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