Horse Racing

Todays random points were less than exciting...

351: watching TV with the parents
643: sleeping
824: still sleeping
1015: still sleeping...

Lunch: We walked down to the place we went to yesterday for dinner. I had turkish food- a lamb rice plate with a strawberry smoothie.  I had sweet chili sauce on the lamb, which was also a bit spicy but really good.
Dinner: We had roast beef sandwitches (mine without the bread) at the track.  On our way back from the bus we stopped for some cake at a coffee shop- I had chocolate.  Both were great.

Random fact: 1080 is used on New Zealand to control (and hopefully erridicate) invasive species.

Woke up and and met up with Is, Andy, and their moms.  We walked to the conference center and put my poster up.  The poster boards were really narrow so we had to artfully arrange them to get both mine and Leighs to fit.  Luckily I was next to Leigh, so we didn't mind moving her's around.  Then it was time to go in for the speed presentations.  Andy went 3rd, and there were some really intersting ones, including a talk preceptions of large carnivores- basicly in areas where people arent at odds over land use they tend not to be too upset about occasional depradation by large carnivores.  The presenter was pretty funny too, and cracked some nice jokes about the UK and Norway.  I spent some time trying to track down the presenter from last night who was doing the ancient DNA work, finally was able to get her email address.  Is appeared and we went to look at the conference tshirts.  After a bit of confusion he bought a shirt for himself and me and then I gave Andy the one I had bought earlier.  All headed back to the hotel, got the rest of the gang and went to lunch.  After lunch we wandered around the harbor for a while, got tickets for the ferry tomorrow, then the parentals and I went back to the hotel to catch the bus for the horse races.  The bus was complicated because we didn't know what the name of the stop was, but luckily the bus driver told us where to get off.  Then a guy on the street directed us to the track.  The track was really pretty, very open unlike tracks in the US.  We could see parts of the city skyline also.  At one point it misted for about 30 seconds and then a brilliant rainbow appeared.  It then turned into a double rainbow and was the brightest I'd ever seen.  Im sure the race track was sad Lucky Charm stratched, otherwise I'm sure tons of people would have bet on him.  We bet on longshots all the way through with no luck, I think its a worse stratigy in this time of race where there is such a big range in horse quality compared to graded stakes where all the horses are really close to the same talent level.  The one race I decided not to pick the horses in and left my parents completely to their own devices the longshot won.  Figures.  In the last race though, I misread the odds and picked a non-longshot, and he ended up winning.  So we won 5.90$, totally by accident.  We then caught the bus back to the hotel area, stopped at a coffeshop and got some cake.  My chocloate cake was amazing.  On the way back to the hotel we ran into a couple of the guys who were sitting near us in the general admission (where there were like 10 of us).  They recognized us and said hi.  Apparently they didnt win at all.  We had both bet on a horse called lemonaid who lost by a neck (came in 3rd), really close race.  So glad we went to the races, I love horse racing, and the woman we collected our winnings from said my dad must be old since he use to work as a runner at a racetrack.  Back at the hotel I went and hung aorund with Is, Andy, and Is's mom until about 2300, then went back to my room and watched some tv until about 1am...