Yes, Jan. That was us cutting the rug at some joint in downtown Norfolk way back in 1992-93. The hip thing to do in Lexington is karaoke. Every Wednesday at a bar downtown called A1A.

I usually stick with safe choices like Bob Dylan or the Ramones. How can anyone sing worse than Bob Dylan?

I had to miss a couple of weeks while working on our coverage of the Kentucky Derby, from which I'm still recovering.

I always watched the Kentucky Derby but didn't follow it like people here do. I had some learning to do. I likened the last three months to a semester in college with Derby week being final exams week. I even pulled an all-nighter!

Fortunately I did better this semester than I ever did in college.

I stayed in Louisville Wednesday through Saturday and got to the track at 6 a.m. Derby day. Even before that there is activity on the track with horses beginning training before dawn. Trainer D. Wayne Lukas has won the Derby four times but he's just as famous among the Derby media for training his horses in the dark before we can get any shots of them.

I spent some time sitting trackside watching the training runs and going over the Derby field again to give myself some more filler information if I needed it for any of our shows. Occasionally a horse would stop nearby and look back at the people watching him before going back to work.

The track opens to fans at 8 a.m. The stream of people entering is slowed by the searches security people do on anything people carry into the place. It's like airport security the way they search every cooler, backpack and anything else that could carry the banned alcohol, metal cans, weapons or umbrellas into the track. If you have a jug of orange juice with the seal broken, they'll pull the top off and sniff it, smelling for vodka.

There are dumpsters next to every entrance and you can hear the thumps as some kind of contraband lands inside one. People already inside would boo at the sound of each thud!

The savvy fan has learned how to sneak his hooch past even these stringent security measures. People told me stories about everything from sneaking beer through under the seat of someone's wheelchair to freezing vodka into ice cubes that they put into the cooler, letting the security people search through the cooler not knowing that they're pawing through the very stuff they're trying to confiscate.

Mosts of these people are headed for the infield. The shots they show on TV of all the well dressed people in their suits and Derby dresses (And those stupid hats. They won't let you bring umbrellas in the place but you can wear a hat the size of a circus tent and nobody cares.) that give you those romantic notions about it's only the rich and famous who enjoy the "sport of kings" on Derby day.

No ma'am. One trip into the infield will disabuse you of that notion. It's like Woodstock in there. In fact Friday, the day they run the Kentucky Oaks, the big race for 3 year old fillies, they had a concert in the infield during the races. The headlining band was Loverboy. Remember them? "Everybody's working for the weekend..."

Anyway, they don't show the infield on TV. They couldn't unless it was some cable channel. You see every kind of drunken debauchery known to humans in the infield. Even nudity. A bunch of guys will talk a girl into getting up on one of the guy's shoulders. Once up there, she's there to show off her wares. Woo hoo! This is only 1:30 in the afternoon and these people aren't even in prime form yet.

Nice as the nipples were, I had a horse race to watch (plus live reports all afternoon for our Derby coverage) and the only thing you can't see from the infield is even a hint of a horse race!

Some people who do come to see the horses never get near the track, either. Before each race they parade the horses in the paddock. At 9:30, I talk to two middle aged sisters who have set up camp right next to the paddock. "This is where you can see the horses close up," one told me. Sure enough, they watch the horses in the paddock then watch them race on a big video screen above the paddock area.

Not me. I was determined to watch the Kentucky Derby in person. You can't see that much from my perch on the roof. You see the horses run past you in the front stretch and then you see a herd of animals and a dust storm until they come back around to you for the final stretch run. You can't even hear the track announcer from the roof. And I'm sure you couldn't hear him over the din of 153,000 screaming people anyway!

So here comes the herd and we see one separate himself from the rest. "Who's that?" Someone asks. We can't tell at first. But when I see it's the horse I have said on the air would win the race, I raise my arms and yell from the rooftop "FUSAICHI PEGASUS!!!!!!"

Then scramble to the press box to watch replays before rushing down to our live shot location for the top of the 6 p.m. news which comes on right after ABC's Derby coverage.

Sometime when you have a lot of time I'll recount the whole week for you!

John

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