I got my ride on the Icelandic, as promised. Tiny, but there's a lot of horse in that little body. And he's cute, too. Lucy came by while I was riding him around camp and took a couple of pictures. She posted them on her Tevis coverage pages, and I snatched this one.
I watched Susan Evans Garlinghouse measure the horses in the vet line for a while. Fascinating. And she's really good at it. She wanders over to the horse, pats it on the neck, and it doesn't even notice that a tape measure has dropped on the other side . She measures the girth, cannon bone, body length, and body condition, and the horse still doesn't know anything has happened.
I got a wonderful quote from her, and when I find my notes I'll know what it was. I know it included the words "filthy, tired, don't get paid" and a few similar ones. But she looked pretty happy out there.
SUSAN PREDICTS:
The body condition scores of the horses is averaging quite a bit higher than last time she did this. She believes there will be a higher-than-usual completion rate. She was very reluctant to give me an actual number, though.
As I am writing this, it's nearly 8 AM Saturday. I suppose the race has been going for 3 hours, but I haven't heard a word. I'm in the hotel in Auburn. Lynne and I were up past midnight again last night, working through plan c, plan d, plan e, .... We think we have it figured out now, though.
Becky's truck seems to have recovered from its interesting noises. We'll see. Tori is off to meet her rider, Becky and Heather are going looking for something interesting to report.
Private note to my mom:
I'm taking good care of your little computer. He's being very good, and we wouldn't have been able to do this without him. And, no, I'm not taking him out into the field. He sits in the vehicle and people come in and type their stories.