I have a sticky saddle.

The first time I had a horse stop at a jump with this saddle I nearly got whiplash because I was NOT coming out of it.

I am certain that I would have had a few less Rider Falls if I’d had this saddle a little sooner in my BAD EVENTING career.

In preparation for my first Prelim, I thoroughly stickified my jump saddle.

There is one problem with sticky saddles………..they leave sticky stains on your britches.

I decided my present to myself for becoming a Grown Up Prelim rider would be cool new riding britches that have a black seat. (A black seat that’s supposed to be there!)

So I purchased some snazy new pants with a black grippy seat. It crossed my mind that the combination of sticky saddle & sticky pants might be…..well……. too sticky

 But then I decided that was silly. Any help I could get staying on would be a plus!

I headed out to XC warm up in my cool new pants. I was composed. I was ready. I was amazingly not puking.

I started trotting around warm up, and then the worst happened.

SSSShhh-WACK, that’s the sound my pants were making as they stuck to my saddle, pulled down 2 inches and then SMACKED back onto my…….um………. well……………you know.

The grippy seat then started pulling my leathers up & actually bunched them in my………um…….. well………..you know.

This was BAD.

This was incredibly BAD.

There was no time to change and I knew I had to survive this somehow.Warm up has never been my thing, and I’ve had more than a few catastrophes in warm up.

I decided to carry on, and head over some jumps.

The cross rail was uneventful, but when I approached the vertical I had a serious flash back of total warm up choke……………

(or maybe it was the sticky pants smacking me in the……um……..well………you know) and I smashed through the jump.

We managed to take the entire jump, poles, standards, all of it, to the ground!!

This – was surely a bad omen.

My coach scrambled to reconstruct the jump (I will NEVER live that down)
and then said, “This is NOT Stadium, come again!”

Bad Eventer goes Prelim…………to be continued……………..