Tryon Boot Camp: Day 4

I don't know how a weekend of lessons ended up with me sitting here, alone at a bar, four days later, indefinitely stranded, but there you go, life's hilarious like that.

My truck is down the street at the Ford dealership, and instead of hanging out in their crusty waiting room I thought I'd hit the town. All three blocks of it. I found a pub with internet and these wonderful ham, swiss and raspberry preserve sandwiches, so that's where I'm hanging now. I also got to experience the Tryon Horse, which is a somewhat underwhelming wooden, polk-a-dotted horse on wheels that sits in the middle of the main drag. People in Tryon take the horse seriously, though. There are Tryon Horse paintings and replicas and crafty things in all the shop windows. Kaitlyn apparently knew some people in high school who got drunk and rode the horse down the street. (I don't THINK Kaitlyn was involved.) Anyway, hopefully I'll know before too long whether the truck is an easy fix or whether boot camp is going to keep... going.   

Backing up a few steps, I had another lesson this morning with Amy. She walked out to the ring in her helmet, thinking she'd have a crack at the old Spreezer-pleaser herself. He had a little hissy-fit when she got on, like, "Just who do you think you are, lady, telling ME what to do? Do you KNOW who I AM?" But about 15 minutes later, his tune had changed to something more like, "Yes, ma'am, whatever you want, ma'am." I think he was happy to have me climb back on, and Amy had some good suggestions based on what she'd felt while riding him. To make a long story short, I've got to make sure that I stay really straight and centered (especially to the left) even when he's goading me to fall for his bag of tricks, all designed to get be off-balance so he can wiggle and twist and basically do anything but work.

After our epic flatwork session, we moved on to a couple jumping exercises designed to test his straightness: a single barrel to a single barrel, and a skinny, bending-3-stride to a liverpool. He was a little squirrly about the barrels at first but got more committed as he got more confident, and then was surprisingly good about the three-stride. Amy observed that sometimes I'll use my voice to "whoa" him but not follow up with my body. She also got after me a little for letting my flatwork fly out the window once I started jumping; I need to make sure that I am disciplined about every single transition instead of just trying to get to the fence as fast as I can.

I love this bar. I think it's called Elmo's. I just ordered another pint and the bartender looked at me and shook her head and said, "Dang, hun."