Month: May 2017

​Short version of Sunday at Rolex? Be early, bring a raincoat, and if you’re going to buy bleacher seats, might not be a bad idea to pack some brass knuckles. JK on that last one. Kind of.

But first – the jogs!

We rolled out of the RV about an hour before the final horse inspection and wandered down there to try to claim a good spot. On our way we passed by MJ in one of the arenas, lunging Roxy at a nice relaxed stretchy trot. It’s really cute seeing him with that horse, it’s very obvious how much he loves her and how involved he is. Made my cold little black heart pretty happy all weekend, and made me love both of them even more than I already did.

Most of the horses looked pretty good, aside from the 3 that were sent to the hold box. Two were accepted when they were re-presented (one of which still looked pretty janky to me), and of course Doug’s Vandiver ended up getting spun. Definitely sad for him. Mostly though I really liked watching the jogs because we were able to get a good look at the horses and their conformation and movement. We kept referring back to their breeding when we spotted one that we particularly liked. For breeding nerds like me and Hillary, it was fun.

Then it was back to the RV to cool off (for real, humidity) and relax for a bit before packing lunches for ourselves and heading back out for stadium. We bought bleacher seats mostly because we’re cheap, but also because if you play it right, you can get REALLY close. We showed up at 10:30 (showjumping didn’t start until 1) and secured what was, IMO, the absolute best spot on the bleachers.

Of course, the real price we paid was having to sit on the metal bleachers for hours and hours. It’s ok though, spines and asses recover just fine with time and Advil. Some things are worth it.

We sat and watched the riders walk the course (which gave me a chance to take creepy pics of Maxime to send to Bobby):

and watched Reggie’s retirement thing, the Pony Club games awards, some exhibition thingy, and the parade of riders. We made sure to tell Maxime that Bobby still loves him, which produced a look that was 50% amused and 50% terrified. You know it’s been a good weekend when you’ve terrified a Frenchman.

At one point a couple girls tried to set up their stuff on the walkway in front of our spot on the bleachers and a volunteer came over to tell them they weren’t allowed to sit there. Because… obviously… there are hundreds of people trying to walk through. They moved their stuff, and not long afterward this rude-ass lady came to the exact same spot and started setting all her stuff down. Hillary very kindly leaned forward and said “Just so you know, someone else tried to sit there earlier and the volunteers made them move”. The lady glared at us and said “WE SIT HERE EVERY YEAR”, to which Hillary replied “Okay that’s fine, just letting you know.”. Lady glared at us again, arranged a sheet on the ground to ‘reserve’ the spot (in the middle of the walkway), put rocks on top of it so it wouldn’t blow away, and then went and sat on the bleachers a little ways down. Still glaring at us of course, and obviously talking shit about us to the girls that were with her. That’s fine, I had nothing to better to do for a couple hours than glare back.

The volunteer came around again and asked if we knew who’s stuff was sitting on the ground this time… Hillary and I both very gleefully leaned forward and pointed right at Ms. RudeAss. The volunteer goes down there and tells her the same thing she told the previous girls, the lady argues with her for a while then finally gets up with a huff, marches over, glares at us some more while muttering rude things under her breath, rips up her sheet off the ground, and marches away. Of course, in the process of snatching up her sheet she threw all the rocks that were on top of it INTO the arena. Way to go, jerkface. There for a few seconds I thought we were going to end up in a Rolex brawl.

While all of the pre-showjumping stuff was going on it rained a little bit off and on, but despite the 20% chance of rain we had decided to bring our rain jackets anyway. I was definitely glad about that. Luckily once stadium started it didn’t rain anymore, and for sure I swear we had some of the best seats in the house. I love being right up on the rail.

Let’s be honest, the two main perks to the showjumping are 1) watching the rider’s reactions when they successfully complete a 4*, and 2) The top 3. Or in this case, the top 2. MJ could only afford one rail and I think all of us were on the edge of our seats, especially when he dropped the middle element of the triple. That man gives me a stroke sometimes. The Europeans still soundly whomped all the US riders though. I have some thoughts about that, but that’s another post for another day.

​And with that, Rolex was a wrap. I had an absolute blast with Hillary (and Sonny!), the RV was a stroke of genius, and I 100% for sure want to do this again. I just need a year to recover.

Saturday in Lexington dawned warm and humid. It had rained a bit overnight (not gonna lie, I was a bit smug in my bed in the RV as a thunderstorm rolled through at 3am and threatened to blow away all the tents. Probably because I’m usually the person in the tent.) although it was really just enough to make the footing pretty perfect yet the air so thick as to be almost unbreathable. I was wondering how those foreign and Canadian horses would handle it, and the thicker ones with less TB.

Hillary and I trudged out of the RV (and trust me, after our 9 mile day on Friday, it was trudging) about an hour before XC started and decided to head down to the ditch brush. In that field you could see 3 fences plus the big screen, so it seemed like the ideal place to park ourselves. Because, ya know… neither of us really felt like wandering around a whole lot.

I have to say though, I was quite happy with our jump choice. The ditch brush always makes for great pictures, and we were able stake our claim right at the ropes. It really could not have been a better view, plus we didn’t have to deal with insane crowds.

Around 10:45 we headed up to the trade show to the Dubarry tent, because there was supposed to be a blogger meetup there at 11. We got there a few minutes early and waited… and waited… and kept checking our phones to see if the time or place had changed. At 11:10 we were irritated and gave up, and wandered over to the trade fair to talk to a couple of vendors. Turns out our timing was super fortuitous, because about 30 seconds after we got into the building, the skies totally opened up and it poured buckets for a few minutes. We just stood in front of the big screen in the trade fair and watched everyone else get wet, then once the rain was done we went back out and parked ourselves in front of the ditch wall again to wait for MJ to come through.

We did manage to meet up with most of the other bloggers briefly after cross country was over, and as we were standing there talking to everyone, I pulled up my Instagram and saw this.

I am not one to get excited about the “celebrity” aspect of riders, and I definitely would not typically stand in line to meet any of them… BUT…

Bobby is obsessed with Maxime Livio. Like, he kept asking me all weekend to go find him and take pictures of him. I am not that dedicated to being creepy, but if I know where Maxime is going to be and when, maaaaaybe I can creep a little bit on Bobby’s behalf.

As soon as he said “Make him write I LOVE YOU BOBBY” I saw this as a challenge, and what else can I say but CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

So off Hillary and I marched back up to the trade fair to stand in line for Maxime Livio with what was, for the most part, a bunch of of 13-16yo girls. Also, it was balls-hot up there, and I had sweat rolling down my back while we stood there for half an hour and waited for him to show up. But we finally worked our way up to the front, and I said to Maxime “Hey this is going to sound really weird but my friend is obsessed with you, can you write ‘I love you Bobby’?”. He kind of grinned and said “Sure!” and asked how to spell Bobby. I said “Oh just like the regular guy’s way, B – O – B – B – Y”. He raised an eyebrow but wrote it anyway. Tim Price was sitting there with him and Hillary says “Yeah Bobby is a 40yo man” and Tim says “4? Well that’s way better than 14, 14 would be a bit weird.”, to which Hillary says “No, FOR-TY.”. This seemed to really tickle Tim, because he snickered then reached over and put three little x’s behind where Maxime had written “I ❤ you, Bobby.”. I have to give Maxime credit here, he did not skip a beat.

I really hope that Tim Price went back to the barns and told everyone about how Maxime wrote I LOVE YOU for a 40yo man named Bobby. I’m sure after the gaggle of women falling all over themselves for Maxime all weekend, surely this was a nice change of pace? Either way, now he knows he has a stalker and that his friends are equally as creepy.

Plus now Bobby owes me forever and ever.

I know Rolex bills itself as #bestweekendallyear, but for real they ain’t lying. I have so much to cover (boy, it was action packed) and a ton of media, so I’m gonna have to break it up into a couple posts. Plus I’m currently sitting in the back of an Uber on the way to the airport, and posting from a phone is annoying, therefore I can’t do this all at once. But alas – here’s a Friday recap!

I left off last week with our arrival on Thursday. Our camping spot was ridiculously amazing (for real like 100′ from the front gates) as was the RV rental that Hillary found on RV Share. 110% the best way to Rolex. We had a few too many ciders at the taco party on Thursday night, so we were able to sleep in a little on Friday and still have plenty of time to hit up the trade fair.

I know several other bloggers got a ton of stuff, but I’ll have to disappoint you right off the bat. My spending money was slim and I didn’t find much that I wanted anyway (aside from the $5700 CWD, of course), so I mostly just got a few shirts and some gifts. Apparently I cannot resist anything that is billed as a fundraising effort for an OTTB organization. 

After the trade fair we dumped our stuff in the RV (so convenient) and headed down to stalk Michael Jung. We opted not to get seats for dressage because I can’t sit there and watch the sandbox for a long enough period of time to make the purchase price worthwhile. Instead we sat by warmup and watched him get ready, which was way more interesting to me anyway. We were able to get right up close and see exactly what he does to prepare. 

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When he went in we just pulled up the live feed on Hillary’s phone and watched his test from our hillside.

Then we headed up to pick up our packets for the RK5K. Hillary might never forgive me for this but somehow I totally tricked her into running it with me. And although she is not a runner, she certainly is not a quitter either, because she dug in and got it done like a champ. Granted, I’m pretty sure she wanted to punch me for at least 60% of it, but we finished it together and hey… we got cool shirts and a few good stories out of it. There are certainly worse places to run than KHP!

Our total mileage on Friday between all the walking and the 5k was over 9 miles. We earned our pizza and early bedtime, especially since the next day was XC…