Our friends tease us that we now living in a “retirement home”, but we now live in a 55+ Active Community (it’s not even called a “Retirement Community” as many people still work, there just needs to be on person 55 or older in the household and no one under 21).
Our community has a Lifestyle Director who plans many awesome activities (and every time we tell a certain group of friends about these activities, ha, we add more fuel to the fire of them teasing us about living in a retirement home!)
In July we had a community outing to the local horse racetrack – Bally’s Arapahoe Park Race Track.
Before the outing we had a workshop in the community room on how to read the Racing Form/Track Program at a racetrack and how to do betting.
I haven’t been to a horse racing track since I was a kid growing up in Long Island, New York – Belmont Park.
For many years as an adult I was anti animal racing (horse and dog) due to the animal abuses I read about in these sports but over the years much improvement has occurred in the treatment and conditions for racing animals. So I was willing to try this outing; and a group of fun community members that we’ve befriended were attending.
John was very excited about going to a racetrack and although he’s lived in Colorado all his life, he’s never been horse racing in Colorado before.
He couldn’t wait to place his bet.
I didn’t pay much attention to the horse racing (hence no photos of actual horse racing in this post by me) but I did enjoy the social aspect of visiting with people and working on my granny square project at our indoor viewing area.
The photo above is of some of our friends in the community being very excited about the race. (Interesting tidbit about our new community – I’ve met many people from New York including Upstate NY and Long Island where I grew up! A lot of people moved to our community because they relocated from different state around the US to be near their grandkids.)
John did make $35 from horse race betting and it was a very fun afternoon with our community!
I’d go again with a group for the social activity but I don’t think I’ll become a regular at the racetrack, ha!
I’m chuckling at your friends all making jokes about you and John living in a retirement home now. You’ve met some lovely new people, it sounds like there are heaps of interesting things to do in the area. I have a question though: Did you really take your crochet project to the race track?
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I grew up on Long Island too, and I worked in Franklin Square, a few miles away from Belmont. My home town is Point Lookout, south shore, on the beach. I miss the Atlantic ocean, the Pacific is pretty to look at, but way too cold for me.
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It’s often a good idea to try something new, and sounds like this worked. Glad you had fun.
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Remind your friends how important social engagement is and how hard it is to make friends once work or parenting no longer puts you in situations to meet new people. Plus most of those “friends” don’t survive once you are no longer working/parenting together. I have been surprised by how much of the YMCA’s mission is about providing community versus being only about exercise. I am so thankful for the activities our winter condo complex has as a means to meet others in the community. It is very much a consideration as we determine if we should “age in place” since we live in the country and don’t have nearby neighbors. Hence why I love that we still have two of our sons living in our multigeneration house. Youngest son already plans to turn the guest bedroom into a nursery.
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Oh, they are just jealous that you are having so much fun. Honestly, I just turned 61 and feel the youngest I have ever felt. Not kidding. As a young mom in my 20s-30s, I was EXHAUSTED! Enjoy yourselves. Come to NY and visit the beautiful Saratoga race track!
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Sounds like a fun day! I haven’t been to a horse racing track since I was a teen. I grew up in Laurel MD and we had a couple of semi-famous tracks (long gone now). I think our next move (whenever that may be) will be to a ‘retirement community’ with lots of planned activities – otherwise I might never leave the house 😂
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