I was in Mexico.
We were on a tour of some Mayan ruins. It was incredible.
There were paintings that were thought to be hundreds, maybe it was thousand(s) of years old. One member of our group asked why we couldn’t make paint today that lasts 5 years when they could make paint then that still looks good today!
I’m not sure our tourguide knew enough English to answer the question but he smiled and nodded.
One part of the tour included some kind of ancient aquaduct. He explained how they moved water through the city, and then he said very seriously while holding his stomach,
“Everyone think drinking water here make you sick!
The agua no make you sick!
The TEQUILA make you sick!!”
Truer words have never been spoken. This morning was only a slight improvement over the Horse Trial where I closed out the competitors party with the farm owners and a fabulous musician. I remember stumbling to my trailer as the sun was coming up, knowing I had a stadium ride in 2 hours. (The party was so much fun, the stadium round…………not so much.)
If your goal is to be so tired and ill that you can’t get nervous, this works remarkably well.
This is my first competition at Prelim and it’s already been an adventure.
Some big oops in dressage left my trainer saying, “Well that’ll take the pressure off, now you can just have a good time jumping!”
Suprise surprise, the bad moments were (well…….. bad………. 4’s) but the good moments were many more and were spectacular (more 8s than I’ve ever seen on one test!) I finished in the middle of the pack. This was a lovely surprise as I’m used to being either last or next to last.
It’s always so reassuring when I’m next to last. “At least one other person out there is worse than me today!”
Then we had a rather serious shoeing crisis. There is this entire concept, “No hoof no horse.” And no hoof, no jumping great big Prelim jumps either.
I lucked out incredibly that one of the very best farriers was in attendance and came to my rescue.
A full set of new sneakers for the Princess had us back in the game.
Today was stadium, and I had to convince myself those jumps didn’t look that big!
I went out of my way to walk the course when it was set for Intermediate, so they would be smaller when I jumped. (This usually works well for me at Training, but Prelim is often the biggest course, so I lucked out they had Intermediate this time.)
By the time I was warming up for stadium the fog was clearing, though my stomach was still doing back flips from all that bad agua at the party last night.
It’s just so fun to sit around with a bottle of wine, with friends you only see at competitions and talk into the night.
I was going to put a little video clip here of some of the fun we had last night.
But after watching it during daylight I think it falls into the “you had to be there” category.
So I will just leave it to your imaginations!
Warm up is where I used to freak out completely. Something about those airy monstrous looking warm up jumps just frazzles me every time. I’m not sure if it was the dull ache in my head or just that we are finally ready, but we did a pretty nice warm up.
I headed into the ring relaxed & happy and had my very first “lovely” stadium round.
Is it possible I was still intoxicated from the night before?…………………….
It’s the first time I’ve done stadium on my horse that didn’t involve the words CRAZY or SCARY.
We were double clear (one of only a few) in my very first Prelim stadium round. This moved us from dead center, to top 1/4!!
Afterwards 2 friends who had seen my “crazy & scary” rounds over & over & over…….. were both a little astonished while congratulating me on actually “doing a lovely round.”
It was nice they both noticed.
But that’s ok, we all know that I KNOW I’m BAD EVENTER!!
Cross Country tomorrow!
WHOOP!!!!!!!!!!