The Working Rider: Gulfport Day 2 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I’m up to 98 likes on my FB! Yay me!

I awoke on Saturday with grand plans of amazing riding and eating protein. Protein? Yes protein. You see, I have this odd habit of somehow having a diet that consists only of varying forms of bread and cheese. A typical day’s meal plan might be cheesy toast for breakfast, quesadillas for lunch, and pizza for dinner. I’m a self-proclaimed carboholoic, and have quite the funny story about the 48 hours I attempted the Atkins diet. Do you remember that Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich I ate whole on the previous day? I might have had two bites of chicken then eaten the bun and cheese (which I added). I do actually quite like vegetables and salads, and other foods than bread and cheese, but bread and cheese is a staple. Like potatoes, but worse for you.

As a result, on Saturday I was thinking I should eat some protein. I wandered down to the hotel breakfast only to find that they had a variety of things including among others, scrambled eggs. I hate eggs. I felt like I should eat protein. I hate eggs. You see the quandary I was in. I did the only thing I could think to do, and that was get a scoop of eggs and add plenty of things on top so I could pretend they weren’t eggs, like cheese(!), and salsa, and tabasco. Too bad no tortillas, or I could have gotten my bread requirement in as well. I somehow managed to choke down this spicy, cheesy, eggy combo (nothing really helped the fact that they were still eggs, protein might not be worth it), and headed to the show.

Matt’s inner zen master trainer decided that he did not want me to hack in the morning (trust the ways of the master), as he thought maybe he was just getting a bit overdone. So, I got to show up at a much more reasonable hour of 8 am. I did so with the promise to myself that I would buckle down and get some work done on a response that was due Monday at 7pm. Do so or pay the price.

Upon arrival, I found this dashing young man all braided up and ready for Mardi Gras!

Also looking oddly like a dinosaur

Our classes had an estimated start time of 11:30, so I had some time to watch some of the newer girls in the barn ride.

When it was nearing time for me to get on, I headed to the barn for my long hike down to the hunter rings. DC was feeling cuddly and super friendly. Not that this ever changes, but it is a note to make that he is just the most gregarious horse I know. He also had a touch of scratches started on both front legs. Gulfport seems to equate scratches in the DC world, as this happened last year too. If anyone has any super-secret remedies, please let me know.

Regardless, we made it down to the rings with little fanfare (which compared to last year was a big improvement, maybe he did learn something at WEF after all).

I can essentially break down the day’s trips into three categories:

The Good – I had my lovable, quiet, amazing, level headed, positive attitude horse back. Really this was the good, the great, the amazing, the incredible etc etc etc part of my day. Really, he was just on his A game and acted like WMD never even happened. In my second hunter I had a couple of closeish spots and scored an 82. Nothing to be ashamed of and was 4^th.

The Bad – My amazing horse did not have an amazing rider to go along with him. My first hunter I was all over the place with my pace and had a complete lack of consistency. A good hunter round this does not make. No score announced, but I jogged 9^th. Something about close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades.

The Ugly – Coming off of the 82 second hunter and first classic score (the rounds were combined), I was thinking I could really go in and ROCK IT for my second classic round. And rock it I did, all the way up until I was headed up the hill to a 6 stride line. I legged, nothing. Leg more? Nothing. Legggggg and kick???? Just enough response to take away my normal distance and create a heinous chip right at the base. When in doubt, leave it out. Except when you should just stay where you are and add up on the in of the line. We landed in a heap with no horse, and no response with just enough sludge up the hill to just make another chippy add coming out. Barf. The rest of the course was beautiful, wonderful, and marvelous. Somehow the judge just couldn’t ignore that line though and we scored a 66. So I went from a piece of the classic to 12^th. For those of you who didn’t know 12^th place is a dark hunter green color, so just like a 6^th but twice as far away from 1^st. sigh.

The important thing though was that DC was back in full form, and even after that disaster line finished up on the final three elements beautifully. Our goal of Gulfport had been accomplished in one day, and I even walked away with a white ribbon to prove it.

We finished our evening with a long graze in the field (yet another thing to love about GP).