Jumping Show - Stadium

These are the pictures from Cecil's second jumping round at the show. The first round was through some standing water in the arena, and though he was happy to leap over any fence in the arena, he also felt the need to jump every puddle so as not to have splashing. This second round was much better after he had schooled his cross-country and realized that it's just like trailriding, just with jumps!

Jumping Show - Cross Country

My long term plans for Cecil are to compete in eventing with him. This generally involves 3 days of competition, the first is dressage (horse ballet), the second is cross-country (as seen here) the third day is stadium jumping (in the next post). This weekend I went with some friends on a whim to a local stable and showed in some jumping classes and schooled (practiced) on the cross country course they had available. SO MUCH FUN. This is why I ride, the precision of dressage, the fast trailriding over jumps, and the thrill of fences in the arena!

Raining but still competing...

Here's a photo from this last weekend's horseshow in the downpour. Cecil was a superstar in the indoor warm-up arena, and then had several moments of near panic while worrying about cantering through puddles in the outdoor competition arena. What a guy. Still got a good score, but was just shy of a qualifying score for this year's championships. It's ok - still have 3 more chances to qualify. I do like this photo, though.

Crazy Owen

I worked from home yesterday and decided that I would go on a bike ride during lunch. Holly and I plan on biking up Snowbird when we go in August, so I need to get some training in. Holly and I had done a 15 mile ride on Saturday in Soapstone Natural Area, so I figured I could go further on county roads since the terrain would be smoother. So, I planned out a 21 mile loop. I have an application on my phone that uses gps to track the route, and keep statistics like speed and elevation. I can then upload it to google maps and look at it in more detail. So, here it is. If you click on the end icon (the red one), you can get the statistics.

map

Addresses on the county roads here are actually quite informative. For the north county roads, divide your address by 1000 and it will tell you how far north you are from downtown Ft. Collins (Mountain St, if you want specifics). After I had gone about 15 miles, I started looking at the numbers on the mail boxes to gauge how much farther I had to go. Well, our address is 12245 and I saw a mailbox with 1800 on it. "What!", I thought. "I have 10.4 miles to go!" Turns out that mailbox was actually for a west address. A couple mailboxes further they were in the 6000s, which is what I was expecting.

Needless to say, when I got home I was pretty tired and my butt hurt from sitting in the saddle for so long. I'm not sure how people do it for over a hundred miles. My butt would be sore for weeks if I did that!