Wow, what a weekend………..

The smiles…………..

Phobias……………

You probably know how I feel about corners………………..

I lost sleep over this……………

And this……………..

The weekend started off with one very VERY good dressage test

And in true Bad Eventer style ……..one dressage FAIL

Then came cross country on the green bean…….

and some nostalgia for the old days of penalty zones.

Here’s what happened…………………………

I was rather offended by the Novice course.

80% of the jumps were also BEGINNER Novice jumps………….so they were…….well…… tiny.

There was no ditch.

There was no bank.

There was no combination.

I was thoroughly and completely disappointed. This was to be his last Novice (moving up to Training next time.) He was already thoroughly unimpressed with the Novice jumps from the last show, and that one was a BIG and challenging Novice course!

This much less impressive course, was a step in the wrong direction………………..
as it turns out…………. for BOTH of us.

I guess I was asleep at the wheel, when I turned to jump 5

when……….you guessed it……………. 

We were about 30 feet away from the jump and hadn’t even really looked at it yet.

He stopped.

I smacked.

He went.

I was pretty far away from the jump……. we didn’t circle or back up.

But it cost us 20 penalties

Anyone else remember Penalty Zones?? It sure would have taken the questions out of this situation!!

That’s what Bad Eventer gets for being upset that the jumps were too small!!!!!!!!!!!

The next day was my second ever XC at Prelim.

We were ready, I was in warm up. And warm up apocalypse happened AGAIN!!

We SMASHED another warm up jump to the ground. I didn’t think it was even possible
for this to happen 2 shows in a row. I had actually considered not clipping on my air vest until AFTER warm up!!! Just in case!!!!

But I stayed on, didn’t blow my vest, got a talking to about “not doing that again”…..

and headed out on course!!!

Here we are over the last jump!! Another clear XC round at Prelim for Bad Eventer!!