In the Paddock

Spend roughly 14 hours in the car yesterday driving from Lexington to Saratoga – thanks for the accident Cincinnati, costing me an hour – and wondered what things might look like back home after two-plus weeks on the road.

Standing on the hill at Keeneland, outside Doug O’Neill’s barn and waiting for Blue Grass winner Irap to go to the track for his final workout before last weekend’s Kentucky Derby, a colleague pitched a question that got me thinking.

The buzz started before the weekend was through. Snow was on the way to upstate New York, a surprising revelation to some even though we live in, ahem, upstate New York.

The lights flickered and the screen of my office iMac went dark just after 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

There’s an old saying out there that the cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears or the sea. Someone needs to come up with one about sunshine, too, because as winter set in for good in the Northeast the last few weeks a little bit of the bright stuff is undoubtedly a tonic for anything that ails.

They say you always remember your first.

Your first Breeders’ Cup, that is.

What was your first?

Leave it to my great friend, running buddy and former Lexington assistant fire chief Rick Jordan to get philosophical on the roughly 75-mile drive from Lexington to Clermont, Kentucky, last Friday.

The singing started about a half hour before the show and it continued for well over an hour after the show.

Everyone talks about pace.

In racing it’s early pace, fast pace, slow pace. Pace makes the race. That kind of stuff.