Daily Archives: January 17, 2014

Good news day

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The last 24 hours have been pretty exciting – I’ve just been accepted into the Masters of Physiotherapy degree that I’ve been aiming for, so I’m absolutely thrilled. 2013 was pretty stressful trying maintain high enough grades to be considered, so this is a huge relief! If nothing else, it makes leaving Team Dutton and heading back home slightly less depressing.

A beautiful sunrise for a beautiful day

I’m also super excited that one of my posts was featured on Eventing Nation’s Best of the Blogs section today! My blog views have gone through the roof, so a big hello to anyone new who is reading this 🙂

Check out the EN post here:

http://eventingnation.com/home/friday-news-notes-from-flair-nasal-strips-49/

We’re still waiting on the shipper to arrive, who is so far a couple of hours later than we expected. We took the opportunity to head out for a celebratory/farewell lunch, and were entertained by yet another Starbucks name blunder…

A slight improvement on the previous “Harvey”… But still not quite Cobie, even after spelling it out letter by letter!

We probably won’t end up leaving here until at least 1:30pm, so we still haven’t decided if we’ll drive through the night and arrive in Aiken early in the morning, or find a motel halfway there and finish the trip on Saturday morning. I guess we’ll just see where the road takes us!

Shipping out to Aiken

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The last few days have been a whirlwind of packing up the barn and shipping out multiple loads of horses at all hours of the day and night. I’m currently sitting in my very clean and empty apartment waiting for the last horse to be picked up by the transporter, and then the last couple of us who are left here can finally hit the road ourselves.

The super impressive True Prospect Farm rig

The process of preparing each load of horses was super efficient and well organised – it makes life so much easier when you can roll out of bed at 2am and know that everything is ready to go. Every horse due to leave wore a cooler under their stable blankets, and had their own set of turnout blankets, shipping boots, shipping halter and tail wrap neatly labelled and stacked in front of their stable door – so all that had to be done when the trucks arrived was to take blankets off, put shipping gear on, and away they go.

All set for the first load of horses to ship out at 2am

The barn became progressively quieter and cleaner as each load left, and those of us still here had the job of emptying out, sweeping and liming all the stalls. It’s been quite surreal going from a bustling barn of 40 horses to just half a dozen left this morning! A number of other horses and riders are beginning to move in now though, to take advantage of the vacant facilities once we’ve gone south.

The packing process – before…

And after!

One very empty barn

I’m feeling quite nostalgic and a little sad at the idea of leaving True Prospect – I’ve felt so at home here, I just want to stay! I really hope it won’t be the last time I get to come here though. By this time tomorrow we’ll all be settled in Aiken, and will be flat out getting back into the routine of riding and preparing for all the upcoming competitions. I’m super excited to start heading to events again – my braiding fingers have been getting itchy!

My ride to Aiken – a trophy from the 2013 Red Hills event. Can’t complain about driving 1000km in this!