And down the stretch they come!

This past Saturday we celebated my 30th birthday some more by going to the racetrack and betting on the ponies.

Shark tattoos and pony stickers firmly affixed to our persons, Yana, Eric and I headed down to the San Mateo County Fair noonish on Saturday to check out the racing, the music and the carnival. Included in the fair admission was entry to the hallowed Bay Meadows racetrack, which is co-located with the fairgrounds. Or was: Saturday was the second to last ("penultimate" as fancy people say) day of racing there and they closed it down yesterday after over 75 years of wild-eyed gamblers yelling and desperately slapping their hands with their programs willing their horse to come across the line first.

I can now personally speak to one day of the racetrack's storied existence and one of those wild-eyed gamblers: Eric picked the winner every time, but may have caused permanent damage to his vocal chords and hands in the process.

The fact that he has an addiction-prone personality is not good news.*

We each won at least one bet and had a great time at the track in spite of the range of human and animal smells that we discovered there. It was especially fun "expertly" commentating the pre-race and race events, like we do when watching the Olympics. (What's more fun than haughtily criticizing near perfection?) Anyone who overheard our authoritative discussion of the horses' muscle tone, disposition, post position, and jockeys' abilities would surely have thought we were experts, unless they had any idea about horseracing whatsoever in which case they probably just had a good laugh.

As Eric and Yana will wearily tell you, I invoked my birthday privilege to the fullest at the fair: we rode the rickety roller coaster against their better judgment, ate ice cream and caramel apples and popcorn, and played rigged carnival game after rigged carnival game until someone finally won.

It's good to be 30!

*Unless his newfound conviction that he simply cannot lose is in fact true, in which case I'm looking forward to an early retirement.