worth the wait

Theme of the week: wait for it.

When I was a wee PCer with Aly at Upland Acres, aka Abby Moody's house, I took a couple of lessons with Ally Stillers, who came over from Canada. Besides gaining a whole new collection of vocabulary and learning that purple hair works at any age (really), we also gained our fair share of Ally-isms, and the one I remember best is the LFA.  LFAs (that's Long F%^&ing Approaches) between jumps were recipes for disaster unless ridden correctly. Since was "no such thing as an acceptable long spot," the key to riding the LFAs was to wait for the fence.

Never mind that the LFAs in my life now are cell adhesion molecules for extravasation and formation of immune synapses- the 'wait for it' theme still applies. I've had a transitional couple of years since a great summer in '09. I have from time to time lost faith that the great karmic pendulum would swing back my way. When Lisa Mendell emailed and asked me what sort of riding I had been doing recently, I had to be honest- not a whole lot of eventing of late: a lot of green horses with the occasional chronic bucker here and there, to be more accurate. I've been weathering an eighteen month storm of vet bills. It happens. Luckily, Lisa emailed back and offered me a working student position with her and her husband Mike, both of whom are upper level event riders in Area II. Worth the wait? I'll say. And that's not all- let the karmic cascade of awesome continue:

 I feel like Neil has actually made a lot of progress since coming to VT. The other day I realized how long I'd had him (about a year and a half) and where he was when I brought him home. At first glance, it sort of looks like the only thing he's learned to do is canter, but that's not entirely true- his lateral movements are really getting nice and confident also, and he is definitely ready to get some mileage this year. We had a fantastic lesson with John Burgoine of Arbrook Farms a few weeks ago- very basic, but not the kind of lesson where you're beating yourself up afterward about how much you need to fix everything in your program. And hey, learning to stand on the crossties was a pretty big deal, too...

 The very awesome Ann Hambleton phoned me yesterday to let me know that her two friends would love to have me in PA over spring break. Who are her two friends? A steeplechase trainer and a vet from Kevin Keane's practice- you know, the Kevin Keane who's Phillip Dutton's vet. Who needs to hit the gym to get ready to gallop some timber horses in Chesterland County? This girl. Track in the morning and clinic in the afternoon? Sounds like a deal to me. If I don't die, I'll get my adrenaline fix for the next decade.

New roommate: one of the perks of being assigned a Febmate is the opportunity to choose from among the various housing applications of the incoming students. My new roommate, whose name has yet to be revealed to me, is a dressage rider who has spent the last semester as a working student in Australia. I'm really not sure we'll have anything to talk about. My not having been struck by the campus-wide gastroenteritis plague = extra extra win (knock wood).

Ultimately, I'm feeling super lucky to be in the place I am right now: primed to really focus and improve as an athlete, with a sound, more (or less, depending on the day) sane horse and all the tools to make things happen. As of last week, I'm six months (also knock wood) without a single concussion or trip to the ER, which might be a PR. So, maybe the last couple of years did not go as planned - not that they didn't have their upsides as well. But so far, this year isn't going as planned, either. It's going way, way better, and finally, I think I get what Ally meant about LFAs. The long interim can be dangerous: it's easy to get sidetracked by the big bad wolf, or, say, immunogenetics.  But if you keep your priorities straight, focused, and balanced, when you finally get to the base of the jump, you'll realize:

it was totally worth it.

Cheers!
Marina

P.S. If for some strange reason you're possessed by an insatiable desire to understand severe combined immunodeficiency, don't go to strangers...

brrr from vermont!

Just take a moment and imagine this:

You're eighteen, studying at the fifth ranked liberal arts college in the nation (pretty much for free). You've got a young horse who's all fresh off a nice vacation (sound) and also a couple of Grand Prix jumpers to ride (who you aren't paying to feed). You've just spent two weeks sleeping off last semester. You're in Vermont, sitting at a counter, in front of a fireplace, having ridden your young horse at 6:30 AM. The only thing between you and the rest of your day is a hot cup of coffee. You've pretty much got the gist of my morning. It's a hard knock life, yeah?

I'm back at Twitchell Hill Farm for the week before J-term classes begin- Oakley is in Ecuador, so Sue invited me back to ride and be a barn rat here instead of at home. While it was nice to see the Horseplay Farm Crew - especially my dear Miss Mary Drew - I have surely and sorely missed my boy. My parents knew it was getting bad when a family screening of Secretariat produced tears (Sham does sort of look like Neil, you know). Echo was a trooper and all 13.2 hands of him showed up for work every day last week, but there's nothing quite like a young, crooked, slightly crazy TB to brighten up your morning. Also, I was starting to get intimidated by my dressage lessons-  35 pounds of Mary Drew screaming GALLOP!!!!! from the middle of the ring is way scarier than CMP. Trust me.

Being in VT is great, but getting to VT is not great. I'm driving the family Scoobs these days, which is all well and good for gas mileage and not going off the road, but for mountains, not so hot. Since it would obviously make life way to simple if I ever read my Google direction before I got in my car, I somehow ended up coming over the Green Mountains on Rt. 117, which is a U-turn-esque degree of spiral all the way up and all the way down. Third gear was non-negotiable on the way up. Second gear was non-negotiable on the way down. Vermont is very cute when it's snowing, except when it's snowing and you're driving down a mountain and a deer runs out in front of you (yay, Subaru brakes) and then its friend makes a mad dash for it just as you start crawling forward again (Subaru brakes, not so much. He got a little love tap from my bumper). On the plus side, I was not towing horses. Lesson to be learned here: suck it up and get a TomTom.


It is great to be back in the land of good coffee and the people who appreciate it. I have before me my own little week of spring training, aka, riding a zillion ponies and sitting in front of a fire with my Immunology textbook. Hard knock life though it may be, it's only uphill from here (literally. in any direction.)!

Cheers!
Marina