Reader beware- This is long. I just got going and couldn't stop. This was one of the most unique experiences I've ever had, it won't be so unique the next time I head down to OKC, so I felt I needed to document it in detail. I won't be offended if no one reads to the end.
So I've been back from Oklahoma for just over a week and the high from the experience has finally worn off. See October's post if you don't remember, I qualified to take Nic to Oklahoma to compete in the NRHA's National Final's competition which took place the week after Thanksgiving. To qualify, I had to do well at the local level and then the regional level. I decided to head down because I felt I had a shot at actually doing really well in OKC.
I was lucky enough to head down with my friends, Roxie and Lindsey. Roxie, Lindsey and Roxie's other daughter, Brittany ride and train, and sell their own reiners. Roxie used to be a trainer and as her girls grew up, she made them ride and train their own horses. Needless to say, all three of them can ride with the best of them AND they've always trained their own horses (in the world of reining, many of us non-pros don't train our own horses, in fact, some non-pros just get on their horses before they go to show in a class, the trainer does the rest of the work). This was their third trip down to OKC, so it was nice traveling with two people with previous traveling experience.
November 25, DAY 1: 5 am, we leave Dufur, Oregon to begin our 1800 mile journey. Roxie quickly establishes the fact that she could have been a long-haul truck driver in a past life. After a hectic stop at Winco in Twin Falls, ID (day before Thanksgiving grocery shopping was out of control) we decide not to stop until we reach dreary Rock Springs, Wyoming especially after stopping for gas at a Pilot, getting stuck in the parking lot and blowing out the back window with our 1 ton of hay. It was cold and barren in Rock Springs, Wyoming. The horses water quickly froze. We leave at 4 the next morning eager to get out of a town where everyone seemed to live in a tempoary trailer because they were working for an oil company.
November 26, DAY 2: Still driving. Roxie still insists on manning the wheel (secretly reliving her long-haul truck driving days). Eastern Wyoming and Nebraska are boring places. FLAT, straight roads, makes one feel like they aren't really going anywhere. We decided to find an open restaurant in hopes of salvaging Thanksgiving. Our favorite holiday is Thanksgiving and it was hard to leave the prospect of good food for the prospect of eating at a grocery store OR worse, a fast food restaurant. Since most restaurants were closed on Thanksgiving and we limited ourselves to restaurants with big parking lots, fairly close to the highway, we quickly found that our only option was Perkins. Lindsey reminded us that Perkins had good pies (Lindsey has a sweet tooth that was so contagious, I've done nothing but dream of cookies and pies since returning to Wa), which did make the place a little more enticing. The weirdest thing about Perkins was that the place was totally full (did I mention this was Thanksgiving?????). I had trouble knowing that people CHOSE to go to Perkins in Thanksgiving. Depressing. We ate and left with a chocolate pie and headed off to York, Nebraska where stayed at a much nicer place. Stalls had straw for horses to lay on and the temps. were just above freezing.
November 27, DAY 3: We saw our first Starbucks in over 500 miles. I never thought I'd be happy to see a Starbucks but unlike the Northwest, the rest of the US is not inundated with Starbucks annoyingly located on every street corner. In fact, they're sparsely located and almost seem like true coffee shops, not coffee the McDonald's of coffee shops which is what they have become in the Northwest.
We arrived at the OKC fairgrounds by 2 pm. This is where my eyes got big. For those of you who have been to Las Vegas, this is the only thing I can compare it to. Gina, Carrie, Colleen, remember the first time we went to Vegas and were totally in awe of the hotels, all the little details of extravagance? That's what OKC was like, just think continuous horse theme. All the big name barns and trainers, decorate their stall isles to the T, they bring in leather couches, facades for the ends of the stall isles, flat screen TV's that provide live feed of arenas. Aside from this, there was a separate sale barn, three arenas, and vendors as far as I could see. We spent the rest of the afternoon riding and oogling at all there was to look at.
November 28, DAY 4, 2 am: Lindsey quickly set a regimented riding schedule where we would crawl out of bed at 2 am, bundle up, head over to ride because the arena's were nearly empty, clean up the horses and then go back to bed for awhile. I felt like I was practicing for the time when I would have a newborn. This again instilled to me that I was NOT having a kid. Doing a week of this getting up in the middle of the night thing was fine, doing it for months on end, wouldn't cut it for me. I like my sleep. I did like riding in nearly empty arenas instead of trying to get things done with 20 other people in the arena.
November 29, DAY 5: This was the first day I really had time to sit down and watch the futurity classes (this is where all the money is- showing the three yr. old horses). I spent most of the day glued to my seat watching the second-go round of the futurity. Lindsey was busy trying to sell the horse she's been showing. I can't tell you how many horses were for sale in OKC. Even more suprising was the fact that I didn't see a single horse advertised for under $15,000. Don't think this is a teachers hobby!
November 30, DAY 6: Riding at 2 am is going well, I felt I continually improving my riding and finding holes in my riding program. Reiners are very particular about the condition of the ground we ride on as a big part of our manuevers are the sliding stops. Bad ground makes for bad stops and lame horses. The ground in OKC was so good and so fast, the horses actually had a hard time finding their footing becasue they'd stop so fast. The NAAC classes started on the 30th and Lindsey ended up 2nd in her Novice Horse class. She won yet another buckle, more horse supplements, and a bunch of other loot (not to mention $500).
December 1, DAY 7: I was surprised at how well Nic held up through this whole experience. Hauling a long way is pretty stressful on horses, but he was a champ. He drank fine while in the trailer and settled right in once we got to the fairgrounds. He didn't seem to mind the constant hustle and bustle in the barns and was content to continuously eat and beg for more food when we were hanging out by the stalls. Some horses get pretty sore from the riding and standing in the stalls, but his legs held up pretty well. I had fancy new shoes put on him when we first arrived and they really seemed to be the ticket. I showed in my first class which went ok, not as well as I'd intended and I knew I'd had to work on some thing early the next morning.
The sale horses also came in on December 1 . During the week long show, the NRHA also hosts three horse sales. The horses consigned to the sale must meet specific performance breed requirements and typically the horses at all three sales are sold for fairly large sums of money (the cheapest usually sell for around $5000). As the sale barns filled up, Lindsey, Roxie and I started window shopping. All those little faces looking at us through the stalls, called to us, especially the babies.
December 2, 3, and 4 DAY 7,8, 9- At this point, I started to forget what day it was and quit looking at my watch. By now the night time rides, the cozy trailer quarters and generally living in a barn seemed a regular part of my life. December 3rd brought the start of the first horse sale. Lindsey, Roxie and I decided to see what our picks would go for. After sitting in the stands for a mere 10 minutes we realized this year was not like other years. Horses that would usually command a decent amount of money were going for a pittance (or what seemed like a pittance). It appeared that the economic slump had finally hit the horse industry. We quickly decided that we needed to obtain a buyers number. I quickly put the buyers number to good use and bid on and won, Sophie's Wrangler, a yearling, bay filly. This was probably the quickest and 3rd most unthoughtout decision I'd ever made (the Hermiston house being the 2nd and I'm sure I've got a few firsts that I can't remember right now). Although I'd seen Sophie earlier in her stall, I didn't examine her as a future buyer, I knew she had good legs and she seemed "nice minded" but that was all I could knew about her. I think I got lucky because aside from trying to commit suicide on the ride back from OKC, she seems to be a real winner and even Jarred who did a great job of containing his disgust for my equine spending habits admits that he kind of likes her. She does have a great personality and loves to be in on any action that seems to be going on. Like any baby, she also likes to put everything in her mouth. The other day I caught her licking the arena light switch.
The next day, Lindsey caught the sale bug and also purchased a filly. Lindsey had just sold the horse she raised, trained and successfully showed for a pretty decent sum of money. I think the money was burning a hole in her pocket and she was already missing the horse she just sold and the need to replace a cool horse had taken over.
December 5 Day 10: This was the day I'd come down for. My Rookie of the Year class. I drew up 40th out of 45 which gave me a lot of time to ride in the morning and time to watch my class to see what my competition would be like. I was able to watch the first twenty riders go and was pretty confindent that I'd do well. I was nervous about starting my run becasue I'd had trouble with Nic dancing around in between my spins, which I had to do first but I got through them and ended up with a good set of circles. My first stop was decent but I made a huge mistake in my second stop when I went to roll back to head to my third stop. I knew this had cost my a placing in the top 10 and finished in utter disappointment. Maybe it was my confidence that got to me or maybe it was just a "shit happens" aspect of life. I'd driven nearly 2000 miles for one run and shit happened. I feel that I'm able to now examine the entire experience rather than just focusing on the one run but I remained pretty grumpy the rest of the day.
Our final cool experience was watching the open futurity finals class. This is the class where all the big time open riders show their three year olds. They'd been showing all week and the class was narrowed down to the top 30 riders. As they were showing three year olds, anything could happen which made the class exciting.
The Ride Home DAY 12, 13- The one huge bummer about living in Washington is that Washington and all the northern states experience winter. Driving a horse trailer in the snow SUCKS. Coming through Wyoming again wasn't an option unless we wanted to drive 25 mph through snow with a 4 horse trailer over two mountain passes. We opted to go through Texas, Arizona and head north through California. We were also traveling with two slicked out babies who had no hair and spent all their lives in Texas and Tennessee and had never spent more than three hours in a horse trailer. All of this proved to make an interesting ride home. As I stated previously, Sophie had had enough by the time we hit Southern Oregon and decided to lay down while we were driving (does not work for horses), she nearly hung herself and we had to get her up and out of the trailer in -4 degree weather. Just before this incident, Lindsey's filly somehow got her blankets stuck around her neck (she was really trying to hang herself...must have been cavorting with Sophie on the finer points of how to kill herself). We made it home in one piece, alive.
Jarred and I seem to keep pretty busy and are weekends and summers are consistently filled with fun times. While, at times, I feel like we go, go, go too much it's experiences like these that remind me that life is for living, not waiting to live, or wishing to live. I came home from OKC totally motivated to improve on my riding and I set higher goals for myself. No one should regret an experience that leaves them with this type of motivation, no matter how many regrets go along with it.
