Fort Worth It and No Drilling

12 hours of road, 6 hours sleep in the car and then another 6 hours on the road didn't leave us in the best of moods. Childishly I started to resent Texas for being so goddamn big, what I did not resent was our Sat Nav (now to be known as Brenda) telling us that we were within mere sniffing distance of a branch of Tony Roma's Ribs.

I talk often of this establishment, for I am of the belief that there is only one in the UK (Kingston) and I used to frequent it often because it's a delight. After a barrage of Oriental based foods in San Francisco and a basic diet of beef/chicken burgers everywhere else, the ribs would be a deserved reward for our efforts.

We couldn't find it, or we did find it but it was closed (permanently) and yet Brenda persisted in telling us that we HAD in fact arrived at our destination. After going on to lie to us about the location of a Starbucks we'd started to doubt her integrity, she was getting at us and we didn't deserve it.

Next door provided me with a pleasant but inappropriately expensive steak and Phil with slightly inferior ribs before we headed to the wonderful house of Anthony, his girlfriend Misty and their dog Maui. Arlington lies between Dallas to the East and Fort Worth to the West and is the home to both the Texas Rangers (baseball) and the Dallas Cowboys (US football) teams.

They took us to Fort Worth which featured a trip to a Tex-Mex restaurant then to a bar called the Flying Saucer. It's part of a chain that do the largest selection of draft beers that i've seen and 240 in total if you include the bottled variety. Drinking each of the beers earns you a plate on the wall, Phil gave it due consideration but with only two days it was too big of a task even for him.

After considering all options our excursion the next day was a self-guided tour of the Cowboys Stadium, which will be hosting the Superbowl in February next year. They let you go on the pitch and inside the locker rooms which is a nice touch, easily the best feature is the largest high definition screen in the world (53.3 metres diagonally) that hangs over the middle of the field.

A bit later we headed to for a quick drive around Dallas itself and then on to the game with our hosts. The Rangers are going well at the moment so the stadium was pretty packed, this translates into poor seats. Our rescue came in the form of a bar behind home plate that Misty had acquired tickets for, it was great and certainly the best way of watching the game. The Rangers beat the Angels 1-0 making us 5 out of 5 for the home team, I figure that if we get to fifteen/fifteen we make the news.

Post game featured a bar called Sherlock's in Arlington itself, a British pub! It's a giant venue with pretty cheap drinks and pretty much all you want under one roof including everyone's new favourite cover band Metal Shop. They were great fun, inviting a veritable hoard of women up onto the stage which worked in a fashion similar to that of the Pied Piper. We all had a nice chat/booze up after in what can only be described as an epic evening.

We're only the third group Anthony has hosted but they were both brilliant to us, he's been to three World Cups so maybe we'll meet again in 2018 somehow.

Having craftily updated my facebook status with the words of Gene Pitney's classic exactly a day before we were due to arrive in Tulsa, the four hour drive was fairly uneventful. Brenda told us Drillers Stadium was on our left, she wasn't lying and Drillers Stadium had to be the home of the Tulsa Drillers right?

"There's not many people there" I said as we approached
"No it seems quiet"
"There's no game on"
"But they were playing?"
"Yes, I'm sure"
"Well they're not there"
"I know"

So we got out of the car (the only car in the car park) and ventured round the periphery taking a few badly angled photos. Head in hands we strode back to the car,

"What's that on the ground there?"
"Looks a bit like a race track"
"Fuck me Phillip, it is a race track."
"Wait there's horses"
"And people"

So having driven four hours to go to a baseball game that apparently did not exist we've ended up attending a night at the races.

Fair Meadows is never going to host the Breeders Cup and the catering is fair to middling but the operation is quite well run, relatively busy and best of all free to get in. Despite running out of race cards (not that well run then) it would have been quite literally a disgrace not to have a few wagers. Having to think outside the box a little with the selection process I decided to use the patented Paul O'Connor clip clopping system.

I gave up with the Paul O'Connor clip clopping system after the first two races having backed both a last place and a second to last place. Still at $4 dollars down my night was far from over.

I decided to instead become a paddock judge, and as I gazed at the horses on parade looking for signs of fatness I threw a dart at a 4/1 chance that duly obliged.

I was $4.40 ahead.

My confidence in the my new system led me to stake $5 on what was to be our last race, worst case scenario I was to be 60 cents down and a hot dog that wouldn't go away. I liked the 7 the best but the 1 was physically huge, fit and resembled an equine Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"$3 to win the 7 and $2 Quinella (reverse forecast) the 7 and the 1"

My go-to attendant was impressed that I'd up my stakes, I could have bored her with tales of my gambling background back home but the gun wielding cowboy* behind me in the queue was not a man to be kept waiting.

Pgm Horse Win Place Show
7 Three Times Quick 7.40 4.40 3.20
1 First Arctic Dash 17.80 5.80
9 Takin the High Road 3.20

$1 Exacta 7-1 154.70
$2 Quinella 1-7 106.80
$1 Superfecta 7-1-9-8 1,291.50
$1 Trifecta 7-1-9 215.90

Somehow I'd managed to win a useful 116 dollars on the day, if I had any idea what I was doing it would have been totally different.

We returned to a night of relative luxury at a hotel before heading to Kansas City tomorrow...

In other news the Tulsa Drillers now play their home games at ONEOK Field having moved there at the beginning of this season, they also won tonight and we'd have been six for six and one step closer to international notoriety had Brenda not been lacking in recent updates.

Nevermind....



*It was a real handgun, scary.