The good news is on the way up there the trip was uneventful. We got our hotel rooms and proceeded to go to dinner at Texas Roadhouse where Jenn found an alien peanut and dinner was pretty good. We found out when we went back to the hotel that there was an indoor pool, sauna, and hot tub...all of which were explained in great detail by a 7yr old whose parents let him ride on the elevator alone ( and naturally I was the one trapped on said elevator with the chattering 7yr old).
Saturday proved a good first day for us. We drew four pretty cool horses and the judge was "R" rated (for you non horsey people an "R" judge is a high rated judge which is good). Our Training Level 1 rider even finished 1st in her division which was awesome. The best part of the day though was when my Upper Training rider was gettting ready. I told her I would help her with her hair and her stock tie (why is it no one knows how to tie those? If Jenn hadn't taught me years ago I'd be clueless too!) as soon as she was ready. I was watching a rider in a test in the arena (Otterbein has BEAUTIFUL brand new facilities) when Kellie said, "ok I'm ready!" I turned around to her holding up a white cumberbund. I said, "why do you have a white cumberbund?" although I had an idea of the answer. She said,"it's my stock tie." I told her no it isn't its a cumberbund...aaannd a bowtie that fell on the floor, amongst much laughing. I asked her why she had those, they are for men's tuxedo's. She told me she had bought it from a pile of "stock ties" that were on a table at the CKRH tack sale the other week. I asked her if she had ever even looked? She swore they told her it was one. Amongst much mirth that followed including her asking how to wear said cumberbund we finally got her dressed and she finished 3rd for the day. Our team finished a technical 5th for the day out of 9 teams but only Findlay and Otterbein beat us- just with two teams each...so to me we finished 3rd.
The only other thing that happened was when my winning rider was getting dressed she was bragging to the team about how her boots were brand new- so new we found out that she couldn't bend her legs... For those of you that know me, I was a little peeved that she hadn't warned me prior to the show so she could break them in, so in my irritation I told her she had to go to the sauna Sat night and sit in there with them for 20min to break them in. She took me literally. I went to check on her to make sure she wasn't dying and she was holding her boots in the sauna....oh well...what can ya do... ( I ended up making her put them on and it helped a little)
I was proud of myself for actually running saturday night after the show. Tough Mudder be damned I will finish my training.
Sunday was not a great day. We drew cute horses, but they were difficult and the judge was unrated. I had one rider error (nerves) and one get crucified unjustly. Courtney finished 2nd (it was the boots in the sauna) and my walk/trotter got hosed (she is insanely tall and both days drew small quarter horses) and she is a true walk/trotter where some of the schools obviously used kids that were not such.
The ride home was mostly uneventful other than one of the girls looking over and seeing a monkey in a car next to us. We proceeded to speed up to stare at the monkey and when the owner (who was on the phone) saw us she sped off.
Overall it was a great learning experience. I have a good team. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and we look forward to going to our next show. Hopefully the luck of the draw will be on our side and my team will kick butt.
Thats all for now, though here are some pics of the team...
signing off~ Mandy
No comments:
Post a Comment