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I’m currently in the car, somewhere in the Netherlands, on the way to Germany. I’ve got two hours to kill, so blog post it is! 

This morning we left Bruges (after a pretty great hotel breakfast… they had giant hunks of chocolate on the fruit table…)

then we hit the road down to Asse, outside of Brussels, to visit Tal Milstein Stables. This place is absolutely top notch – beautiful facility, excellent competition horses, and nice stallions. I mean… WOW. 

We met the stallion manager Kenneth, and then the owner Tal, both of which were extremely welcoming. We watched some of his horses go while we chatted bloodlines, mares, and stallions. He has a really nice collection there (although his flagship stallion Alicante was away at a show) and it was excellent getting to see some of those guys in person.

Tal was also really fun to talk to, and treated us to a nice lunch (pizza! I’m hitting all the food groups here…) before we got back in the car to head to Zangersheide.

We got a quick tour of the facility, including the lab, offices, and barns. The highlight of which, of course, was the stallion barn!

We saw so many boys I really can’t even remember them all, but it was such a great opportunity to be able to see these famous, big name guys in person and get an idea of their character. 

So tonight we get to Warendorf, and then we don’t have a lot of driving to do for a few days. More stallions tomorrow, and day 1 of Bundeschampionate!

I left off yesterday when we were in our hotel in La Bouille, France, getting ready to head out to see some more ponies and then head to dinner. Earlier in the day we saw the stallion Usandro, owned by Elevage Alias (Milèna). Now we were headed out to the other farm where all of the other Alias sportponies live.

I have to say, I wish we had the niche for these kinds of ponies in the US. These aren’t fat, lazy little plugs that tote Susiekins around the 2’6″. These are basically pony sized showjumpers. In Europe they put kids on these little Ferraris that are talented, forward, athletic, and sometimes a bit cheeky. They’re fast and can JUMP, and these kids are pretty great little riders. I’m not sure I’d have the balls to gallop a pony around 1.15m courses with the pedal to the metal, but they do. Such a different world, with how they bring up their young riders. These ponies are NICE, and there is a solid market for them here. Lots of pony-only jumper classes, even pony-only Grand Prix. We totally need to get on this bandwagon, both for kids and for smaller adults.

Aside from the very fancy ponies and adorable babies, the barn itself was so charmingly European. Stone wall barn with straw-bedded boxes, a nice little arena, covered walker, conditioning track, and this, my favorite feature:

A cold stream with a little stall-sized pen, where the horses can hang out and soak their legs after a hard work. If that’s not amazing, I dunno what is. Who do I have to kill to get one of those?

After our tour, and meeting all the ponies and babies (omg poneh bebehs) 

we had some nice rosè at the farm before heading into town for a fantastic dinner: steak, gratin dauphinois, and a salted caramel macaron for dessert. So much yaaaaas. Milena from Elevage Alias was a fantastic host, we had a great time! But by that point we’d been up for like 42 hours, so we collapsed back at the hotel and got a good solid 7-8 hours sleep.

This morning we drove back into Belgium to Bruges. Nothing horsey today, just being tourists in a really freaking COOL gothic-style town. I absolutely love it here and MUST come back when I can stay a bit longer.

Our two main goals for Bruges were waffles and frites, and we’ve accomplished both of those. I might barf, but I have no regrets.

Tomorrow we’re back on the road headed east toward Germany, with a stop or two along the way to look at some more stallions. 

This is so fun, y’all.

We did in fact make it out of Austin and over to Atlanta for our connecting flight with no problems. However, a slight schedule conflict with our French contact had us doing a little bit of last minute tap dancing with our itinerary. 

Basically we just swapped our first two days… instead of heading straight to Bruges we got in our rental and drove over to the Normandy region of France. We were able to change our hotel reservations to make it work, so aside from giving my OCD a serious work out, it all ended up being perfectly fine.

We stopped along the way at a petrol station and got what was, hands down, the best gas station food I’ve ever had. A big, super cheesy croque monsieur dripping with sauce. Omg.

We got up into the Rouen area around noon and stopped off first to see a jumper pony stallion, Usandro. He’s ridiculously adorable and a true little powerhouse jumping bean. Also super sweet. He may be available via frozen on the US market soon… stay tuned. 😉 

Then we were off to another rider’s barn(s) to see all of his young horses. I got a bit sunburned traipsing up and down the hilly pastures of Normandy, looking at ridiculously well bred French showjumpers. Definitely have had worse days.

Now we’re at the hotel taking a quick break to clean up before a quick stop to see more ponies, then dinner. I am beyond ready to SLEEP, but the jet lag is worth it. 

Texas has been an exciting place for the past few days. Hurricane Harvey quickly turned into BAD business for the coast and the Houston area, blowing the earlier projections out of the water and becoming a Cat 4 by the time it made landfall. The real problem is the flooding from the now basically stationary storm, dumping literally FEET of rain into parts of that area so far.

Luckily everyone I know in the area either evacuated or is still faring ok to this point. It’s far from over, since the rain is expected to continue for the rest of the week, but hopefully everyone remains ok. It’s heartbreaking to watch the destruction on TV (not gonna lie, I feel a special kind of fury every time I see a dog or a horse). If you want to know how you can help, click here to find out more.

Over here in Austin we’ve gotten quite soaked from the outer edges of the storm, but nothing like what they’re dealing with. At my house we’re up to about 7″ of rain, with more to come, but we’re on higher ground with better drainage, so there hasn’t been any flooding to speak of in our area. It’s yucky out, and the wind was crazy for the first day or so, but that’s about it. Henry is warm and dry and tucked into his stall with his hay. The barn is on top of a hill and farm’s soil drains well, so no problems there.

Of course, both Houston airports are closed. On Friday I was starting to get pretty anxious about our Europe trip. It was already quite clear that we would not be able to leave from Houston. By mid-day Delta finally extended their travel waiver through the 28th, meaning I could change to another airport without paying the change fee. Of course, they still wanted to charge me a “fare difference” of 1k. Hilarious bunch of assholes.

After some minor panic on my part, a friend of mine was able to use her pull as an elite member to get them to not only waive the fare difference, but to let me reroute through Austin. Originally when I was booking this trip, leaving through Austin was A LOT more expensive than leaving through Houston. I’d have even been happy to leave through Dallas, honestly, but leaving through Austin is obviously waaaay more convenient. I don’t have to drive 3 hours to another city and pay to park my truck for a week. So ultimately we dodged a bullet with that (THANK YOU ANNA) and kinda came out ahead in the end.

Our flight is supposed to leave around noon today, and we layover in Atlanta before hopping the flight to Brussels. Hopefully we’re able to get out on time, or close to it, and don’t have too many travel issues. Between all the stress with work lately, and then the anxiety of the past week worrying about the weather and whether or not this trip was actually going to happen, I’m in serious need of some mental downtime. And waffles. Lots of waffles.

I’ll do my best to keep posting here and on Instagram for as long as I have access to WiFi. So, hopefully the next time you guys hear from me, it’ll be from our hotel in Bruges. Fingers crossed, anyway!

For those of you who haven’t noticed, a hurricane is currently bearing down on Texas. Well, technically it’s not quite a hurricane yet, but they’re expecting it to be a category one or category two by the time it makes landfall tomorrow. Of course, it’s heading pretty much directly at Houston. I live in Austin, so typically this wouldn’t be much of a problem for me. We’re supposed to get a lot of rain, but that’s about it.

But guess where I’m supposed to be flying out of to head to Europe? And guess which direction Trainer lives, where Henry was supposed to go while I’m gone?

Yeah. Pretty convinced the hurricane is my fault.

Henry’s “week of learnin'” has already been cancelled, because if he’s gonna sit in a stall for a week he might as well do it here instead of there. That’s going to leave me scrambling a bit when I get back, to get him ready for our mid-September horse trial, but it’s not the end of the world. At this point I’m much more concerned at how Houston is going to fare during all this. Mostly because I have a lot of friends down there and I’m hoping they’re able to adequately prepare. But also, if I may be selfish and have a major #firstworldproblem about my European Dream Vacation for a minute, I’m not so sure my flight out of Houston is going to happen.

It’s supposed to make landfall late Friday, and then basically just stall out and sit there all weekend. Hence the crazy projected rain totals. My flight is mid-day on Monday, which will at least miss the worst of the like… HURRICANE parts of the hurricane. But by that point I’m betting everything will be pretty well flooded, and it’s not really supposed to stop storming until Monday night.

Aside from the whole “driving to Houston in a flood” thing and the “strong thunderstorms and heavy rain” forecast thing, our layover in Atlanta is only 50 minutes. If we don’t leave Houston on time, we ain’t making it, and the next flight out of there is a whole 24 hours later. I called Delta yesterday to see about switching to an Austin to Atlanta flight instead… I can see the flight available, and it has plenty of seats open, and it would get me to Atlanta in plenty of time for my connection to Brussels. But of course they haven’t issued a travel advisory for anything past the 26th yet, so she said my only option at this point is to pay $8,000 to switch my flight.

HAHAHAHAHA you’re funny, Delta agent. This was a $368 flight. Total. Round trip.

So all I can do now is wait and see if they issue a travel advisory. But of course, Michelle is flying out of Midland, and literally the only connection from there to Atlanta takes her through Houston. Therefore I’ve kind of just already resigned myself to the fact that we’re likely to end up getting to Brussels a day late. Which effs up our timeline a bit, but we’d still be there in plenty of time for Bundeschampionate. It just means we’d have to cut off the whole France leg of our trip, basically.

Of course, for me it’s mostly just an inconvenience (unless I really do have to drive to Houston in a flood, then maybe I should invest in a boat). For the people in the storm’s path, they could have some serious issues to contend with. I hope everyone down in that area who is susceptible to flooding is able to go ahead and get their horses out now… I know there are lots of barns in Austin that can take some in, if needed (contact me if you’re looking for somewhere to go). Everybody else, batten down the hatches!

At this point there’s not a lot I can do about it except wait and see what happens, and hope that this thing isn’t as monstrous as they’re saying. Let’s hope it ends up weaker and faster-moving than they’re predicting at the moment.

I just want to GTFO of here and go pet some European ponies, man.