I know the Area III eventers are completely used to it……..

but I was a bit star struck walking around warm up last weekend….

Look!!    a  4* rider!

And another!

oh another!!

Oh look more!!!

They were standing around in the rain and cold, looking miserably frigid just like the rest of us mere mortals…..

What’s this mythology about Florida being WARM?????

35 degrees and raining is NOT my idea of a good time.

But here I was………

and in TRUE Bad Eventer style, I had a total fail on packing rain gear.

You see…..

this was my first……

and last…..

horse show where I hitched a ride.

My rain gear lives permanently in my horse trailer. It has a special spot so that I always have it.

Problem was………

I didn’t HAVE my trailer.

To add to the epic fail, I always WEAR my water proof boots to the show………

And…………

as it happens, I flew to a work conference first….. where this…….

was my standard attire……. I guess it would have been a statement walking around in them……..

The only boots I had packed in my trunk were my show boots…..

which I have a serious prissy princess-ish objection to walking around in…..

Here I was…… at the venue with no transportation (a friend was kind enough to come get me), no boots, and no rain gear.

I rode my horse in the rain & cold the day I arrived.

I’m not sure what I expected….. I hadn’t ridden him in a week…….. it was freezing and raining……..and he’d just ridden in a strange trailer for 20 hours……a recipe for success if I ever heard one.

In spite of this we put in our very best dressage test to date.

It was a personal best.

And then I saw my score.

Don’t get me wrong….. Bad Eventer is more than used to bringing up the tail end of the leaderboard.

I have even received THIS……..

for being last…..repeatedly.

I have an entire collection of last place “awards”.

But! I was riding the Wonder Pony’s Evil Twin.

This horse is FANCY.

And STEADY.

And a WARMBLOOD.

Dressage judges LOVE HIM.

I can ride backwards, forget my test, put 3 feet out of the ring and still get a 30 on this horse.

But not this time.

Welcome to Area III.

Bad Eventer did the best test we’d ever done on a fancy warmblood, to solidly secure LAST place in her division.

And it wasn’t even CLOSE, there was a 25 point spread between my spot and 1st.

I kept telling everyone I was used to bringing up the rear……..no biggie.

but that’s not really true anymore.

I had the most amazing 2012 (a BLUE ribbon at Prelim, and a successful outing over the red numbers)…………

I trudged on, and told everyone a NUMBER is always better than a letter! Afterall, I am Bad Eventer!

We had another best ever stadium round.

yeah, yeah, we had 3 rails…

……. but we had STEERING…… for the first time ever. It was a huge success, but not without a Bad Eventer moment…….

This face is what happens……………

when you get a long spot going into the triple!!!
 
Then we had a terrific SLOW AS CHRISTMAS cross country round, where the Evil Twin acted like a grown up…….

even jumping the skinny chevron coming out of the water………. though he didn’t actually see it……… it was a definite Bad Eventer moment! 

What a good boy.

In the end……….a number is better than a letter.

Always.