Chronicles

Up until 5 years ago, my only passion in life was horses. Or my primary passion I guess, I loved running and music but it was always all about the ponies! Then I kind of had to give it up, cold-turkey style, when I moved to San Francisco. I thought I'd miss them less and less as time went by, but I've experienced the opposite effect. Ah well, maybe some day I'll be back to spending most of my free time at a barn.

In the meantime, at Christmas I asked for (and got! thanks ma!) a subscription to my favourite horse magazine, The Chronicle of the Horse. It thoroughly covers the happenings in the horseshow world - hunters, jumpers, dressage, and 3-day eventing (the triathlon of equestrian sports, basically), in the U.S. and Europe. And one of the best parts is it's a weekly magazine! In the first issue I got after Christmas, on page 2 there was a huge photo of a kid that I rode and hung out with back in Charlottesville when he first started riding, on a little white pony named Seinfeld. He was always the most dedicated of the littler kids, and the most talented. Zach just capped off his junior career (riders under 18 years old) with a national small junior hunter championship on his horse Cadeaux! And a girl my age who I met during the summer of 1998, when I was a groom for Leslie Howard, anyway at the time she was just starting out but now she is on the US Equestrian Team, competing in international grand prix events! So even though it's been a while, I am not completely out of the loop, and it's so awesome to see that old friends are seeing their dreams come true.

(I am also getting to read all about little 13 year old girls wintering in Wellington, FL with their tutors and their strings of show horses and ponies... Man I hate being jealous of middle schoolers but I totally am!)

I guess that's the only downside about being at training camp until the middle of next week - I have to wait an extra week to read the Chronicle :(. Oh right, and also the fact that I'll be away for Valentine's day. But I have an AWESOME plan for V-day, just awesome.