2008-02-23

Horse Racing

Still in Phoenix, and still underwhelmed by the differences, but just went to my first horse race yesterday at "Turf Paradise" here in Phoenix.

It's really quite an experience. If you happen to ever go, opt for the "Turf club" on the 3rd floor at $5 a seat. (Free refills on soda). Nice big windows so you can watch the track. They are only open during the "cooler" months of the year.

$4 to get in the door. We came to watch a friends horse race. You can get a program that gives you all sorts of stats about the horses and whether they had won or not.

I went ahead and put money on my friends horse, and they have their own lingo for what to bet on. Minimum bet of $2.

You can bet to "win" which means the horse will come in first.
You can bet to "place" which means you will win if the horse comes in "at least" second, or first.
You can bet to "show" which means you will win if the horse comes in "at least" third, second, or first.

I could probably cover this topic way more in depth, but I'm sure the website will explain it just as well:

http://www.turfparadise.com/howto.html

I enjoyed being there, it wasn't so quite you were afraid to talk, and wasn't loud so you could easily here the people around you. And at 1 race every 30 minutes, if you just dropped $2 on every race, you could stay there for 2 hours and only gamble $8.

Oh, ask your waiter who could explain "claim" races to you. That's really interesting to show how it keeps the races fair.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny, in the almost 40 years I lived in the Valley I never went to Turf Paradise. Thanks for decribing it.

Anonymous said...

Just found 'you . . . ' Thinking of moving to the Phoenix area from Lbk. Your blog is really helpful. How I'll "do it" is beyond me, but . . . want to spend some life w. a 94 yo aunt, before she's not 'here' any longer.

m said...

Hey "Anonymous" if you ever make it out, look me up and I'll introduce you to some of the different places around here.

If you haven't already, check out the post
http://lbb2phx.blogspot.com/2006/02/moving-truck.html
For all the technical parts of the move.

We did move from one apartment to another in Phoenix and used "Two men and a truck" and they were awesome, big thumbs up.
http://www.twomenandatruck.com/

Not knowing what line of work you are looking into, but I guess that's something the job search sites can help with.

You might try checking twitter for "Phoenix Jobs"
http://search.twitter.com/
Or put in the town name your aunt lives in if it's a suburb. Not having to commute is very nice.