You Can Take The Girl Away From Her Horses....

But she'll still be obsessed.

I went to try out a new (to me) running route this afternoon. I've been eyeing it up for a while via all the satellite imagery I deal with daily at work.  Real life did not disappoint - it's a beautiful park and the trails are really nice. It's a bit of a drive from where I'm currently located which is why it hasn't made my list of go to places. It was a beautiful sunny fall day, the temperature was just right, the trails had some nice inclines to add a little challenge, and for once I just felt good right to the end of my loop (I am the world's most naturally UNgifted runner. Seriously. I suck. So to finish without feeling like I'm dying/scaring passers by is pretty awesome all in itself :) There was even a rowing regatta taking place on the river right next to my trail, so I almost felt like I was being encouraged along myself with all the yelling and cheering coming from the rowers.

So what could have possibly been wrong with my day? I spent the whole run thinking:

A. How much more fun I would have riding my run route.

B. How the trails are wasted for hiking/running and would instead make a kick ass cross country course.

C. How fall is here and I've officially missed an entire summer of riding.

The trails. Seriously, how is this not a cross country course? :)

View along the river, just cause it's pretty by prairie standards

Actually, it was a pretty nice afternoon.

Ginger's Stuff

Takes up more room than Ginger! I hope I am not alone in this. In my absence, G has been tidying up our basement and has just realized the extent of Ginger's things. How I got away with it for so long, I have no idea. I think he must have thought the miscellaneous boxes and bags in our storage room were the remnants of moving out of my house and into his. Now that he is organizing, he's realizing it's all horse gear. He just texted me asking if Ginger is secretly living in the basement too - after all, she'd probably take up less room than all her belongings.

It's funny, I'm pretty minimalist in real life. I love having things organized neatly and hate clutter. I have a bare minimum of possessions. Ginger, however, owns the better part of a tack store. I've tried to downsize, but her collection only grew larger this summer with all those vacation deals. We definitely need a larger barn  :)

Working Student

Anyone out there done a working student gig?

After this contract is done I'm considering packing up myself and Ms Gingersnap and putting ourselves at the mercy of one of my very favorite clinicians for a few months. She's one of the few that travel to our town in BC for clinics, so I feel like I have a good idea of what she can teach us (a lot!) and what she'd be like to work for.
Event though I have a career and I'm ancient by traditional working student standards, I'm considering this option because it would solve a lot of my first world horsey problems and hopefully get Ginger and I on track for an actual show season next year :)

A Day At The Races

I can't believe it was two weeks ago already!

Our day started with me being uber lazy and not wanting to get out of bed - I told G I was jet lagged. Ha ha, one hour flights do that to me every time :)

Finally, off we ventured to Hastings Park, home of Hastings Racecourse, and of course the Pacific National Exhibition, along with Playland (an amusement park) and for Vancouver Canucks fans, their previous venue, the Pacific Coliseum.

The racing didn't start until 2PM, so we had a couple of hours to tour the PNE. We entered to win the prize home lottery (fingers crossed!), checked out the livestock barns, and generally milled about with the rest of the fairgoers. I was disappointed not to see any draft horses in the barns, although we did see part of the 4-H light horse show which was neat. After a veggie burrito which turned out to not be veggie at all (boo!), we decided to go for a ride on the roller coaster. It's a super cool old wooden one that apparently is on most hard core roller coaster fans bucket lists. I love it because its old and rickety and rattley and so very much fun! I'm not sure what was different this time, but The Coaster beat me up good :( I got a huge bruise all across my chest from getting slammed into the restraining bar thingy repeatedly. Still, it was awesome, and made for a great story at the beach. "Oh this little thing...yeah, got it riding a roller coaster" lol. It made a refreshing change from all the horse related bruises I usually sport on vacation.

At last, it was time to head over to the track and admire all the beautiful TBs. With the fair going on next door, I have to think these particular thoroughbreds are pretty much bombproof. There's a ride called "The Hellevator" right outside the paddock that lifts people way way up over top of everything and then randomly drops them. The sound of it kept scaring me, but the horses were totally oblivious lol.



"3 year old TB gelding. Has some get up and go, but Hellevator safe"

As you can see from the pictures, the weather was typical dark and gloomy Vancouver weather, so the pictures live up to my usual low standard. Coming from a baking hot sweaty prairie summer, I admit I enjoyed the luxury of wearing a light coat and the excuse of staying warm by snuggling up to G in the stands :)

This jockey made up pretty great save when his horse got away from the outrider and had a bit of a meltdown. Very well ridden and they managed to get settled enough to start and place.

Resident eye candy. Horse is obviously gorgeous and I am told the rider was a pretty good looking guy. You can see where my priorities were, though ;) Sorry good-looking-guy-with-no-head!

 

All in all, we had a really great afternoon horse watching and I saw more than one I wanted to take home. I make a bit of a hobby of watching how they move warming up and trying to predict what the outcome of the race will be. That day, I was good enough at it to buy G a nice steak dinner :)