marys and mimosas(left over from two weeks ago, thanks ladies ;) and left Tom at the cabin to study as he has a HUGE test coming up April 2nd that is pretty much consuming his life (poor Tom). Got to the track where I tried to place a daily double bet on the first two races, I say try because I had never made this bet before and totally screwed it up. Needless to say that was a losing ticket and was promptly thrown away.

Things got better after that though, I hit a winner on the 3rd race and an exacta on the sixth, and enjoyed one of the truly greatest things about Oaklawn...a cornbeef sandwich, YUM...

The main event of the day was the annual running of the "Rebel", it's a $300,000 race and the horses in this one were b-e-a-utiful. Eight of them are triple crown nominees and the one picked to win was Old Fashioned (I love that name!) He and the 8 horse were right on each others heels the whole race until the final turn when OF started pulling away from the pack. But then out of nowhere came running the 9 horse Win Willy. He turned on the heat and passed OF with less than a 1/16 mile left and won the race...Now the reason I find this so exciting is because Tom and I (he drove in for the last race and dinner) both had placed a bet that OF would come in second and Win Willy would win...We're talking 50 to 1 odds that Willy would win. We walked out of there with $360!!!

It was my first big win at the track and will not soon be forgotten! We celebrated our day at Chef Pauls in Hot Springs (holy crap it's good) for dinner and then headed home and quickly to bed...

It was a very prosporous weekend!