last sunday was my first trip to churchill downs, but i had studied up…

casey and i visited keeneland in 2010 and i Thought i’d learned a little from that experience, but, alas, experience is the only teacher.  at keeneland, you really need a reserved seat.  general admission gets you standing room only and the crowd was deep… i had to stand on a bench to get a picture (or view) of the racetrack.  illogical logic told me i needed seats at churchill as well.

online, i ordered up 2 reserved seats for churchill’s live racing on sunday…best available, good enough for me…when we got there, we discovered we were sharing a very small, albeit well-placed, box of 6 seats with a family of four eating nachos.    we were polite.  with plenty of other empty seats surrounding us, we asked if we could exchange our tickets for a more private spot.   kari, kerry, keri, caree, cari…with the piercings, said yeah, great;  her bosslady said, no.  we expressed our genteel displeasure, so bosslady, whose name was monica or something, took us to patty, patti, or pattee.  after monick left, pattee told us to just go ahead and take one of the empty box seats.   we walked back up and moniq was monitoring…we told her that pate’  had said help ourselves and she said that’s just wrong, people pay lotsa $ for these seats, etc…   so we went back down to

Customer Service… and who greeted us but iris. ( not eyerhis)   we told her that we were fine with whatever, enjoying, first time visitors, just a little uncomfortable with…   she called for paatteey.    while she was waiting she started looking for stuff to give us and pulled out this great hat:

in short order, patty showed up and was instructed by iris to take us upstairs and get us past the guards to the excellent areas…