I started writing this while sitting on the deck in Westoba at 10:47pm with (Kara says) a million dressage rides to go. Today has turned into the "Never Ending Day in Westoba"! But in the interest of sticking to my goal of posting something every day here goes!
The morning started off as usual with the reining championships and our breakfast delivery by Kate. While the breakfast is terrific, with as much bacon as one could possibly want, I don't think that picture is worth a replay. However, the picture of Kate delivering it is!
As far as I can tell, our eventual 1 hour 30 minute delay came about because of a great reason! A multitude of Hunt Seat Equitation riders, all with patterns! Show management doesn't have a crystal ball to be able to predict how many people will enter those classes and the bigger the class is are the longer it takes to run. Follow that with several sections and finals of Sport Horse Under Saddle and, well, here we are (10:53pm).
I was impressed with how quickly the Canadian show management team got the arena prepped and the dressage arena set up!
Because those Hunt Seat Eq classes took at least an hour it was a while before Kara would need me for awards so I had time to go over to main ring to get pictures of Mike's Canadian fashion statement for the day. Another of his Carolina Perez shirts of course!
But the picture I liked the best was this one that I took for his favebook cover!
While I was over there I was also able to get a couple of very cool pictures of the Jeff Janson team in action during Championship presentations.
The picture above is from Larry Hoffman's Show Hack win.
And this one is from the set up for the awards for Larry Jerome's National Champion Futurity Filly! After that, it was time for me to get a move on. Everyone has toneat while working tonight! Kate's on standby to run the main ring cards and Elizabeth is running the booth so during the first dressage class I get dinners from the Canad Inn Tavern...snack food they can just pick up and eat.
This picture was taken at 7:35. That's Kara's chicken wings and sweet potato fries!
And here's Kara, 11:35 pm!
They actually got some good pop music playing in Westoba which helps! And of course we're not alone in the Wilderness that is Westoba.
The announcer, scorer and our good buddy, ring master extraordinaire, Derek Jones are all still in the house.And by this time everbody is just a little punchy!
Sometime after 11:30 things just got funnier and funnier! But to get the joke you just had to be one of those still left standing at the end!
Last win photo of the session!
Tomorrow morning at 8am we're right back here with 3 classes of Dressage. What I haven't looked up is how many rides are in each class. At some undetermined time after those classes we have Sport Horse In Hand Open. Dressage and Hunter type running on concurrent cards!
But for know, we're done!
More from the 2017 Arabian Canadian Nationals tomorrow!