Recapping the Summer: Kentucky Derby

As mentioned quite recently, I had quite the summer of stuff and things and other stuff, and I thought it might be fun to share some of the highlights. First up, the Kentucky Derby!

Getting to Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky from Chicago, if not flying, necessitates driving through the entirety of Indiana. From the Northwest corner, which includes scenic Gary, to the Southeast corner, which includes nothing, the three members of our car experienced all that Indiana has to offer. And, all three of us came to the same conclusion. Namely, that Indiana is awful. Indiana may be the worst state in the union, and that's including bullshit states like Delaware and North Dakota. Indiana is a desolate wasteland of crushed hopes and dreams, and sadness wafts off the roadways like heat in the August desert. The roadways, it should be mentioned, more often than not get siphoned into one lane in each direction, even on major freeways around Indianapolis. Ostensibly, this is for construction occurring. That we never did see occur.

All these opinions of Indiana had solidified in our brains before we ate at the Taco Bell in Lebanon, or went to the Walmart in the middle of Bumfuck, some hour or two south of Indianapolis. Now, this may seem like hyperbole, but I might rather spend the rest of my life in the actual Lebanon than the one we stopped in for lunch. Bet you don't think about how white trash Indiana can be. But oh, man, can it be. I think that's enough description for that one. But the Walmart. My lord. The Walmart.

Before this trip, I had actually never stepped foot inside a Walmart. I'm sure part of that is the remnants of the "Walmart is evil" stuff that has been pounded into every liberal's head, but now, I have an entirely new reason not to go back to one. The stifling sadness. And not even from the customers, though once you're that far South in Indiana there is something you're going to get a special breed of Walmart customers. No, it's from the people that work at a Walmart in nowhere, Indiana. The checkout girl, pregnant and still a teenager, was staring off into space the whole time I was there, helping no one, and I just got the feeling her single thought was something like, "There had to have been a way to escape this." The older employees seemed more resigned to their fate of living and working at the Walmart in Southern Indiana, but you could tell they weren't particularly happy with it, or perhaps even with the life decisions that had brought them to this juncture.

On the other hand, I bought a really awesome Cookie Monster hat for half what they're charging online.

But finally - FINALLY - we leave Indiana, and get to Kentucky. KenTUCKY!!! We'll skip the uneventful Friday night in the motel, and go straight to Saturday, the big day of the Derby. I had packed my finest white linen pants, pink linen shirt, and horse racing hat, ready for the awesomeness. And then the forecast was rain. Soooo, I realized I wasn't going to be comfortable in my special Churchill Downs gear, put on my jeans and track jacket, and piled in the cab from the motel with my friends. I had also brought a change of clothes in my backpack, in case the rain did get particularly intense, and I needed dry stuff.

The entrance to the infield at Churchill Downs on Derby Day is a clusterfuck of people, many already drunk, bottlenecking through the gates. There are no tickets - it's forty bucks for admission, and they never stop letting people in. After getting in, they have Military Police checking bags for any booze, and, well, really, that's about it. You can bring in coolers, you can bring in bags, women can bring in huge purses, you can bring in rolling suitcases.

You can't bring in backpacks.

The MP checking everyone's stuff looks at my backpack and says, "You can't bring that in here." I look ahead at people already admitted, and see, for example, a woman with a bag bigger than my backpack slung over her shoulder, and ask, "Um, why not?" MP says, "I have no idea. Maybe someone last year tried to strangle someone with a backpack. But you can't bring it in." I ask what I can do with it, he says take it back to the car or throw it away. Seeing as I don't have a car, I have to opt for the latter. Of course, the only things in my backpack were other bags, but those were fine to bring in. Naturally. Makes perfect sense.

But, we get in, and we've brought chairs, so we set up as close to the track as we can, and go get our mint juleps and place our bets. Derby day, by the by, is about 13 races in total, with the Derby itself being something like 11th. We've arrived after four races, so I bet ten bucks a race on races five through eleven. My friends do the same, though bet in substantially higher dollar amounts. And then, we sit back, drink a ton of beer, and wait for the races.

Now, here's the thing. There are a lot of people in the infield during this day. And, there are police on risers between you and the track. And the horses run by really, really fast. All this is to say, you can't really actually see any of the races. You get maybe a blur of the horses as they go by, and then you check the screen to see if you've won or lost. So, really, there's not much to do but sit and drink. And then some people might decide to run across the tops of the porta-potties, but they're mainly idiots.

So basically, being in the infield at the Kentucky Derby is the exact same thing as if someone had said, "Hey, I have an idea? Why don't we all pay forty bucks to sit in a field for eight hours and get plastered? Oh, and as you leave, be sure to throw about two hundred bucks on the ground for all the beer you drank and all the bets you lost. Oh, because you will be betting on a sporting event you can't witness." And, yes, in our entire group of seven people, not a single person won a single bet.

And then, the Sunday after it's all done, we had to drive back through Indiana. And guess which state doesn't sell alcohol on Sundays? Mutherfucker.