Well, I didn't REALLY go all the way to Austin just to visit Retama Park, but as long as I was in the neighborhood, why not? They got horses. They got wagering. They got beer. So we drove down by San Antonio. And oh yeah - as long as I was in the neighborhood, I temporarily blew off my Retama boycott.
We were surprised. There was a really big crowd on hand, it being $5/carload night, plus $1 beer, $1 hot dogs, and 50 cents some other things. I thought the $1 hotdogs were okay, but others must have thought they were great. GM Bob Pollock came down to the ground floor at one point and paid cash for a couple. Who knew? Tons of families with kids, and the track had plenty of kid entertainment, like a ponyride, petting zoo, face painting, and the whole schmear. It was nice to be at a racetrack with a crowd for a change. When the horses came down the stretch, they'd scream their heads off. Equibase chart recorded it as over 5000. The evening also gets an award for one of the strangest things I have ever seen, when a worker with a rake had to come out after the 2nd and chase a snake off the main track and back into the turf course where snakes properly belong.
Here's everyone fixin' to do the YMCA, including the horse. It was apparently a regular highlight of a night at Retama.
But Retama was only part of why we were down there. There was the big sausage festival in New Braunfels earlier in the day. We'd stopped in.
Yeah, baby, check out that sausage! They don't call it a 10 Day Salute to Sausage for nothing!
Of course, there was entertainment. The hype of cloggers was much more entertaining than the actual act. We lasted about 8 minutes.
Oh man! A wall of beer!
Well, I didn't REALLY go all the way to Austin just to visit the big sausage festival at New Braunfels, either, cool though it might have been. That was just an "As long I was in the neighborhood, why not?" event. The real reason was McChump #2 finally found a permanent place to live. Give the man a hand. I needed to check that out and help him break it in. (And help him move some stuff in, it turned out.) That's worth a long weekend of running around, don't you think?
This must have been fun!
About enough for one year, don't you agree?