I hadn’t even left for The Fork yet, and things were spinning out of control. See Part 1 for the details.

It’s amazing how fast confidence can go from 100 to 0.

In spite of all my preparation, the one thing I couldn’t get out of my head was that this is #70.

I cannot screw this up.

You see The Wonder Pony has a perfect cross country record. In 10 years of competing he’s entered 69 recognized events and he’s never…….

nope not ever……… had a single XC jump penalty. The Fork was going to be #70.

So when everything unraveled on Tuesday my main worry……. was that not only could I not mess up his perfect record, I definitely couldn’t get the first 20 or E of his life at Number Seventy!

I know it’s stupid, and that really shouldn’t have played a factor in my decision, but it sure did………….

So we had a new plan, Training at the Fork & hopefully get our mojo back….. and get on the wait list for the next weekend at Prelim.

No matter how that turned out…….we were headed off for a grand adventure.

I arrived Wednesday evening and decided to squeeze in some hacks before dark.

There was a sign that said “warm up” so I headed that way.

Then there was another sign

and another

and………….another.

And then………there were some more.

I was beginning to wonder if there was some sort of hidden camera gag going on as I followed the signs.

It turns out the walk from the stabling to the riding areas is a warm up all of its own.

In spite of the 30+ minute round trip to the rings and back I managed to squeeze in a ride on all 3 horses before I ran completely out of daylight.

Bad Eventer & the Lock, Stock & Barrel trio had arrived at THE FORK!!!!

To be continued…………………………