If you’ve been following along with my Tales, you already know that I’m not very brave when it comes to jumping.

If you’re new to my saga,

Hi! I’m BadEventer, and I may be the world’s biggest chicken that still wants to jump big jumps.

Yeah, I know I’m insane.

You’re certainly not the first to mention it.

Last fall when I arrived in Florida to be the World’s Oldest Working Student I wasn’t doing very well jumping much over 3′.

As soon as the jumps started inching closer to the tops of the 4 foot standards my resolve would wane and my pony would mutiny.

I was promptly demoted a level (or two) and we began our journey <again> to sort things out & start inching our way back up.

We’ve been hanging in there going up & down a level as things went well, or when things unraveled.

I’ve called the show secretary more than once & asked to drop down a level when the jump school right before the show

went

all

wrong.

But we’ve been chiseling away at it………..

and things have been going well.

Then yesterday I had someone join me for my jump lesson. I love having group jump lessons, you get the benefit of seeing someone else do the exercises and learning from their strengths and weaknesses. Not to mention the break between courses in this horrible heat. 

So I was pretty happy to see someone join me!  But then the fearless leader asked her how things had been going……

And she said, “Oh we did the 2* a few weeks ago and she was fantastic.”

I nearly had heart failure on the spot.

As I could predict……………. the jumps got bigger and bigger……………….

By the time we got to the final version I was looking at jumps at the top of the standards…….

Faced with bowing out or giving it a whirl……… I decided I’d give myself the ” you’re doing your first 4 star speech”.

Here it is:

“You’re qualified, you’ve earned the right to be here, you know what you’re doing.”

I gave myself this little talk in my head and off we went.

For the record, the car jump was a  4′ square oxer.