I have 2 choices this morning. I can post a blog entry that will be boring or I can talk about our outing yesterday and make us seem like a bunch of degenerate gamblers. I think I’ll go with door #2. I could blame #2 on the fact that Frank takes Requip for the Parkinson’s except that he’s on something else now.
When Frank was in his early 20s, he used to go with his dad to Yonkers racetrack. He grew up in the Bronx so it’s close by. Over the years, I’ve gone there with him but I don’t like Yonkers because it’s not regular horseracing, it’s trotters. If you’re not familiar with trotters, the jockey rides in a little buggy thingie in back of the horse and the horse can’t run or he’s disqualified (I think it’s referred to as ‘breaking’). Any time I lost (which was 99.9% of the time) I’d just claim the jockey was holding the horse back and cheating, that the race was fixed.
Anyhow, the whole horseracing business, in general, isn’t doing too well so rather than closing down the tracks; they’re looking into ways to pull in more revenue. What Yonkers has done is they’ve installed video slots. Because it falls under the NY State Lottery, the age limit is 18 rather than 21 so the kids can gamble.
Yesterday was a hot, muggy, rainy day so we said, “Hey why don’t we take a ride up to Yonkers and go to the racetrack? We can take the kids with us and turn them into gamblers. Everyone who has gone has said it’s really nice and there’s a good restaurant in there we can go to for dinner. ”
We all pile in the car. We hit traffic before we get to the bridge to the Bronx. We hit traffic after the bridge. The trip should have taken half an hour tops but it’s going to stretch into close to an hour. When we’re about 15 minutes away, Steve suddenly says, “Uh, I forgot my wallet. Do you think they’ll let me in without ID?”
“Uh, no.” So we turn around and head home. Naturally, we hit traffic. By the time we get home, we’re starving and no one feels like getting back in the car again to sit in more traffic. There’s nothing more fun that riding back and forth to the Bronx in the rain.
The boy did feel really bad about the entire thing and he’ll be annoyed that I posted about this but he doesn’t read my blog so I think I’m safe. 
I’m thinking that maybe, just possibly, the boy saved you some money! I do have to admit, though, I’m chuckling more than just a little at the thought of a carload of New Yorkers out for a “Sunday drive.”
And that it was to the Bronx just somehow seems…not quite right. 
Or maybe I’m just jealous that you live in a cool place, versus where I am–where every hick is out clogging up the roads, taking their Sunday drive!
Hmmmmm…now where did I put Steve’s address?
You can send anything you want. Who do ya think gets to the mail first. On the other hand, if you have his cellphone number, I’m in serious trouble.