OCEAN CITY, N.J. -- Thanks to those of you who have expressed concern about me after my fall on opening day at Monmouth Park. You'll be happy to know I'm none the worse for the wear.

I went down on my sixth mount of the day after winning with my first mount of the meet, Precious Package for Rick Dutrow Jr. I hit the board a few more times in there too before I fell. The horse that dropped me was a 3-year-old maiden going two turns, he'd only started about four times for Kiaran McLaughlin and Shadwell Stables. Basically he just fell leaving the gate, hard, just buried me and ran me over. It was the outside post and pretty much in the first jump he just went to his nose.

At the time I felt OK, like I could have ridden the rest of my mounts on the card. But the doctor in first aid at the track was watching the replay and he said I got hit pretty hard in the head, which is true because I was a little fuzzy. The horse hit me in the left arm, too, and the more I sat still, the stiffer and more swollen my arm got. So I went to the hospital to get it checked out but the doctor looked it over and determined I'd be OK. I was actually kidding around with him and I said, "If you take these X-rays and everything looks OK, do you think I can get back to the track in time to ride the last?" But he said, "Not unless you have a helicopter."

I actually got back to the track before they ran the last race; I went back because all my stuff had been left there. I took a shower in the jocks' room and moved my arm around. It hurt, but the more I moved it, the better it started feeling. The next day when I came in I had one of the massage guys work on it a little bit, stretching it out to get me ready, and actually when I was riding it felt better and didn't really bother me at all.

Everything's run well since I got here; I missed a couple winners when I went to the hospital so I've gotta make up for it and get back rollin'. I'm definitely enjoying my time here at Monmouth Park and the vibe on opening day was awesome. People were excited, they were wondering how things were going to go down. We had a lot of people out at the track, it was a beautiful day and people came out to bet and picnic and play -- it was a good thing, it was something that needs to go on all the time.

The second day attendance wasn't quite as good; it was really overcast, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees, and we had a couple little downpours that lasted for a few minutes. So we didn't have the attendance that we had on opening day but you could still feel a good vibe in the air from the horsemen and the people were still out there to cheer us on; a lot of fans. Hopefully this weekend, the holiday weekend and the second weekend of the meet, will be a solid one.

The nice thing about Monmouth is that it doesn't feel old; it's a very clean facility and they take good care of it and maintain it really well. Also, everybody's very helpful here. From track management to guest services, they want to know what they can do to make everything better. And that's what it takes, that's what you need with a racetrack and the people that work for the racetrack -- accessibility and courtesy and friendly attempts to make the public feel at home. And everybody around here is very helpful.

I'm riding for various trainers. A lot of people are just coming through, in and out back and forth and that kind of thing. Some of the guys like Todd (Pletcher) have barns here -- I was there this morning -- and then a lot of the guys that have been here for a while they've got their barns here and it's good because they don't have to just run here if the race they're looking at isn't exactly what they want, they can run at Belmont, Delaware, Philadelphia. In all actuality, from Monmouth to Belmont, door-to-door, is 70 miles.

I ride there Wednesday -- a filly named Franny Freud for John Terranova. They're running her on the grass and the race was supposed to go Saturday or Sunday and I wasn't gonna be able to come because I had commitments at Monmouth. But they wrote the race back to run the males and females together to make the race go; it's New York-breds running for $100,000, so it worked out because now I'm going there to ride a little stake on a Wednesday and I'll head back to Monmouth for the weekend.