First the notes...this blog has sucked with no activity for 6 months. Part of that is due to limited poker activity, part due to just being so damn busy and tired, and part due to laziness.
I had written up a trip report from my trip to the Preakness almost 6 months ago, yet never concluded it. Here is the somewhat complete trip report I had written. Enjoy.
Friday:
The trip started with Victory dropping me and Erik off for a 7am flight out of Detroit to Baltimore. The flight was smooth, and Paul picked us up at the Baltimore airport. We had about 9 hours to kill before the Phillies-Blue Jays game that night, so we drove to Philly in search of a genuine Philly Cheesesteak.
We got to Philly and saw some of the dumbest parking ever. Cars were parked in middle turn lane of roads, as well as just all over the place. We tried driving around for a while following our instincts for Cheesesteak, but eventually we had to ask someone. He directed us to Geno’s and Pat’s, which are across the street from each other. We drove through an area that looked like it was from the movie “Rocky”, with all of the houses close to one another. It was a one way street, with cars parked on both sides of you. It was quite claustrophobic for a road. After about 20 blocks of random houses, Italian bakeries, pizza joints, markets, etc….we found the cheesesteak joint.
We went to Geno’s, which is apparently very famous as they had pictures of famous people eating/cooking there. Included were Bill Clinton, Tiffany Amber Thiessen, Grant Hill….among many others. When you order, you order it with the type of cheese and with/without onions. For example, I got “Provolone without”. Other choices were American or “Whiz”. I don’t know what the “Whiz” was aside from maybe Cheese Whiz. The cheesesteak was actually kind of disappointing, low on meat, and overall not very flavorful. I’ve had better here in Michigan, but I wasn’t about to say that there, for fear of being killed.
After lunch, we drove through more of the local area on the way into the downtown district. It started reminding me more of a European/African market with all of the street vendors, people running around, and overall close quarters. Finally we got to drive through the downtown area. It was very nice, very clean, some interesting architecture as well. We didn’t get out as we were interested in drinking. By the baseball stadium we say Philadelphia Park (Horse racing) and decided to bet some races there, then walk to the baseball game. I wouldn’t be surprised if I drank 12 beers (Yiengling) while betting the pony’s for 6 hours. As I drank more, I bet more, and handicapped less, which is a very poor combination unless you are extremely lucky (I wasn’t). After all of us getting our asses kicked, we went to the baseball game. Our first order of business was getting beer and another cheesesteak. This cheesesteak tasted better (could have been due to the beer). We got there a little early, so I was able to take a decent number of pictures of the stadium. Overall a very nice stadium. Our seats were nice, about 26 rows up even with third base. We were very obnoxious by hassling every beer vendor for cheesesteaks, and even annoyed some girls that were sitting behind us, which amazingly did nothing to stop us from asking, and might have even led us to ask more. I recall pretty much harassing every player on both teams, but that is a little foggy right now. Going through my pictures I have several shots of a guy with what looks like pie on his face, but have absolutely zero recollection of that, nor does Erik.
After the game (a 5-3 Phillies win) we went back to Philadelphia Park, but I was totally hammered and ready to pass out, so we left shortly. Apparently finding the hotel was difficult since Erik and I both passed out, and Paul was driving after about 15-20 beers (not sure why we felt that was a good idea).
Saturday:
Saturday (Preakness Day) started out miserable. First Erik woke up about 5am and proceeded to puke multiple times. I felt rough and decided to go try to find some Tylenol with my toiletries. I reached in there in the dark and sliced the tip of my left middle finger pretty bad on my razor, which bled a ton. After using a Kleenex to stop/slow the bleeding, I proceeded to run in the bathroom and puke. Erik had already puked all over the back of the toilet rim, so I compensated for that by hitting the front of the rim. Fortunately I only puked once, while Erik did about 6-7 times. After puking, I felt far better, but it effectively ended my drinking for the weekend.
We made the 90 minute drive to Pimlico after grabbing some breakfast. On the drive Paul pushed for just getting infield tickets. Since we were getting killed at the races, we decided to do it. We paid $30 to park in a decent neighborhood, that was not dfficult to make it back to…pay attention, this is important later on. We walked to the track and you could tell it was different from the Derby. There were a shit ton of school buses and motor homes, with people pounding beers, and standing on the top of said buses.
After buying the way overpriced $60 ticket (I wanted to sit grandstand, but due to waiting tickets weren’t available online anymore), but Paul wanted to save a bit of money and buy infield (first bad decision by Paul of the day). As were were in line to get in, suddenly the line stopped. Apparently Pimlico doesn’t have a tunnel under the track, so you have to wait from about 10 minutes before the next race until a few minutes after the race is over to cross the track again. This caused us to miss the first two races. Race 1 I picked the winner on but didn’t miss out on any money, the second race I pegged nearly perfectly. I would have 100% hit the trifecta to return $700+, and I would almost have assuredly hit the superfecta to return $2200+….definite bad beat for me!!!
Erik described the Preakness as “The infield at the Preakness is basically like Spring Break on steroids. When we first set up camp, Paul and Todd left to use the ATM and place bets. During that short time I had at least 15 beer cans fly over my head, a bottle of Gatoraid explode about 5 ft from me, saw about 5 chicks pop their top, and saw a huge dude get tackled into a foam cooler full of beer.”
The rest of the trip involved my friend Paul getting so drunk that we lost him on the way back to the car, then us spending over an hour driving around and looking for him, while speaking to his incoherent ass on the phone. In the time of trying to communicate with Paul, I accidentally dialed Sonny on speed dial multiple times. It became so comical that he pretended to be Paul, and directing us to a non-existent location, before I realized who I was talking to. Finally we found him walking by a random hospital on some backroad over a mile from the location of the car. In the process of getting lost, he had lost his Pistons hat, and camping chair that he was carrying. The rest of the night was quite ridiculous dealing with Paul, but none of it is really worth rehashing here.
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