Cowboy Country HDT 6/4-6/5/16 - Marathon

I've been SO BUSY this week.... running around trying to catch up with work, and house stuff, and then having to go spend the weekend at a family reunion. I feel like I'm a half dead zombie. To top it off, I've been really struggling to come to terms with the shooting in Orlando this past weekend. I feel like I'm grappling underwater and I can't even catch my breath.

But I finally have an update on the marathon at Cowboy Country! Sorry it took ages. I've been feeling so completely spent and overwhelmed that I needed a little bit of process time before I could sit down and write. Not about the show of course - the show was really good! 

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After having a good dinner with Dr. G and crashing for the night, I dragged my sorry carcass out of her super comfy guest bed and headed to the barn for our morning ritual of stall cleaning, feeding, and handwalking. O was not eating still - she is just the worst about eating when at shows. She lives on her Ulcergard and her Pro CMC, but she just likes to stand around and stare at everything instead of eat. She'll nibble delicately here and there, and she'll eat grass, and then when we get home she'll ravenously dive into her haybag like she's starving (which she probably is, after not having eaten much all weekend) - but at the show, she's just terrible about her food. I had walked the entire course the night before, including all four of our hazards - and they were easily the hardest and most complicated ones O has ever done. They were tight, they were solid, and they were complicated. I chose to do several of the tighter turns, as I thought this mare was capable of handling them, and when we do move up to Prelim she'll need to have some experience with those tighter turns. She may not ever win the dressage, but by god she'll be tough to beat in the marathon with a little more practice.

After getting O's boots out and ready, I wandered up towards the office. Since B2 couldn't come this time, I recruited fellow blogger Stephanie from Hand Gallop to come and help! Originally, she had mentioned that she would like to come and watch, and I told her that if she brought her helmet I would give her a ride. As luck had it, B2's poor pup had bloat surgery and she had to stay home with him, which left me with no navigator. I asked Stephanie if she wanted to jump in and give it a whirl, and she said yes!

As I was walking up to the office, I heard a voice calling my name, and turned to see Stephanie driving up in her car. We skipped off together to the office to sign a release form, then trotted back to the barn to see O and stuff her with cookies. I took Stephanie over to my carriage and did my best to give her a brief crash course on navigating, and how to use your weight to counterbalance the carriage. The two most important things, I told her, were to keep your weight on the inside of turns, and to keep your weight on the uphill side of the carriage. Oh yeah, and watch out for branches. And mud. Oh yeah and did I mention there are big rocks and ditches in this course? Oh yeah and whatever you do don't fall off!

As we hitched up, Stephanie and I continued to chat about how to hang on, what to do in turns, how to handle terrain, and the like. We were so busy chatting it up that I completely forgot about going to our safety check. At HDTs and CDEs (and probably ADTs, but I've never been to one), there is a mandatory safety check before each section, where someone inspects your harness and carriage and equipment to make sure you are properly hitched and your gear is in good safe order. This is obviously super important, and I'm glad they put an emphasis on it. If you miss your safety check, you are eliminated - that is how important it is, and they do mark it down. The horse before me had just trotted off on course, when I suddenly when, oh god! My safety check! Crap! I told Stephanie to hang on, and told the starter I'd be RIGHT BACK, and we took off for the safety check. Naturally, the guy there wanted to ask what breed she is and the like - I must have looked like I was in a hurry though, as he didn't hold us too long, and as soon as we were done we trotted right back to the start line to head out on course. I thought I heard the starter say she was starting us at 10:19, our actual go time, but I was not correct - this will come back later.

Warming up

The actual course maps are here, if you're interested. But they probably won't make a lot of sense! Training level only did hazards 1, 3, 4, and 5 - hazard 2 was for Prelim and above. Our course was 4.4 KM, and was through a whole lot of wooded, hilly terrain. There were some HUGE giant washed out ruts, and some big giant rocks, but for the most part the footing was 10,000 times better than the swamp at Pine Hill. I felt that I still would have a lot of horse at the end of the course.


Off we flew through the woods, bumping over the giant ruts and cruising up and down the hills. Stephanie went into this course totally blind - usually you walk the course with your navigator, so you both know the route, but since we did not have time for that this go around she just hang to hold on tight! I did my best to call out some of the things we were doing so she could prepare, but half the time I think I was probably talking quietly to myself instead of being helpful. I talk to O a lot too while we are underway.



The first hazard was the most simple - just some turns through the trees, a good warmup for Stephanie to get a feel of the turns. In these pictures, you'll see my helmet cover blew off somewhere early in the course - looks kind of funny flopping down over the back of my helmet!

Here goes nothing!

Turn mare turn!

She is the best at tight turns

Well done mare! Well done Stephanie!

The other set of professional photos we got was from the next hazard, called the Rattlesnake. It was easily the most complicated thing I had ever set eyes on! These hazards are permanent, and get decorated differently every year. 

I had decided to stair-step the first element, which you'll see in the helmet cam video. We did it carefully and were successful, although we did scrap a wheel on the way out. It was tight in there! 

This is my favorite picture of O from the whole season!!

Exiting!

We powered along to and through the next hazard, The Fort, which was another permanent fixture on course. It's SO COOL. I don't know who originally built it, but it was just amazing and I have video of it too!

The Fort!

It's a bit grainy since it was a video that Dr. G sent to me, but you can still see how she handled it! Unfortunately, my helmet cam had died by this time, so you only will get to see the first two hazards.

The final hazard, Cactus Jack, O handled in supreme style, although she did slow down and walk through the more complicated parts. That's all right... we will add speed as she gets stronger and more confident! She was exceptionally clever about her footing this weekend as well, slowing down and looking at the footing when it was a bit questionable, chosing her own path, and being extremely speedy when the going was good.

And when I say speedy I mean... way too speed. WAAAAY too speedy! Our speed time was 19 minutes flat, and our optimum time was 21 minutes - we have a 3 minute window to come in. There is a 300 meter mark where you must continue your forward motion once you cross it (no stopping or circling or whatnot), and as we reached that mark I looked at my watch.... yeah, we were at 15 minutes. Oh man how were we going to kill four entire minutes!? We slowwwwly walked up the hill... slowwwwwwly.... slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly.... the finish line was approaching..... we slowwwwwwly wandered towards it... and barely crossed over it with just 12 seconds over the speed time!




O cooled out super fast and was cleared by the vet with compliments on her fitness.  Unfortunately for us, while I thought I had started on time, we actually started 30 seconds past our set start time. They are strict on this (as they should be), and I was penalized heavily for it, knocking us down to 4th. I can tell you something though, I'll NEVER do that again! Only takes one time of making a big costly rookie mistake. I won't forget it ever again!


I could not have done it without Stephanie's fine help as a navigator. She did wonderfully for her first time ever being on a carriage!! And I also couldn't have done it without Dr. G, who let me crash at her house all weekend and fed me and cheered me on. Thank you guys so much!!



Here's the helmet cam footage. It's a little hard to hear, but if you turn up the volume, you can hear me talking to both O and Stephanie:






What a weekend! What a mare!



I checked the rulebook recently to see what the official rule on pregnant mares is for the ADS, and they have a strict 4 month cutoff. I think that is perfectly reasonable, but because of it, this means Cowboy Country was O's last show until the babe is weaned. Our show season in Texas goes totally dead until about September/October, which is too late in the year for that cutoff. From here on out, O will rest and be merry, and Dylan will take over as primary show horse. I feel really good about the whole thing - I was able to do what I set out to do, get this mare full blast through her show season until she could not technically show any longer due to the rules, then let her rest. What a luxury it is, to have a fine show mare that I can breed and then pull out of my show string, not because she is crippled or old or not useful anymore, but because she is a fine, sound, strong mare and I just so happen to have a fine, sound, strong stallion that I not only have full access too, but who I want to be fully focused on while I have him. I have the luxury to choose which of my two fine, strong, sound show horses I would like to show most at the moment. What a lucky person I am.

Cowboy Country HDT 6/4-6/5/16 - Dressage and Cones

Doing back-to-back shows is insanely exhausting. I've done it a few times in my showing career, but it always leaves me feeling like I have a million loose ends at home and at work that I haven't gotten done on any kind of timely basis, which I don't like. As we have a limited amount of shows in our area, we don't have a lot in the way of choices, so when there is a big show and then another big show right after it - well, that's what we do. Immediately after getting home from Pine Hill - the very next day - I set to work prepping everything all over again, washing all of my show clothes and O's boots, cleaning my carriage, washing harness, remembering tests and courses, getting hay and feed, and all the rest of the song and dance that comes before a show, on top of working basically nonstop all week. 

Friday arrived in no time, and before I knew it I was loading up my carriage and getting ready to hit the road. One downside to driving is that it's basically the biggest song and dance production you've ever seen in terms of getting gear ready for a show. You think it's a pain in the butt to clean a couple of bridles? Try scrubbing down a marathon carriage. Sometimes people bring TWO carriages. And two harnesses. And two horses, or four horses! Can you imagine? Four horses plus a spare horse, eight plus sets of harness, and two big carriages? It's hard enough to me to wrangle just one carriage, one harness, and one horse - especially since I do it all myself. It's such a process to get ready - the carriage has to be cleaned, then it has to be winched carefully into the bed of my truck and strapped in securely, then the trailer has to be hitched, and THEN the horse gets loaded. THEN we can get on the road.

Naturally, as is apparently my curse when going to shows, I had YET ANOTHER flat on the way up.

Again!!

I had replaced the spare on the way down to Pine Hill after the other blowout, so I had my brand new spare ready to go (hell, the spare I put on for Pine Hill was also literally brand new). I didn't replace the spare on the continuing trip this time for some reason - I don't know why, but I just knew I wasn't going to get another flat. And, I didn't. Although relying on a feeling like that isn't exactly recommended most of the time.

Oklahoma is pretty

We arrived in Stillwater after an otherwise uneventful drive, if you don't count the tire blowing and driving through yet another small town completely decimated by a huge tornado. Apparently that is also something that happens when I go to horse shows? 

Because the world is really small, my favorite college professor who taught me for four years when we were both in Ohio now lives in Stillwater. As such, I had an extra set of hands and a soft squashy local bed to crash in all weekend - what are the odds! I love Dr. G dearly and am always glad to see her, and still shake my head in wonder over the fact that we both ended up way down here, far away from the chilly crap winters of Ohio. Dr. G met me at the showgrounds and helped me set up O's stall and tuck her in for the night, and we also picked up my packet. After unloading my carriage, we went and walked the cones course, which made me feel itchy just looking at it. The thing was the most horribly cranker of a course that I've ever seen, and I'm pretty sure the turns were all set for VSEs. It was also on a bit of terrain, which was not something we've practiced much with. I was feeling very confident coming off of my clean cones at Pine Hill, so I wasn't terribly worried about it at the time. 

I also got to meet Bumblebee when Dr. G and I went to dinner.... Optimus Prime was on the other side of town. Who knew?

The morning came WAY too early, and after staggering out of bed and making my way back to the showgrounds, I did my usual morning ritual of feeding the mare, cleaning her stall, taking her for a handgraze, and then going to walk the cones again. O was AWFUL about eating all weekend long. She's a good eater at home, but horrible when she is at shows. She lives on Ulcergard and ProCMC when we go away on overnights, which is probably the only thing that saves her from being eaten alive with ulcers. Over the entire course of the weekend, I don't think she ate more than two flakes of hay total, if that. She also managed to eat one of her grain meals, but only one - it took her the entire weekend to finish it. Granted, I had put some electrolytes in there, which she doesn't like taste of, but still. She grazed whenever I'd take her out, and here and there I would catch her eating, but she did not eat much. She doesn't act concerned, or nervous, or anxious in any way - she just stands in her stall and looks around, or stands in her stall and naps. It drives me completely nuts, but as long as she is on her ulcer preventative, and is at least eating some cookies and grass, that's something. 

I watched three VSEs (mini horses) eliminate out in a row on the cones course, and started to feel a little more anxious about it. Even they were having hard times making those tight turns. How was my big horse going to handle it?

I bathed the mare, readied all my gear, and hitched up for dressage. I felt that I had warmed up for too long at both Sunrise Ridge and at Pine Hill, so I shortened my warmup quite a lot. While I think it was a decent move to do, I still had a blazing hot horse when coming down the centerline. In some ways, this was good, because I had all the forward I needed - I got tagged at Pine Hill for not being forward enough. This time, we were *too* forward, and I got a few comments that we were rushed here and there. I also lost a whole lot in the way of relaxation and submission, because I basically had no submission whatsoever. O overshot all of her transitions and fought me through nearly all of them - she wanted to trot, and trot NOW, and trot fast. She chucked her head in the air a few times in both the downward and upward transitions, although they must not have looked quite as horrible as they felt because the judge did not hammer me on them. The test scored mostly 6s all the way down the line, which I felt was fair. We ended up with a 62.0, which was actually only one point worse than our score at Pine Hill. 

I think this was an effort to keep her straight on the centerline, and failing to do so

I definitely need to learn to SIT UP when I am in the box seat. Why do I always hunch over?
I'm also starting to dislike my outfit. I don't actually think the color goes with O as much as I had originally thought it did. Ah well... lots of time to think about that, for the future.

We were in 3rd after dressage - not last for once!!

In the cones, however, things got all kinds of interesting. And by interesting, I mean they were terrible. O just was on the muscle from the first turn, which was this horrible cranker to the right. I creamed the very first cone, and had a firebreathing dragon on my hands all of a sudden - head tossing, snarling, no steering and no brakes. And then suddenly, too many brakes, when she nearly stopped dead in the middle of the combination.

So angry

SO SUPER ANGRY!

  

Really? I hit the first one? Really?

Angryyyyyyy

Less angry

A lot less angry

Me looking down at the ball I am knocking over... damnit all

Overall, I had three knockdowns but quite amazingly no time faults. I had to spend a few minutes schooling the mare in the warmup on how we listen to turning aids and how we don't just thrash around angrily whenever we don't want to do something. I think she could very well be out again chiropractically after Pine Hill - she's not normally THAT disagreeable. Had I thought of it, I would have gotten her adjusted this past week, but... she could also just have been being her red self, which she does whenever you make her mad with too tight of a turn when she didn't expect it. I have to be careful in how I set her up so as not to fluster her little brain beyond capacity.

We were in 3rd again in the cones, so solidly we were in 3rd overall. The cones course was truthful carnage - not ONE horse or pony went clean, not anybody. A few VSEs went clean, but not any of the large horses. I also feel strongly that some of my cones were awfully narrow - they didn't all appear to be measured the same, but I didn't say anything to show management as I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination or not. Several other people said the same thing to me later though, so it's hard to say.

After dressage, I washed the mare, cleaned the harness and carriage, and got ready for the next day....

Pine Hill HDT 5/28-5/29/16 - Marathon

Phew - I am finally caught up with Pine Hill! Of course, now I am leaving today to go to the Cowboy Country HDT.... so I'll have another huge writeup at the end of that! Doing back to back shows is super hard - it's exhausting to prep for and go to a show, and then to literally come back and prep for ANOTHER show the next weekend? Phew! My showclothes are loaded, my harness and carriage are scrubbed and ready, O's boots are washed, my grooming stuff is all loaded, my trailer is cleaned, the hay and feed are all packed, and I think everything is just about ready to go... oh wait, I still have to pack my going away bag. Damnit!

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Stop me if you've heard this joke... a mini, a mule, and a mare walk into a bar...

How many other sports can you have all of these types of equines interacting with one another, and not care one bit? The sight of a mini - or the sight of a mule - sends a lot of horses into a total tailspin. Not a driving horse though! The little mule is Handsome, who is known well around these parts, and O fell in LOVE with him. I'm not sure if she liked him because of her own mules here at home, or if he just was the right size to make her think he was her baby, but she couldn't stop nickering to him, and then cried hysterically for him when she went back to her stall. She doesn't feel that way about the other minis, just the mini mule apparently!

Sunday morning dawned bright and early again, and once again we had our ritual of terribly bad coffee, donuts, and filling the cooler with things to drink. I decided after feeding O and cleaning her stall that I really needed to go walk obstacles 4 and 5 again, since I was not clear on the route and couldn't remember some details. Thank god I did - I was completely confused and lost. Some experienced people came along at one point to find me standing in one spot looking totally lost, and they were kind enough to point me in the right direction.

Oooo aaaaah

I finally got things sorted out in my head, and walked back to the barn. My feet were sloshing in my shoes already - it was still SO wet. There was active water running across the course still! Everything looked like this:

Ehhhhhhhhhhh

If you are super interested in actually seeing the coursemaps, you can find them all here. But they are kind of image heavy, so I won't post individual pictures of them, save for part of Hazard 4:

I also did a few Facebook livestream videos over the weekend, one of which I'm going to share because it's both educational and kind of funny. You'll hear me make some random commentary, which is directed at the people who were interacting with me and making comments on the livestream. It's a super fun tool for things like this! I'll probably do a few more at Cowboy Country too. 

As we were one of the last to go, I knew the course was going to get increasingly torn up as the day went on. The VSE drivers all came back to the barn with their minis looking fresh, and with reports of it not being too bad, but I figured it would change. I didn't even bother to really seriously wash my carriage... because why do it. It was just going to get covered in muck anyway! It was so mucky that I decided to go completely barefoot for O - usually she shows in boots, but it was so muddy that I felt they would just get ripped off anyway. 

Fat girl standing around sweating in her stall from the humidity 

We warmed up at a walk... got ready... and off we went!!

Right from the get-go, everything was slop. TOTAL slop. It felt like we didn't even have wheels on the carriage - like she was just dragging a dead weight through the mud. There wasn't a single spot on the course where I felt like it let up for a little while. It makes it so much more exhausting for the horse when they have to drag the carriage like that instead of it rolling along smoothly. She was exceptionally clever about her footing, and slowed in a few spots of her own accord - I let her choose these, and then trotted onward once we were through the areas. The entire course had been slowed down a whole kph to account for the state of the course, which I was thankful for. 

The hazards were all fairly simple and easy to negotiate. She cruised through every one of them like it was nothing, no issues whatsoever. The only alteration I made to my planned course was in the 4th hazard, where I decided to go around a jump instead of button hooking the first gate (go in, go out). It was too slick and muddy at that point, and I felt it would just tire her further, so I opted to go around. 

I let her walk a large part of the last 300 meters, as she was very tired by the end of dragging the carriage and our two butts through the horrible, wretched slop on a super steamy, ridiculously humid day. She never quit on me. O has a history of totally checking out when the going gets a little too beyond her, but this time, she showed that she has really matured and that the sport suits her. She was tired - SO tired - but when I asked her to trot on, she trotted on. She never quit, and she never said no. For that alone, I was so proud of her.

It's pretty poor camera footage - I didn't place the GoPro very well, so I will try again this weekend. If you turn the volume up high you can hear me talking some!



We finished under the time and clean. She was very hot and breathing pretty heavily at the vet, so we dropped the carriage and went to vigorously cooling her. Right about this time, poor B2 got the call that one of her dogs had to go in for emergency surgery (he's okay!), and she had to take off to get home. Poor B2... she had to get soaking wet all weekend, almost heat stroked out a million times, never got her proper coffee, had to deal with my ruthless taskmaster orders, and then her dog almost kicked the bucket. I don't know if she'll ever want to go with me again!

After about 20 minutes of aggressive cooling, handwalking, and grazing, we went back to the vet, and were cleared. O was quite fine by then, which meant we were officially finished!

With our excellent cones and marathon, and halfway decent dressage, we finished 2nd! We scored about 20 points better overall than we did at Sunrise Ridge, and we were only two points behind the first place finisher (who was also the first place finisher at Sunrise Ridge). 

We leave TODAY for Oklahoma... oh man!!! Wish us luck!!!!

NTW Sunrise Ridge 4/3/2016 - Marathon and Final Results

What a weekend we had. We obviously had some serious lows, which you've already heard about, but we finished on an extremely high note on Sunday with an amazing trip on the marathon!

Drama posing mare and B2, ready to hitch up and get on with marathon!

O was really into the dramatic poses all weekend

B2, R (her husband and also our comedic relief for the weekend) and I walked the marathon course on Saturday after we were done with dressage and cones. Since this post is already going to be extremely picture-heavy, I'm not going to waste more space with individual pictures of the obstacles on course - but you can see them all listed here! You can also see the competitor list, omnibus listing, cones course map, times, and other things there. It's a great resource for us competitors to have ahead of time! B2 has never done a marathon before and this was only my second one ever, so while we knew what was going on and how we were going to approach every obstacle, there was still an element of, "ok let's not kill ourselves today." We just wanted to get through alive without messing up!

As a recap, Saturday just sucked. It was awful. O was not playing the game, there was all the stupid drama with people going nuts with rumors, and the like. We were in 6th after our crappy dressage, then moved up to 3rd after cones - but despite that, I couldn't let everything that had happened go. I was so upset by it that I stewed about it all night long. I'll be the first to admit that I'm kind of an emotional cripple who doesn't handle these kinds of situations well inside my head - it's just part of who I am. I was still so bothered by it still in the morning that I very nearly scratched from the show and stayed home. I didn't even want to go. I was really and truly that upset by it. (Caveat: since I don't think I was clear before, I am *totally* okay with the TD coming over to check a horse with a rumored injury - that's their job and what they are supposed to do! That part is totally fine. It's just the fact that someone started the rumor, and the fact that the whole thing was inappropriately handled and information was allowed to leak out all over the place... those were the problems.)

But, I didn't want to let it drag me down. I didn't want to throw away my 3rd place just because I'm a hyperemotional trainwreck, and I didn't want to let the old bats who were causing the drama to get any satisfaction out of the whole thing. So I got up, put my big girl panties on, pulled my mare in from the pasture, and headed out to the show.


O's specialties are her everlasting endurance, speed, and ability to turn on a dime easily. This is what is going to make her an exceptional marathon horse, and a good cones horse too if yours truly can actually steer properly some of the time. She doesn't have a lot of patience for intricate things, slow work, or anything involving a lot of aids coming from me. She would rather be left to do it on her own without a lot of input on my part. This makes dressage kind of a mental challenge for her - she might end up being like a lot of those event horses you see that kind of just fumble through their dressage but get out and eat the XC up. Moreso than in eventing (or at least it seems that way to me), you must have a horse that can handle the marathon and the cones and not just have a good dressage test - especially in the lower levels of eventing these days, you can have a killer dressage and as long as you can flop your way around a few jumps you'll win it every time. It's not quite that easy in combined driving, which was reflected in the way our placing lept from nearly last to nearly first by the end of the weekend!

B2, O, and myself all went for a nice walk before the marathon began. People were out there trotting around and getting all busy, but we just walked. Why waste energy? We had five hilly kilometers to tackle, no rush for us!

The countdown began.... I started my watch... off we went!


There were five hazards/obstacles to tackle along the way. She handled every one of them like a total champ, including the second one which I very nearly messed up - in each one of the obstacles, there is an enter/exit gate, and several lettered gates you have to go through in consecutive order. The gates are live until you cross them, then they are dead and you can double back through them as much as you like. Training level only does A, B, and C, but there are also gates D and E for the upper levels. You must go through them in order, otherwise you get eliminated. They try to trick you too - they'll put gate B in front of where A is to make you go around, and similar things. You as the driver must walk the course ahead of time and choose your route - and there are multiple ones to take. You play to your horse's strengths and the terrain, and while the obstacles aren't timed in Training level, they are timed at all the levels above it and you must get through them as fast as you safely can.
In the second obstacle, I flew right past A without even realizing it. The obstacle was full of trees and I got lost immediately - thankfully B2 yelled out that I had missed it! I managed to turn her around at the walk, get back through it, and continue on our way without further incident.

What a champ she was. She was just awesome. I didn't have to do anything, just sit back, steer, and enjoy it!

We can flying into the 300km-to-finish marker. We were coming in hot, so I had to slow her way down to make sure we didn't come in under our speed time of 20:05. Just like in eventing, there is a speed time and an obtimum time (which was 23:05 for us). You must come in that window, and if you go on either side of it you get time pentalties. I make very sure that my watch read more like 20:35 or thereabouts when I cross the line, just to play it safe. This will come into play soon.

She cooled out well, was checked by the vet at the finish, got a bath, and took a nap back at the trailer while we waited for results. B2 and R eventually went home, and I continued waiting.

The scores were posted. And... I had 7 time penalties, which means I had about 30-odd seconds of being over or under the time allowed. Since I had been watching my stopwatch so carefully. I knew it wasn't correct. The TD, who was gracious and kind all weekend, took me up to the office and we looked at the official scorecards. And it turns out we did catch a mistake made! It was truly an honest one - whoever handwrote my start time made a 6 look like a 5, which subtracted a whole minute from our time, landing us solidly below the speed fault time. This is why it's always important to check your watch and be sure! It was corrected, the penalties removed, and it landed us in 2nd place for the marathon. We moved up to 2nd overall!!!

Ready for a flood of pictures from dressage and cones? Brace yourselves...

My strategy for cones: go reallllllly slow

It had highs. It had low. It had drama. It had excitement. It had all the makings of a good Hollywood blockbuster. And it was only just the first show of the season!!

O has a well deserved bit of time off now, then our next show is on the 17th. Can't wait!!