New balance

I don't have to work on Tuesday so like any normal person would do, I promptly scheduled a riding lesson. But this time, we are going to an eventing instructor for Hampton's formal intro to jumping. Yay! 

Oh wait.

This means I will need to ride in my jumping saddle.

I have not ridden in that saddle in 2 years (I started Hampton in that saddle and put about 3 rides on him with it before switching to my dressage saddle). Even worse, I have not ridden in the hunter/jumper balance in close to 7 years. And that become obvious today.

It really is a totally different balance between dressage and jumperland. I have been riding only dressage for so long, that I felt unbalanced and sloppy when I rode today. I decided it might do me some good to ride as much as I could in 2-point. Take that floppy lower leg! 

Hampton thought I was drunk. He kept slowing down as if to check on me as I tried to stay balanced, all the while grabbing mane and the running martingale. 

Things got a little better as time went on, but ladies and gents it did not come back to me like riding a bike. I rode hunter/jumpers for many years and gosh in college you could send me to a 3' - 3'3" jump and I would think no big deal. Now a days, I might trot up to a 2'3" fence and crap myself. What happened? Lack of practice? Self preservation?  

So I look at it as a very good thing that Hampton is so young and just starting out. Because this means I also get to go back to basics. And I can just use him as an excuse as to why I will be entering all the green as grass classes. NOT because I am rusty and a chicken. No it's because my horse is young. Duh!

Carl Hester videos

I've been watching a lot of Carl Hester lately. Here are a few super videos. This first one is a 5-year-old stallion (I think the video is from 2010 though) who is obviously incredible. (My birthday is coming up - someone find him and buy him for me!!). I like this video because the horse is tense at first, and then the rider is able to relax and stretch him out. It shows a total change of the horse's movement and length of neck. Part 2, the rider picks the horse back up. My personal opinion is the rider is a little too busy with the horse's neck at times, but he is a 5 year old stallion so you do what you have to do sometimes to keep the horse between you and the ground. Anyway, good videos on basic training. Although the horse is a freak and well beyond what I will ever have the honor to ride.










Here's Carl riding and 8 year old (I THINK this horse might be his current Grand Prix horse, Utopia, but I'm not sure. They sure look alike) ... under the instruction of Jean Bemelmans. This video is great on making the collected canter quick, flying changes and other canter work. I've been watching so many of these videos that I actually said "Zoo-per" to Hampton during our ride today. hahaha.





And here is Carl with Utopia this year. I LOVE how this horse pushes off the ground.

Thank you Miles!

A quick note to give a big thanks to Sarah and her hubs over at Miles on Miles!

I "won" a little contest a while back and in turn got a gorgeous stall sign with Hampton's name on it. His name is carved in wood and the entire thing is stained, smooth and just gorgeous. I need to take a photo if it. It's so, SO lovely! Thanks Sarah! :)

I did not leave my heart in San Francisco

Hellllloooooo blogger land.

I am back from my trip to Cali. San Fran is a neat city and if I was a city girl, I may just move there to live. But I'm not a city girl. I can't IMAGINE living there and having a horse - it's impossible to drive around not to mention how expensive it is - even on the outskirts. Infact I do not know how people even manage to have a dog. No one has a yard and it's very densely populated. Great people watching, however, and I did have a good time. We pretty much saw all the big attractions: Alcatraz, the Redwood trees, Six Flags, China Town, Little Italy, the crooked road, Haight Asbury (my favorite!!), and numerous bars, grills, and shopping. I missed Hampton tho ... he is where my heart is. haha. So corny. *gag* He did nicker at me yesterday when I went to see him. I'm sure he missed me ... or maybe he just missed the lady who constantly feeds him sugar and tells him how wonderful he is.

Here are a few fotos:

The Bridge

:) The Haight

In Haight-Ashbury

Parking lot at a Yaht Club. holy. cow.

more Haight Ashbury

The Grateful Dead House

The Rock

Hampton goes back to work this week ... I'd really like to make it to the Sept. 10 CAF show for our first combined test, Event derby and I REALLY want to best our 64% in dressage. If I can find a fun show in August to go to, we'll hit that too (as long as it's not 90+ degrees). Much trail riding is also in our future. This is a good thing - great for building muscle and bravery. Plus I can relax with a beer. Win win, people.

(by the way, read the below book if you are at all interested in the Grateful Dead, the Beat Generation, hippies, San Francisco, acid tests, or the 60s in general)

Har dee har!

Weight results are in.

Here's an update on the beast's weight.

He's a buckskin now.

Other than being pathetically sun-bleached and somewhat marked up with battle scars from his herd mates, he looks pretty good. And for some reason, he has managed to avoid the gross rain-rot, summer-itch crud that numerous other horses seem to have acquired.

Tomorrow I ride, weather be damned, and then I go on vacation. This is the first vacation in almost 10 years for me that is not 1) horse related or 2) Phish related. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself. Probably drink.

I have a few posts scheduled for when I am gone. I'm sure you are thrilled. :)

Have a good week. I'm off to San Francisco! (well, not yet, on Wednesday morning).

How Hampton got his name

How Hampton got his name

(part of my "it's too damn hot to ride so I'm posting on whatever random subject I feel like" series) 


In March 2009, my favorite band played in Hampton, Va., for their reunion tour after a 5-year hiatus.

It was a 3-night tour, but of course everyone wanted to get in the show on Friday - the first night. The Hampton colesium doesn't hold many people - maybe 13,000. So tickets were very, very hard to come by.

Hampton - at night.

I ended up spending a SHIT LOAD of money on 2 tickets for Friday. I spent more on those tickets than I spent on Hampton. Or my saddle. And a lot of other things. This should tell you just how unhealthy my love for this particular band is.

At the last minute, another friend decided to join us for the ride over and hoped to score a ticket when we got there. For some reason, I had an unselfish moment and decided that we couldn't just go in the show and leave him out in the lot alone.

So, we ended up trading my 2 Friday tickets for 3 Saturday tickets. The women who traded with us seemed oddly normal for a Phish fan. She ended up having to call her husband to bring us the 3 Saturday tickets. We waited with her for about 45 minutes. Finally, her hubs shows up with the tickets and we make the trade. My friend, a very jaded veteran of these shows, examines the tickets and determines they are not fake.

So here I am, Friday night - NO TICKETS - but 3 for Saturday. I really, really, wanted to be in there when the lights went off and the boys took the stage for the first time in 5 years. I started to get mopey about it. The 3 of us decided to mosey up to the venue to "see what happens." I wasn't optimistic and continued to sulk while sitting on a sidewalk.

Meanwhile, my veteran friend is chatting with a very large security guard. Great, now he's going to get us in some sort of trouble. Am I going to have to bail him out of jail? I don't even know where the jail is in Hampton, Va!

At one point, Friend comes over - grinning - and says "We're going to get in. Be patient."

Yeah, right. There is no way to sneak into this venue. There are guards everywhere. Security is tight. I go back to sulking.

Within 20 minutes, he comes over and says "I need $100." My other friend coughs it up. Now I'm half concerned, half shaking from excitement. We wait another 5-10 minutes and the big security guard waves at us.

He walks us in through the back gate. All 3 of us were doing all we could to contain ourselves. The security guard didn't sneak us in - he escorted us in like we were royalty! We strolled right in to the venue and out onto the floor of the Hampton Colesium. Once we were in there, we could no longer remain composed. All 3 of us are now in - not one ticket - and we still had 3 tickets for tomorrow! I felt like the luckiest person on earth. This kind of stuff never happens to me. Ever.

The show was of course amazing.


Phish "Fluffhead" Hampton MultiCam 3-6-09 from Paul Unger on Vimeo.


Um, so on Saturday we walk right up to the venue with our tickets - quite proud of ourselves for scoring this deal. I got in. Check. Friend #1 gets in, check. Friend #2 ... bunk ticket. WTF?! It said the ticket had already been used. I watched him walk off to try and sneak in ... but I knew it wouldn't happen. And the security guard we had bribed the night before? He was no where to be found. And the others weren't going to take the bait. The two of us stayed in the show (hey I'm not THAT selfless to leave once in) ... Friend #2 was no worse for wear.  He hung out in the lot and got drunk.


In addition, here's what else happened during my Hampton experience:

• 2 random hippies ended up coming back and sleeping in our hotel room. Nice enough guys, but they smelled like sweaty feet. And by smell, I mean the entire room stunk like their feet.

• On Friday, a couple asked if they could set up their vending business off the back of my car since they did not have a vehicle. What were they vending? Burritos. We could get as many free burritos as we wanted in exchange for them using our space. As luck would have it, they made THE. MOST. MOUTHWATERING. awesome veggie burritos I have ever tasted to this day. I also drank too much and ended up shamelessly shoveling a burrito into my mouth while sitting on the back of the car.

On the right, the makers of the heavenly burritos.

• A drunk girl nearly pukes on my feet (this would become a theme all summer)

Sooooo when I was looking for a name for Hampton, I thought 1) The name actually fits him (his original name was Smitty, ew) and 2) The weekend was that awesome to me. Why not name my new horse after the city?

And so there is the really long story about how I named my horse.