tellhimfred.com

On Saturday morning, I woke up and was on the road by 7:30ish on the way to visit my family in Hudson Falls, NY. In addition, I wanted to go to “the track”, which, to our family, is the Saratoga Race Track.

One of the things on my to do list was to see my niece and god-daughter, Kaianna (man I hope I spelled that right). She’s going to be two next month, and she is the happiest, most active kid I’ve seen. And I can prove that:

Apart from seeing family and horses, I wanted to get to know my camera a little bit better. Since I had a lot of time on Saturday and not much to do, I played around with the manual settings and lighting, and am finally starting to get accustomed to my camera.

On the way to Saratoga on Sunday, I picked up a new filter and an external hard drive at Best Buy. I love the filter (though it was completely overcast on Sunday and I couldn’t really use it effectively), but my main problem is that I don’t have the right lens to capture horses sprinting as they hit the stretch. I was just too far away.

I think I bet a total of $18 in the first two races and didn’t come close. But on the third race, I bet a $5 exacta, 4-5. For those who don’t know, that means I’m betting $5 that the #4 horse is going to win the race, and the #5 horse is going to come in second.

Well, that’s exactly what happened. It paid $57.50.

And that’s when I decided to leave. Rather than trying to win more (which usually results in giving it all back), I wanted to leave while I was ahead.

I drove back to Boston through ridiculous traffic, and got home at around 7:00 pm. Took a couple of pictures of Bob, and went to bed.

Not a bad weekend. Sometimes you just need to get away for a day or two.