Shoveling It...

Tweet The mercury hit a balmy 40 degrees in the B-lo today. My back hurts. My feet hurt. The bottom of my driveway can only fit one car out due to my less than stellar snow shoveling skills. Of course, Mother Nature waited until our city was holding its annual Winter Fest before melting all the snow, but hey, that's Buffalo for you.


So what's been cooking in the Space Station lately....


- The Space Kid turned two and he's got Keeneland, Churchill, Gulfstream and Saratoga notches on his belt. Not bad for two, eh?


- Posting has been a little light lately due to the time of the year (tax season) and keeping up with my responsibilities for The Buffalo News. My latest article on betting Derby Futures was in Saturday's print edition and can be found here, in case you missed it (h/t to the Paulick Report for the nice linkage).

- ThoroFan Chairman Michael Amo, was one of the invited guests to testify last Monday in front of the Senate Committee on Racing, Wagering and Gaming. The post hearing media has mostly been focused around the NYC OTB's and consolidation, but his speech on behalf of racing fans is a good read. All of the written testimony from last Monday's hearing in Albany can be found here.


- Planning on a visit to Fort Erie Race Track this week to check out what's new on the other side of the border.


- Here's where you can find the RSS feed of The News' Sports, Ink blog to see my weekly posts every Friday.As other posts are included here, other than mine, you can filter them on the right hand sidebar under "horse racing." Check it out.


- I was very impressed watching Brethren smoke the Davis field, and was surprised to see the 83 Beyer. The best recap I've read is at the outstanding SB Nation Down The Stretch blog, where Matt explains why he thinks Brethren was issued such a low Beyer.


- Suffered my second bad beat of the year on Saturday when edged out of the Gulfstream Pick 4 beaten by a head in the final leg when my 9-1 choice Safety Squeeze couldn't get past 8-1 Green Bluff and $1,200 went up in smoke. I was at a friend's house who has his own kegerater..so that made it all better. GP hasn't been very kind to me this winter. Earlier in the meet, Tar Heel Mom kicked me out of a carryover Pick 5 in the fourth leg (paid $4,200), with double digit winners on the front and back end, picking up a 4/5 conso. I had Hilda's Passion that day...of course she beat Mom today in the Hurricane Bertie. Needless to say, they were both on my ticket today.


- The El Camino Real Derby must have been bittersweet for Steve Asmussen, who had the prohibitive favorite Comma to the Top, falter, but his stablemate Silver Medallion picked up some solid graded earnings. It'll be interesting to see where both of them end up next.

- I am looking forward to next weekend's Risen Star, with Machen, Rogue Romance, Santiva and Wilkinson all probables to run at the Fair Grounds.

Things are starting to heat up (literally) and....we're not dead yet...and, by the way, if you see any of those 50.6 million fans, can you have them stop by this blog? (PS - I vote Fiction).