I'm a pretty lucky person. Make that a very lucky person. I get to do a job I love, surrounded by amazing people and wonderful animals. All day, every day. Yeah, sometimes its not quite all fun, like yesterday, when I did my last gallop before Galway in a full on, white out blizzard. Or when my horse is lame (as he was after Twin Rivers, when he popped a huge abscess which kept him out of work for a week). Or when I spend over 12 hours at the barn, riding, cleaning, grooming, riding, and riding, until I'm so tired I forego dinner altogether and fall asleep on the couch. But for every time I'm feeling overwhelmed or harried or exhausted, I can name at least three times that my friends, family, and clients have stepped up to help me out.
The lead up to this trip to Galway has not been nearly as smooth as I would have liked. Between the lame horse, a crammed teaching schedule, the winter that finally came, causing said teaching schedule to become even more wild, cross country schooling, and a clinic with Alfredo Hernandez, I was just toeing the line which divides moderate insanity from utter chaos. Then, I plugged my trailer into my truck to drive to the car wash on Sunday. No trailer brakes. I did have a flashing red light on my brake controller, and when I used the manual trailer brake lever, I did actually have brakes, although the computer didn't think so. Uh-oh. I called the trailer repair guy first thing on Monday morning and made an appointment for that day. I arranged for Steph to pick me up and take me back to the barn. I put the dog in the car, and fired up the truck. Bingo. Brakes. I called the trailer guy back and we decided to try it again later and see if it was still working. He rightly (and honestly!) pointed out that he couldn't fix what wasn't broken. Crisis averted.
But, yesterday was supposed to be Cha Cha's final (and only- stupid abscess!) gallop before Galway. He's finally feeling very fit and no longer looking like a prelim Thelwell, and I was loath to miss another gallop. But... It was blizzarding. Seriously. And windy enough in the valley to blow rain gutters off of houses. I can do canter sets in the indoor, but we'd set up the dressage arena on Sunday, and I'd need to take most of it down in order to make the corners, and even then, its a very controlled canter, and not really very beneficial from a fitness standpoint. The footing in the outdoor was surprisingly good, in spite of the moisture, and the ring is much bigger, and therefor more suitable for a more serious canter work-out. Brian, our wonderful barn manager agreed to harrow the outdoor for me in the blinding, driving snow. So, Cha Cha did his gallop, and recovered very quickly, so I'm thinking he hasn't lost too much in the way of fitness due to his unplanned layoff.
Today was predictably the craziest of all. I started teaching at 9am, and went pretty much straight through until 2pm. Plus, I had several horses to ride before leaving for the weekend, and the trailer wasn't loaded. Lani came up and spent the day, and did the lions share of the work, loading hay, bedding the trailer, adding feed, loading tack, and trunks, and grain, and blankets... Plus, she cleaned and vacuumed the living quarters! What a gal!
So now I'm getting ready to head to bed, after going out to dinner with my mom. I'm just waiting on my last load of laundry to finish drying so I can finish packing. Oh, and I'm waiting for Lani to get here to spend the night before our 3am wake-up. She had a family party to get to, on top of everything else. Oh, and she's stopping by the grocery store on the way up- because, like most of the people I'm lucky enough to have in my life, she's awesome like that!
No comments:
Post a Comment