I Didn't Go To Dartmouth

Instead of a normal Saturday lurking at the junior high, this weekend I went to the Virginia Gold Cup, a steeplechase horse race out in Northern Virginia somewhere. I've never been to a horse race (I did go to the dog track once, which was fun and depressing at the same time), so I thought it would be a good chance to see one and spend a day with horse-racing people.

I quickly learned it's not like the Kentucky Derby or other traditional horse races. First, the 'track' was about 4 miles around (totally making that number up, but it was fargin huge), and all grass. Second, nobody really gives a shit about the horse race. They're all there to get hammered and ask where you went to school. And what they really wanted to know was if you went to Dartmouth or Another Ivy League School.

The group I went with (friend of a friend's girlfriend, etc) contained a good-sized collection of annoying assfaces who went to Dartmouth and were very pro-Dartmouth. And besides acting and dressing like the biggest group of douchebags (there was a double-popped collar sighting) you've ever seen, they were all very concerned whether or not you went to Dartmouth. It was easily the leading first question, beating the standard "what do you do?" by a few furlongs.

The horse racing itself was pretty cool, though. Since it's a steeplechase they jumped over shit and ran around obstacles, etc. Our tent was really close to the rail, so they ran right past us and were hauling ass. And even though they only ran 6 races in 5 hours (seriously?), those 10 seconds we saw actual horses and jockeys were pretty sweet.

Quite an experience, and besides filling my asshat quota for the year, I also learned two things: A) I'm not going next year and B)I'll try to keep my loved ones away from Dartmouth

(flickr photo by user David Clow-Maryland, who may or not have gone to Dartmouth)