DAY 90

I wake up today and put on my tall boots. Now my boots fit me fine but except for the week that I rode in them in July I haven't worn them them since May of 2005. So natuarally my calves were sort of throbing since they had forgotten what it felt like to be pushed into tight leather and kept there for hours at a time. I go down to the breakfast room and find Jeri there sitting at a table by herself waiting for me, talking to Judy and Laura. I sit down at the table with my plate of food and look around the room. Let me just tell you this room is just as beautiful as all the rest in the hotel. With two chandeliers and gold paint on the walls next to beautiful paintings, I'm thnking, most people when they go traveling around the world or "backpacking through Europe" they are probably not going from gorgeous surroundings to more gorgeous surrondings. We then go outside to wait for our driver to pick us up and take us to the stables. Well actually Jeri and I waited, Judy, Laura, and Bill had rented a car and went to go get it from the parking lot and to follow our driver. See unlike Jeri and I who just came for hard core dressage training the also wanted to do a bit of touristing as well, that's the reason why Bill had come in the first place. We arrive at the stable and, OM MY F***ING G-D, this place is not only beautiful, but insanely big. I'll try and explain this, but also look at the pictures. You walk in through this gate and end up in the courtyard where if you took a sharp right would take you up the stairs to the spectators place for the indoor, if you bear right, instead of the sharp right, it will take you into the indoor itself. If you go straight, instead of going any right at all you will go up this little path that will spit you at three LARGE outdoor rings with a spectator house, yes I ment to say house, in the middle of the first two rings. If instead of going right or straight you go left instead you will look down this path with horse stables on either side. The first place you will come across is this little house that has the bathrooms and vending machines. The rest of the way down on either side of you are horse stables with each stable have about 10 to 16 stall in each stable. The whole facility has about 180 to 200 horses total, and of corse a million dogs, well more like 10-15, but it felt like a million that's for sure. After reading and hearing waht are abilities were Jaun decided to give us 1 private in stead of 2 semi-privates. Jaun Matute is this amazing dressage rider who is on the Spanish Olympic Dressage Team, and has won golds and silvers in three Olympic Games, he was at the Games in Seoul '88, Barcelona '92, and Atlanta '96. The horse that Jaun put me on is named Little Banana, if you couldn't guess, he's kids named it. I had a really great lesson, and he kept complenting me on my hands and how still they were. Which made me very happy to hear since that is one of my problems in riding and I worked on that most of my time at OS, so now I know that all of my hard work actully paid off if an Olympian is saying good thing about them. My lesson consisted of alot of lateral work. Transistions, leg yields (which involves forward and sideway stepping, the horse has to cross his legs while engaging his hindquarters and maintaining forward energy. The horse bends away from the direction he is traveling. The forward steps should always be bigger than the sideway steps, thus preventing the horse from over-bending.) and then doing some collected trots and canters (is the increased engagement and lightening of the forehand. The strides are shorter (and higher in the front legs) than in the other paces of the trot or canter. The horse’s outline appears shorter from bit to hip, with the neck and withers stretched and arched upward.) and then extended trot and canter (stretching and lengthening of the outline and stride of the horse, an increased phase of suspension. The horse covers as much ground as possible with each stride, maintaining nearly the same tempo and relatively uphill balance. After our lessons we all walked over to this Italian restaurant with Jaun and had some lunch, though if you remember lunch time is at 3ish so we were actully early even with 4 privates that didn't even start till about 10am. Afterwards Judy, Laura, and Bill went out on there excursions while Jeri and I went back to our little town and walked aroun just looking at all the little shops and what not. Afterwards, I don't know what Jeri did, but I took the best nap. When I woke up I got changed and went out to dinner with Jeri. The restaurant that we went to was just a little bit further up the small hill than the place that we went to the night before. When we walked in there was this waiter with this dish that looked like turkey with gravy and french fries. So when we go to order, we're like oooo that sounds good turkey with gravy. When the waiter comes around we ask for (and this is our conversation) "the Pollo please with the french fries.... um.... potatoes...um...shit maybe pollo isn't chicken... {Jeri starts flapping her arms around like a chicken}.... {no light bulb goes off}.....wait....... pollo is so chicken.... WTF....... never mind we'll just have the, the.........um...... oooooo, Carne. that's what well have some Carne. gracias........ oh, and a fanta limón and a coke light.... gracias" The funny thing is when we get our food it is what we were wanting from the start. What we had thought was turkey was actually beef. So with all of Jeri's lovely sharades and our Sanish/English/French food explanations, we ended up with what we were trying to get in the first place. Over dinner we laughed about that and Jeri told some FUNNNNNNY horsey stories. We then went back to the hotel and chatted a bit in Jeri's room until we were both starting to fall asleep, which is when I went back to my room and plopped down on my mad and was asleep before I knew it, being so sore and all.

The Equestrian Center