Jackie Chan's jet
Monday, September 10, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
Busy weekend ahead!
On Wednesday night, instead of my usual evening spent at the barn, I took to the park with Cassie and Mat to do engagement photos.
Backtrack a little, we have been trying to do this for the best part of summer, pretty much ever since they asked me to be the photographer for their wedding. Between my crazy schedule and their crazy schedules, it ended up taking a few months. In fact, the wedding is TOMORROW.
No room for error here.
We had a great time at the park and their doggie Rocky joined in on the fun. I was pleased that I was able to take acceptable shots since I haven't really picked up my camera at all this summer! Also, I always say I want a new camera, but my good little G10 always pulls through some great shots. It may not be capable of adding telephoto lenses or any other gadgets, but its really a great piece of machinery, even though it is quite out of date by today's standards.
In my excitement for the shoot, I treated myself to a tripod. I have never owned one, and it was the perfect excuse to get one. I didn't go high end or anything, but it does its job. Best part about it, has a bubble level and was really quick to adjust, so even when we were down on the river bank, I was able to get straight shots. Only downside is I have to shoot landscape, and for these occasions, I would love to be shooting portrait. I guess that's where I just have to edit!
Lee's dad printed them for us and express shipped them to me. I received them earlier today and am very pleased with the results. I think they are going to be very happy with their photos AND their NEW LIFE!
Rehearsal is tonight, wedding is tomorrow. I am following Cassie to all of her appointments, so I am going to be very busy!
I will share the engagement photos after the wedding, I want Cassie and Mat to be the first to see them!
Backtrack a little, we have been trying to do this for the best part of summer, pretty much ever since they asked me to be the photographer for their wedding. Between my crazy schedule and their crazy schedules, it ended up taking a few months. In fact, the wedding is TOMORROW.
No room for error here.
We had a great time at the park and their doggie Rocky joined in on the fun. I was pleased that I was able to take acceptable shots since I haven't really picked up my camera at all this summer! Also, I always say I want a new camera, but my good little G10 always pulls through some great shots. It may not be capable of adding telephoto lenses or any other gadgets, but its really a great piece of machinery, even though it is quite out of date by today's standards.
In my excitement for the shoot, I treated myself to a tripod. I have never owned one, and it was the perfect excuse to get one. I didn't go high end or anything, but it does its job. Best part about it, has a bubble level and was really quick to adjust, so even when we were down on the river bank, I was able to get straight shots. Only downside is I have to shoot landscape, and for these occasions, I would love to be shooting portrait. I guess that's where I just have to edit!
Lee's dad printed them for us and express shipped them to me. I received them earlier today and am very pleased with the results. I think they are going to be very happy with their photos AND their NEW LIFE!
Rehearsal is tonight, wedding is tomorrow. I am following Cassie to all of her appointments, so I am going to be very busy!
I will share the engagement photos after the wedding, I want Cassie and Mat to be the first to see them!
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Another Myrddin Lesson
Last night I had my usual lesson again on LBH. We started out in the outdoor ring which was more of a swamp than a sand ring. Got some lovely mud splashed up to MY elbows, and LB has to be about 15.3hh! Of course, since we were starting at 8pm, darkness fell quickly and we moved into the indoor! Yay! Usually I am game to ride in all circumstances, but cantering weaving through jumps (the ring was packed) with deep water in the dark wasn't so fun, I could barely see where the jumps were to avoid them (and I think one terrifying castle one must have been set to about 4 feet... don't want to go over that by accident!)
What was worse was I was embarrassed by my feet, since I mounted in the muck, i had wet sand all over my boots, making the stirrups feel more like a slip and slide. I just couldn't keep them on! Has anyone ever begged a coach to do stirrupless work? I honestly hate cantering in stirrups, I just tense up and byebye! The sand was just that extra bit of oil on the slip and slide.
So moving to the indoor, I brushed off as much as the sand as I could. It felt a lot better, but I still couldn't get those lower legs under control. I grip far too much with the thighs and not enough with the calf. I am going to have to make a conscious effort over the next little while to separate movement from the lower leg to the rest of my body.
Once we got into the jumping part of our lesson, this lower leg thing was elevated. Margie made me put my stirrups even higher than my usual jumping length, I felt like a jockey haha. She told me she "remembered" how I liked my extra long stirrups, and it didn't sound like a good thing! Oops! I guess I should save that length for the trail!
I do have to admit, crunching my legs up like that did make me feel more secure although it was a lot harder to get LB moving and bending around my leg. He isn't nearly as flexible as Bentley. In fact, the comparison I can best think of is riding a brick vs riding a gummy worm. Bentley is flexible, but lots of times can be too wiggly. Hes also very sensitive to what I do. LB takes very strong leg and feels almost impossible for me to bend (though we did get some, it wasn't always consistent) but can keep straight well and is a lot more trustworthy when I screw up and ride terribly! So big differences going from one horse to another.
I went into my lesson debating whether to ask Margie about taking LB in the short course in 2 weeks. My poor riding and difficulty in the lesson stopped me from asking. However, I did ask about trailering Bentley. She had some suggestions of people who may have extra room in the trailer and would be passing by our farm. I think my gut was telling me that while it would be fun to do the jumping component of the short course, I would rather have a great dressage round on my own horse and forgo the jumping. I am just not ready to jump a full course in competition yet, and I think it would be better to set myself up for success the first time out. Well, success in the trot at least. I am guessing the moment we have to canter our dressage score will blow up in "excitement" but it does sound a lot better than having a poorer dressage score and only a satisfactory jumping round.
Don't get me wrong, LB is fine, but the lack of sensitivity and me not being used to using hard leg the first time means we have slow transitions and i have trouble moving him into the connection. Also, I wont have much time to practise the dressage test with LB and I am equally worried about forgetting the movements and becoming "lost on trail". Practising it on one horse and performing it on another just doesn't seem like a good idea, I wont be able to predict and prevent!
What was worse was I was embarrassed by my feet, since I mounted in the muck, i had wet sand all over my boots, making the stirrups feel more like a slip and slide. I just couldn't keep them on! Has anyone ever begged a coach to do stirrupless work? I honestly hate cantering in stirrups, I just tense up and byebye! The sand was just that extra bit of oil on the slip and slide.
So moving to the indoor, I brushed off as much as the sand as I could. It felt a lot better, but I still couldn't get those lower legs under control. I grip far too much with the thighs and not enough with the calf. I am going to have to make a conscious effort over the next little while to separate movement from the lower leg to the rest of my body.
Once we got into the jumping part of our lesson, this lower leg thing was elevated. Margie made me put my stirrups even higher than my usual jumping length, I felt like a jockey haha. She told me she "remembered" how I liked my extra long stirrups, and it didn't sound like a good thing! Oops! I guess I should save that length for the trail!
I do have to admit, crunching my legs up like that did make me feel more secure although it was a lot harder to get LB moving and bending around my leg. He isn't nearly as flexible as Bentley. In fact, the comparison I can best think of is riding a brick vs riding a gummy worm. Bentley is flexible, but lots of times can be too wiggly. Hes also very sensitive to what I do. LB takes very strong leg and feels almost impossible for me to bend (though we did get some, it wasn't always consistent) but can keep straight well and is a lot more trustworthy when I screw up and ride terribly! So big differences going from one horse to another.
I went into my lesson debating whether to ask Margie about taking LB in the short course in 2 weeks. My poor riding and difficulty in the lesson stopped me from asking. However, I did ask about trailering Bentley. She had some suggestions of people who may have extra room in the trailer and would be passing by our farm. I think my gut was telling me that while it would be fun to do the jumping component of the short course, I would rather have a great dressage round on my own horse and forgo the jumping. I am just not ready to jump a full course in competition yet, and I think it would be better to set myself up for success the first time out. Well, success in the trot at least. I am guessing the moment we have to canter our dressage score will blow up in "excitement" but it does sound a lot better than having a poorer dressage score and only a satisfactory jumping round.
Don't get me wrong, LB is fine, but the lack of sensitivity and me not being used to using hard leg the first time means we have slow transitions and i have trouble moving him into the connection. Also, I wont have much time to practise the dressage test with LB and I am equally worried about forgetting the movements and becoming "lost on trail". Practising it on one horse and performing it on another just doesn't seem like a good idea, I wont be able to predict and prevent!
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Abbey gets poofy tail
The photo may not have been in focus, I had to act fast. But when Abbey gets startled, scared or playful, she sometimes gets poofy tail.
Love when this happens!
Progress with Bentley
With all the other exciting things happening, progress hasn't been reported recently. So here is an update:
Last week: Rode a few times, lots of long walking around the fields and plateau. I started to introduce 5 mins of trotting each ride, broken up into 2 1/2 minute trots. Nothing too stressful, just kind of testing. Hes going along happily, with great movement and doesn't seem to have any problems after it.
Saturday: I did a 2 1/4 hour ride, 10 mins of that was trotting broken up into 2.5 min trots like before. He was happy to trot and easy to ride. We did some of the big hills that Linda had cleared. At one point, we were going down the big hill on the far east side of the property and something clicked with me. Well, Bentley had to practically scream at me to make it click. We started walking down the hill with the tiniest steps, the moment he could see the ground becoming less steep ahead of him (mind you we weren't on the gentle slope, we were still on scary steep hill) he would bolt down the hill in an uncoordinated trot, making me think we were both going to go down. At the bottom of the hill, he started bucking and bucking and bucking. I came within inches of landing in a nearby tree, luckily there was enough bucking to knock me out and then back into the saddle? Is that possible? I start to question what exactly happened because I swear i didn't lose stirrups, was upside down at one point beside his neck, but then I was in the saddle again. As I said, I don't remember losing stirrups, but somehow when I looked down, one stirrup was on backwards and the other stirrup leather had twisted inside out. It was quite the mess!
So what was all that grumpiness about? The answer has to be he is afraid and uncomfortable going down the hills. We spent some time correcting his behaviour on the hills and practising his balance going down. It took a lot of effort for me, but we got down again safely and he started being a bit happier about hills. I know I haven't been pushing him to do that trot down the hills, I am much happier with the tiny tiny baby steps he takes. So I would let him take the baby steps and halt him whenever he felt like he was going to take a leap. By the end of our ride, we were able to do a nice long hill fully at the baby steps. No nice comfortable walk, but no fearful awkward running, and I am very happy with that!
Monday: I continued to work on the hills, nothing big this time, but I have noticed down to the plateau we have a problem with speeds and steering down the hill. In fact, he wobbles from one side to the other. I am ok with zigzagging down a steep hill, but its not that steep here and what he was doing wasn't even close to zigzagging. More of a zig-spin-lunge-twist-zag-throwhead-and straight! So a few times down there and we had a reasonable zigzag, as well as straight descent. It wasn't perfect, he still had a couple of those "drop" steps, but it was varied from leg to leg, so I wasn't too worried that he was hurting, I think it was more the nervousness distracting him still.
Lily also hopped on Bentley to give him a try, I have a busy week coming up so shes going to ride him this week. Shes not used to such a sensitive horse who really needs next to no leg. Their first trot attempt was nothing less than an explosion. I can laugh a bit at it because she got it under control pretty quickly and with some more getting used to each other, they will be just fine. Also it didn't help that the stirrups were set to my length, a good 5 holes different from what she is used to!
That's about all I have to say for Bentley today. I guess just stay tuned for next week as I wont be riding for a little while!
Last week: Rode a few times, lots of long walking around the fields and plateau. I started to introduce 5 mins of trotting each ride, broken up into 2 1/2 minute trots. Nothing too stressful, just kind of testing. Hes going along happily, with great movement and doesn't seem to have any problems after it.
Saturday: I did a 2 1/4 hour ride, 10 mins of that was trotting broken up into 2.5 min trots like before. He was happy to trot and easy to ride. We did some of the big hills that Linda had cleared. At one point, we were going down the big hill on the far east side of the property and something clicked with me. Well, Bentley had to practically scream at me to make it click. We started walking down the hill with the tiniest steps, the moment he could see the ground becoming less steep ahead of him (mind you we weren't on the gentle slope, we were still on scary steep hill) he would bolt down the hill in an uncoordinated trot, making me think we were both going to go down. At the bottom of the hill, he started bucking and bucking and bucking. I came within inches of landing in a nearby tree, luckily there was enough bucking to knock me out and then back into the saddle? Is that possible? I start to question what exactly happened because I swear i didn't lose stirrups, was upside down at one point beside his neck, but then I was in the saddle again. As I said, I don't remember losing stirrups, but somehow when I looked down, one stirrup was on backwards and the other stirrup leather had twisted inside out. It was quite the mess!
So what was all that grumpiness about? The answer has to be he is afraid and uncomfortable going down the hills. We spent some time correcting his behaviour on the hills and practising his balance going down. It took a lot of effort for me, but we got down again safely and he started being a bit happier about hills. I know I haven't been pushing him to do that trot down the hills, I am much happier with the tiny tiny baby steps he takes. So I would let him take the baby steps and halt him whenever he felt like he was going to take a leap. By the end of our ride, we were able to do a nice long hill fully at the baby steps. No nice comfortable walk, but no fearful awkward running, and I am very happy with that!
Monday: I continued to work on the hills, nothing big this time, but I have noticed down to the plateau we have a problem with speeds and steering down the hill. In fact, he wobbles from one side to the other. I am ok with zigzagging down a steep hill, but its not that steep here and what he was doing wasn't even close to zigzagging. More of a zig-spin-lunge-twist-zag-throwhead-and straight! So a few times down there and we had a reasonable zigzag, as well as straight descent. It wasn't perfect, he still had a couple of those "drop" steps, but it was varied from leg to leg, so I wasn't too worried that he was hurting, I think it was more the nervousness distracting him still.
Lily also hopped on Bentley to give him a try, I have a busy week coming up so shes going to ride him this week. Shes not used to such a sensitive horse who really needs next to no leg. Their first trot attempt was nothing less than an explosion. I can laugh a bit at it because she got it under control pretty quickly and with some more getting used to each other, they will be just fine. Also it didn't help that the stirrups were set to my length, a good 5 holes different from what she is used to!
That's about all I have to say for Bentley today. I guess just stay tuned for next week as I wont be riding for a little while!
Toronto Air Show
Amongst my crazies on Sunday, we went down to the Toronto Air Show at the CNE.
We had a great spot for viewing at Ontario Place, perhaps the only place with a beer tent and a front row view of everything. It was like the show was being put on just for us!
Since I had seen all the planes before, it was exciting to share with my friends the names I had given them and recount how "Nemesis" had blown over our fences and sandblasted our cars. Then of course, shake my fist in anger at the plane.
Here are some pictures I took with my phone, I deeply regretted leaving my good camera at home!
We had a great spot for viewing at Ontario Place, perhaps the only place with a beer tent and a front row view of everything. It was like the show was being put on just for us!
Since I had seen all the planes before, it was exciting to share with my friends the names I had given them and recount how "Nemesis" had blown over our fences and sandblasted our cars. Then of course, shake my fist in anger at the plane.
Here are some pictures I took with my phone, I deeply regretted leaving my good camera at home!
I am slowly going crazy...
I don't know whats going on with my brain recently. I must just have too much going on.
Saturday night I got a response for something big I am doing at work. So naturally I got excited and was going to have trouble sleeping. I forwarded a question I couldn't answer to my boss, and decided to go to bed and wait for a response the next morning. Now, this is where things get a bit foggy.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night and checking my phone. There were 3 emails for month end reports on our various aircraft. Something I usually don't look at until I need them, I just usually delete them off my phone. There was also a response from my boss with instructions as to how to proceed with the question I had earlier. It had a website and everything. I remember this so vividly. I woke up several times through the night knowing that in the morning I would have to go through these steps very quickly before heading out for the day. As I said, this is something pretty big I am doing so I didn't want to have it wait until the weekend was over.
So I wake up for real at about 7:30 and first thing I do (naturally) is turn to my phone to get the instructions while not in a groggy half sleep. Strange... no new emails? I scroll through and there is no email from my boss or the month end reports. Darn it, did I delete my boss's email along with the month ends? Try to reconnect with desktop but nothing new comes. Oh well, I guess I will have to go into work on my way home from the air show and get the email off my computer.
I will blog about the airshow in another post, this is reserved for my crazies.
I get into work and enjoy the silence of work on weekends. Boot up my computer and check my email. Nothing in there. What? Did the server start deleting my emails again (I swear it has happened before!) At this point, we suspect that I may be losing my mind a little. Regardless, I re-forward the email again with my questions to my boss, in case he never got it.
So now I am back at work for real, and asked if he had emailed me on Saturday night. Nope, didn't email me at all. So I must have literally dreamt the whole thing up. I dreamt it so vividly that I had convinced myself it was real enough to go into work on a weekend? And I knew so many details around it. Very very crazy!
To add to the crazy, yesterday after I came home from the barn, I drove right past our house. I literally didn't even recognise our house until I was well past it. So instead of going nose into the driveway, i just backed up into it... and right into the rock wall, scratching up the bumper and knocking rocks everywhere.
Whats going on in there? Seriously?
Lee asked me if I fell off the horse. Nope, just going crazy is all!
Saturday night I got a response for something big I am doing at work. So naturally I got excited and was going to have trouble sleeping. I forwarded a question I couldn't answer to my boss, and decided to go to bed and wait for a response the next morning. Now, this is where things get a bit foggy.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night and checking my phone. There were 3 emails for month end reports on our various aircraft. Something I usually don't look at until I need them, I just usually delete them off my phone. There was also a response from my boss with instructions as to how to proceed with the question I had earlier. It had a website and everything. I remember this so vividly. I woke up several times through the night knowing that in the morning I would have to go through these steps very quickly before heading out for the day. As I said, this is something pretty big I am doing so I didn't want to have it wait until the weekend was over.
So I wake up for real at about 7:30 and first thing I do (naturally) is turn to my phone to get the instructions while not in a groggy half sleep. Strange... no new emails? I scroll through and there is no email from my boss or the month end reports. Darn it, did I delete my boss's email along with the month ends? Try to reconnect with desktop but nothing new comes. Oh well, I guess I will have to go into work on my way home from the air show and get the email off my computer.
I will blog about the airshow in another post, this is reserved for my crazies.
I get into work and enjoy the silence of work on weekends. Boot up my computer and check my email. Nothing in there. What? Did the server start deleting my emails again (I swear it has happened before!) At this point, we suspect that I may be losing my mind a little. Regardless, I re-forward the email again with my questions to my boss, in case he never got it.
So now I am back at work for real, and asked if he had emailed me on Saturday night. Nope, didn't email me at all. So I must have literally dreamt the whole thing up. I dreamt it so vividly that I had convinced myself it was real enough to go into work on a weekend? And I knew so many details around it. Very very crazy!
To add to the crazy, yesterday after I came home from the barn, I drove right past our house. I literally didn't even recognise our house until I was well past it. So instead of going nose into the driveway, i just backed up into it... and right into the rock wall, scratching up the bumper and knocking rocks everywhere.
Whats going on in there? Seriously?
Lee asked me if I fell off the horse. Nope, just going crazy is all!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)