My marbles are definitely lost. There are bats in my belfry. My cheese done slipped off my cracker. There’s a kangaroo loose in my top paddock. My cuckoo clock is stuck at 12. However many other euphemisms you can think of for crazy, they all apply.

I entered a dressage show.

Like… one that doesn’t have any jumping at all. Not even a combined test. And they do real USDF dressage tests (although thanks y’all for letting me do my lil’ USEA test cuz I don’t have any more room in my brain to learn more). I have never been able to fathom why anyone would want to willingly do a dressage test when you don’t even get to jump afterward as a reward, but I guess I’m about to find out what this business is all about.

How did this happen? I dunno. Moment of weakness? Sometimes I have ideas that seem really good at the time but are actually crap? Or I go along way too easily with things that Trainer suggests… that’s probably it. I’ve noticed I’m very agreeable to anything that is presented to me dressed as a learning/development opportunity. I should remember that in the future (but I won’t) because I think Trainer has figured out how I work. Damn her manipulative ways.

But I sent my little entry in for a dressage test at a show next weekend. Luckily it’s just a schooling show, and the whole point of going is so I can practice my Training test B before our event the weekend after. Test B is really stupid, just in case anyone asked my opinion (they didn’t). Who wants to do a figure 8 of 15m circles at X and canter lengthenings on a circle? Literally no one. Definitely not me and Henry. Maybe I should wear green instead of navy so that no one recognizes me? Or I could just wear a shirt with the USEA logo plastered all over it so that everyone knows I’m an eventer and gives me a wide berth?

Dressage judges freak me out. They’re so… judgey and…. dressagey. At least at an event they know in advance that they should probably lower their expectations. At a dressage show I don’t even get a disclaimer. On a scale of 1-10 how big of a faux pas would it be to say “OMG I’M AN EVENTER PLEASE HAVE MERCY” as I trot past C before I start my test? I’m, uh, asking for a friend.

Remember way back at the very end of January when I finally got to order my long-coveted Tucci boots? Guess what came?

And not a moment too soon, because despite the fact that I have 3 pairs of tall boots in my closet, all of them are in various stages of death. My previous show boots, the Ariat Monacos, have several holes in each boot. My super soft TuffRider boots finally popped a few stitches (and are too short to show in anyway), and the brown Mondoni’s have very admirably held up to constant use over the past year but are definitely not much longer for this world.

So I’m not gonna lie, I might have squealed a little bit when I saw the Tucci box. And I have to give them extra points, it’s a damn nice box. Very fancy.

I very sloooowly opened them because these boots are supposed to last me a long time, therefore who knows when I’ll get the pleasure of opening a new boot box again. Y’all know how glorious it is when that new leather smell first hits your nostrils, and then the excitement of slowly peeling back the tissue paper to reveal The Lovelies underneath.

And they are really, really lovely.

I ordered the Tucci Marilyn, which has all the fancy punching around the top, heel, and the wingtip toe. Thank you eventing for being a sport that welcomes individuality, because I’m not sure that I would have been ballsy enough to order these if I was still in h/j land. I know a lot of people are meh about a wingtip, but I freaking love it.

I special ordered them with a navy top, because… do I really have to explain? I’m just a really big fan of navy, ok? Although I do admit I was a bit worried that with all the punching and the wingtip, the navy might send them over the edge of “too much”. For some people I’m sure it does, but for me the navy is subtle enough to where it’s pretty perfect. From a distance you definitely can’t tell it’s navy, you have to get close up to see for sure.

But how do they fit?

Pretty freaking perfect. Granted, I am not that hard to fit, these are an off the shelf size… 39H (regular calf, extra tall). They are definitely tall on me at the moment, it is not very comfortable to snap them behind the knee yet, but my #1 pet peeve is boots that end up too short. Cannot stand it, even if it’s just the tiniest fraction too short, so I always err on the side of too tall. They’ve already started to drop some and I think in another week or two they’ll be the perfect amount of slightly too tall – exactly how I like them.

There are a lot of features of the Tucci’s that I think are really interesting and the construction seems pretty impressive. I’ll do a formal review and get more into all of the details once I’ve had them for a while. For now though I just want to stare at them and tell them they’re pretty.

Thanks to some pretty incredible serendipity I get to cross off another horse bucket list item this year. We’re going to Bundeschampionate!

Yeah I know… wait what? How did this happen? This was not in the plan!

Let’s start at the beginning.

A few months ago, at the recommendation of a friend, I signed up for the free version of the email list Scott’s Cheap Flights. For those who don’t know about it, basically you just enter your email address on the site to join the list and then once a day you get the email blast about whatever cheap international flights they’ve found. It’s really just a “heads up” email, and it’s up to you to go do the legwork and find/book the flights. Usually they’re out of major cities like New York, LA, Boston, DC, etc. Ya know… major international flight hubs. But sometimes they have some from Houston or Dallas, both of which are only a few hours drive from Austin.

So every day I open the email and scan it and check out the destination and departure airports, and then usually delete it. They’re almost always great prices, typically under or around $500, but usually either to places I don’t want to go (no thanks Asia or South America or Mexico, I’m just not that into you) or they’re not from cities that I can easily/affordably get to.

Then one day last week the email was about Oktoberfest… flights to Germany in late September for under $500, with Houston as one of the departure cities. I thought that was kind of interesting, so I went off to Google Flights and started messing around. I decided to put in some dates around BuCha (end of August) and just see what the fares looked like. Not only were the flights still cheap – it was actually even CHEAPER to fly into Brussels instead of Germany. How cheap? $368 total.

I shit you not – $368 round trip from Houston to Brussels. That’s barely more than I paid to fly to Nashville last month.

Cue gears turning.

It took literally zero seconds to convince Michelle that we should go. Gotta love her for that, she’s off and running with spur of the moment “fantastic ideas” just as easily as I am.

And the best part – my birthday is in August. It was not at all difficult to sell this as a “Happy Birthday to Me” adventure. Tickets were purchased and the itinerary started taking shape within a few hours of the email from Scott’s Cheap Flights.

For those who don’t know, BuCha is the young horse championships of Germany… literally a big collection of all the best horses and ponies in that part of Europe. They have to qualify to be eligible to compete there, so it draws the cream of the crop for each sport. For a breeder it’s pretty much Disneyland. It takes place in Warendorf, the horse capital of Germany, home of their Olympic training center (where BuCha is held).

Michel 233, Will Faudree’s new ride (also a Mighty Magic) winning the 5yo eventing class in 2015

Of course, Warendorf is also quite small and a bit rural (the closest big city is Münster, which is 45 minutes away) so all the hotels, bnb’s, and airbnb’s in town were already booked for that weekend. I expanded my airbnb search a bit and found a guesthouse at a farm in Ostbevern owned by a lady named Helga (I shit you not for the second time in one post). She seemed nice and while the farm is kinda in the middle of nowhere, it’s only 10 minutes from BuCha, and cheap, so we booked it.

We had no problem with quickly filling our itinerary. Michelle has a fancy pony jumper breeder friend in Rouen, France that we’re gonna pop over and see first, with a stop on the way at Tal Milstein to see their stallions (thanks to them for the invite!). Then on the way back toward Germany we’re stopping at another of her friend’s places in Belgium before settling in at Helga’s farm for BuCha weekend. We’re definitely gonna hop up to Schockemoehle at some point and possibly over to Ludger Beerbaum’s as well to see stallions and babies since they’re both within 45 minutes. Plus we’ll obviously spend 2-3 days at BuCha itself for finals (which I’m told has great shopping).

It’s going to be a busy week but I AM SO EXCITED!!!

An entire weekend without horses is really really weird, btw. Not a bad thing every once in a while, but as a general lifestyle choice I dunno. Either way, I did actually have a really fun time this weekend despite the lack of ponies. And if you count Friday as a weekend day then it wasn’t totally ponyless, because I did finally go set my showjumping course back and up and made myself a nice little corner. Henry was unimpressed with me, as usual.

But on Saturday we headed out to Houston with some friends of ours as a late birthday trip for the SO. It was kind of fun because we had planned this without him knowing where we were going or what we were doing, so everything was a surprise. Saturday was mainly eating and drinking… we went to a bunch of breweries, but I hate beer so while I did manage a cocktail at lunch, I otherwise did a lot of sitting.

I did consider asking the group if they’d be interested in going over to Sam Houston Race Park to watch the Preakness but I already knew that one would fall flat so I didn’t even bother. Our Air bnb was a nice condo in Midtown, with a memory foam mattress and a rain shower head, so I was happy enough.

Plus we got pie from THE House of Pies. Granted, I think I earned it after sitting on highly uncomfortable picnic tables at breweries for like 8 hours. Highly recommend the french silk.

The real reason I chose Houston was revealed on Sunday when we drove out to the Space Center. If you’re into that kind of thing, it’s pretty cool.

It kinda worked out anyway, because it rained at home pretty much all weekend. I don’t think I would have been able to ride at all. Plus I’m pretty sure I scored major brownie points for a surprise birthday adventure, and we all know how important that is.

I did injure myself though, rolling my ankle on the stairs in the condo. Figures I was the only one not drinking yet the only one to fall down. Pretty sure I have a soft tissue injury happening, it’s not good.

But it’s not that swollen therefore it’ll still go in a boot and then a stirrup, so no big deal, right?

Hope everyone else had a fun weekend! This rain can go away any minute now so I can get back to riding.

YAY, it’s Rant Friday!

I’ve done my fair share of complaining about horse show photos in my day. Usually when they’re crappy, or super expensive, or take months to get. But you know what’s worse than all of those things? Not having any photos at all. And ya know how to make sure that’s exactly what ends up happening? Keep stealing photographer’s proofs.

Trust me, I’m as cheap as anyone. I don’t love dropping hundreds of dollars a year on show photos, and sometimes it just isn’t in the budget. I get that. But at the end of the day if you like the photo enough to screen cap it and save it – or WORSE, screen cap it and put it on your facebook/Instagram with the photographers watermark displayed loud and proud across it, you probably like it enough to pay for it. After all, that photographer bought the equipment, spent all day watching and shooting boring-ass round after boring-ass round (and probably wanted to blow his/her brains out by the end of the day), and then spent additional hours sorting through and editing all those photos. For your thieving ass!

Unless of course you don’t want the photographers to show up anymore and don’t ever want show photos… then by all means, keep stealing them. But don’t be surprised when I tattle on you after you post that stolen proof all over social media, because I will. And I did. That’s stealing, and it’s not cool. It’s rude, and it’s tacky, and it directly contributes to ruining things for everyone else (especially ME).

So either cough up the money (for real yo, it’s like $18 for a low res digital) or do what any other self-respecting poor person does and take a blurry screenshot from a shitty video. And to the nice photographers that keep showing up weekend after weekend to take pictures of my boring ass rounds… please keep doing it. I promise I’ll buy some.