My wife and I won a gift certificate to Silks, which is the buffet restaurant at Hastings Racecourse in Vancouver. Horse racing, the Sport Of Kings! My wife and I have never been to a racetrack before. The method of parimutuel betting might as well be printed in ancient Aramaic for all we understood of it. We decided it would be interesting to try something new to us.
The buffet turned out to be very tasty, and the service staff was friendly and helpful. The business of a racetrack is betting, so we were at first a bit out of place just watching the horses go around the track. The professional betting agents at Hastings provided us a tutorial that helped us to understand the heavy load of performance statistics that comes with each horse. Armed with this knowledge, we made the safest and most conservative bets possible. My biggest pot was a single shiny dime, as horse #3 (shown above) was edged out by horse #6 (also above) in the fifth race, earning me a "show" on almost even odds. My wife won a little more than I did. We could have won quite a bit had we put money on the last race. She picked the winner against long odds because she liked the horse's name, and because it was wearing an orange blanket. Instead, she won breakfast in bed from me, as I picked the horse that came in fifth that race. I suppose I had better stick to drawing the ponies, rather than betting on them.
I got some decent photoraphs of the races and Hastings itself. The park is in a beautiful setting with views of the Burrard Inlet and mountainous North Vancouver as a backdrop. I adapted today's drawing from one of my photos.
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