To rewind a bit I spent last Wednesday-Sunday at the 2012 USEF National Dressage Championships at the picturesque Lamplight Equestrian Center in Wayne, IL. After spending the better part of the last week watching the best up-and-coming Young and Developing Horses in the U.S. as well as juniors demonstrate fabulous equitation skill the future of the sport certainly seems very bright.
A big hand and a huge thank-you goes out to sponsors; Markel, The Dutta Corp., Performance Sales International, Hilda Gurney, Carol Lavell and Dressage Today. Without their unwavering support and the excellent coaching of Scott Hassler, Debbie McDonald and Jeremy Steinberg among numerous others none of this would have been possible.
So after five days full of supreme competition, great support and many laughs with the USEF’s Hallye Griffin and Leah Oliveto it was time to venture back to O’Hare and jump on the plane to London. But not before one more fun dinner at the airport with Leah, Hallye and Eva Salomon.
The flight was pretty uneventful but I was fairly convinced I had not slept much until we landed and I realized I had only read about 15 pages of my book and watched about an hour of a movie. So I think it’s safe to say I was awake for about an hour and a half and slept close to seven-hours.
I am more than happy to be wrong about the amount I slept!
I headed to the hotel to drop of my bags and return a couple emails and then ventured to Greenwich
Park. Now anyone that knows me is well aware sense of direction does not hold a high place amongst my skill set.While it should have only taken me about 5 minutes to get to the venue, it was a solid 25-30 minute walk. I blamed this on trying to read/return emails while not actually paying much attention to signage. While it was a very nice walk and there are far worse places to wander around then Greenwich it was not exactly the most efficient trip.
Once I got to the venue it was absolutely unreal. Everyone has been raving about Greenwich and everything said has been absolutely spot on. It is really AWESOME.
I even got to see a few horses stretch their legs in the main arena.
I walked around a bit and tried to get the lay of the land, more on that tomorrow if I can actually retrace my steps. Fingers crossed.
Walking back I bumped into Team Vet Stacey Kent who has said everything is going great and pointed me towards the direct route back to the hotel.
Today’s Lesson of the Day: Turn right out of the hotel and it’s a 5 minute walk. Turn left it’s a 25-30 stroll.