Author: Amanda C

I really hope you have that song stuck in your head now, because I do, and misery loves company.

Coming back to real life after vacation is always a little sad. We got back on Thursday evening and spent all day Friday cleaning and rushing around making food/getting the house ready for a Halloween party that we were hosting. Note to the world: don’t wait until Halloween morning to buy decorations and stuff. Apparently the stores seem to think it’s appropriate to take all Halloween paraphernalia down a couple days beforehand and all I could find was CHRISTMAS stuff. What the hell. So our decorations were pretty sad, but everyone seemed to have a good time anyway. Last year I was a surfer and my dog Stewie was a bloody shark… this year I was Elliot and he was ET.

On Saturday I was up early, driving a couple hours away to a horse trial to volunteer as a XC jump judge. The weather was beautiful (Ahhhh, November in Texas) so it was a pretty darn pleasant day alone in the woods with my walkie talkie and clipboard.

Trainer through my jump, in her young horse’s Training level debut. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10154767999570641&l=3032518540487000601 

Sunday I was FINALLY free so off to the barn I went. I hadn’t seen Henry in a week and it was way too long. I missed that goofy boy. He also seems to think that he’s preparing for a Canadian winter, because he’s regrown a lot of coat already. Sigh. Looks like I’ll be clipping again in the next week or two.

A couple of goodies came while I was gone… his new PS of Sweden wool quarter sheet and the voucher for a free set of FlexSleeves that we won at the eventing derby in September. We tried the quarter sheet on (perfect! it’s so preeeeetty) and measured him for his FlexSleeves (navy mediums headed our way). Once it’s actually cold enough to use the quarter sheet I’ll review it but the initial impression is that I’m pretty darn happy with it, especially considering how cheap it was.

Then I came home and did something pretty monumentous:

Yup, we entered a recognized USEA event. Now begins 3 weeks of fretting about every single thing (what do you mean there’s no 21 day forecast?) and trying to make sure we’re as ready as possible. It’s just BN so I feel like it’s well within our ability, but you never know with horses. Fingers crossed pony and I keep ourselves together and that the weather, which has been awful the past couple years for this event, does not suck.

And now – back to work. Boo.

I’m not sure how a regular work week feels 10 times as long as a vacation week, but it seems like I’ve just blinked and boom the week is gone. Most of you will probably not find our trip particularly entertaining (like one of those awful vacation slide shows someone makes you watch, ugh) so I’ll keep it quick and dirty.

We road tripped with the dogs and the mountain bikes to Northern Arkansas. I have family up there and spent many summers/holidays there as a kid, but SO had never been. No one ever believes me when I say how beautiful it is, but trust me… it’s a “must visit” at some point in your life if you’re at all into the outdoors.

We had planned to mountain bike and hike on Tuesday but we woke up to rain and decided to flip-flop our plans instead. So we went into town (Mountain View) and dinked around all the cool shops there, and found lots of food. We spent the afternoon wandering around the backroads with the dogs (who thought Arkansas was AWESOME, so many squirrels). On our walk we came upon these two little Appys in a field, who came running when they saw us, so I got a little pony time.

Wednesday we woke up to perfect mountain biking weather – 45 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The trails were beautiful.

I wish I could say that we had an awesome long ride and everything went as planned, but… well… what was supposed to be a 12 mile loop turned into a 3.9 mile ride and 4.1 mile walk for me. I gashed the hell out of my rear tire to the point where our attempts to fix it were unsuccessful, and there was no “bail out” point on the loop for quite a ways. You know what’s not fun? Walking really far in bike shoes, dragging your bike along with you, especially on trails with a lot of overgrowth and thorns. Ah well, it wouldn’t be a bike adventure if I wasn’t bleeding. Any recommendations for getting a crapton of burrs out of lycra???

 

Not to worry, we eased our sorrows with the best malts on the planet

Then spent the afternoon adventuring with the dogs again before capping it off with a catfish dinner and a whole lot of back porch sittin and reading. Of course, when I got up the next morning I felt like I’d gotten run over by a Mack truck, but whatever.

Another fun note – on the drive home we were passing through one little town after another and as we drove into Quitman, AR I said “Hey this is the town Henry came from”. Then I noticed a little farm on the left with some jumps in the ring and said “Hey look they have jumps!” then a second later we passed the sign out front and wouldn’t you know – that’s the farm Henry came from! Small world. I bought him sight unseen so I’ve never been there. I casually said we should stop by but I think SO sensed DANGER ZONE, TOO MUCH MONEY ALREADY SPENT HERE and I’m pretty sure I felt him speed up as he pretended not to hear me.

All in all, a fun vacation and I’ve got yet another Arkansas convert on my hands. We’ll be back again some day (with better bike equipment). Until then, it’s back to the real world. We’ve got a Halloween party at our house tonight that I’ve done absolutely nothing to prepare for yet, then tomorrow I’m jump judging at an event a couple hours away, so somehow I’ve managed to book myself solid for the rest of my vacation.

Hope everyone had a good week, I’ve got to catch up on everything I missed while I was gone!

 

I’m having a great time on vacation already, but this email popped on my phone when we were out walking and just put the cherry right on top of my day. Of course everyone loves their own horse (none of us are biased at all right?) but there’s something really cool about someone else loving them too. 🙂

As I type this post we’re currently on the road on the way to Arkansas for vacation. A few days of mountain biking and hiking with the dogs awaits! I know for sure I won’t have internet but I should have decent enough cell signal for a post or two, but be prepared for a little radio silence on my end.

This weekend was pretty awesome. Most of Saturday was spent running around getting things ready for our trip. Sunday we went XC schooling at the venue where we’re doing our first event (Nov 22-23, it’s happening!). We had a couple of not so very confidence building lessons with old trainer that we’re still recovering from, so I wasn’t sure how it’d go. Aside from a little bit of “you want me to jump off of WHAT?!?” at the big bank down of death, he was fantastic. Very bold in general and jumped a lot of Novice fences. Hopefully I’ll have pics to share sometime this week!

He’ll get a couple of trainer rides this week and a friend is riding him in a dressage lesson, so he’ll be well taken care of while I’m gone.

Hope everyone has a good week! I’ll try to keep up with everyone’s blogging as best I can.

As I’ve been buying a few of the things we need for our new eventing adventure, mostly dressage stuff, I’ve been faced with a few choices. Back when I evented forever ago there weren’t a whole lot of options… black or navy coat, black velvet helmet, tan or white breeches, a plain stock tie, white saddle pad, etc etc. If you wanted to be bold you put a clincher browband on your bridle, wore gray breeches, and had piping on your saddle pad. I just don’t remember there being a whole lot of other things to choose from. Granted those were the days before there were so many online stores, lots of social media, and more liberal fashion trends.

For the most part my choices so far have been more conservative for dressage. No fancy browband, all black tack, and a plain white saddle pad. I have a couple of logo pads for xc and sj, white shirt and navy vest for me, navy bonnet for the pony. No crazy colored helmet covers or horse boots or anything like that.

I am not cute enough to get away with this outfit.

nor am I chipper enough to pull off this much yellow

I did have a little bit of fun with the colors on my coat… black with french blue lapels and white piping. The only other place I could think of to have a little bit of fun, and breathe a little life into my otherwise dreadfully boring dressage look, was my stock tie.

We’ve probably all seen the folks with cream colored stocks, pattered stocks, and satin stocks.

Some of them are a bit TOO bold for me, but I love the look of piping so I decided to spend the $5 more and have one made to coordinate with my coat. It’s a white pattered tone on tone fabric, has black piping around neck, and some blue and black piping around the loop. A little more fun than plain white but not too out there.

 

What do you think of having a little bit more fun with what is generally a very conservative look, like in the dressage or hunter ring? What about something “looser” like jumpers or XC? Are you a super conservative traditionalist or braver and bolder? And if you like to spice things up a bit, what do you prefer: more fun tack, more fun rider clothing, or both?