Friends, let me know if this ever happens to you. You’re sitting down to write the morning post on Eventing Nation, either at 2:30 in the morning or noon the next day and your plan is to write something serious. I mean, you are SO committed to writing a serious post about an important issue, such as NSAIDs. And then, right before you start writing the serious post, you look in your inbox and there is an email from Chelan with a funny story and hilarious pictures that you absolutely can’t resist posting. Does that ever happen to you? No? Nobody? Well it happens to me all the time.
The good news is that ridiculous FEI moments are more common these days than Chelan party stories–which is saying something. Besides, we are giving most of our serious journalism responsibilities over to Hahahorses, and I think they will be posting some scandalous pictures of Princess Haya eating bute in the next couple of days. Oh, where are my manners? — Thanks for writing this Chelan and thank you for reading.
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From Chelan:
Previously on EN I wrote and article about eventing west coast style. This is a bit of a p.s. to that well received piece.
This past weekend there was an event in my backyard called Campbell Valley, in Langley BC. It is a competition up to preliminary level, and every other year the ‘Can-Am challenge’ is held here north of the 49th. The alternate site in the US is Whidbey Island in WA in July. I’d love to say I know exactly which teams in each divisions from each country won this year, but that would be a complete lie! While it’s fun to ride on a team, and have T shirts and matching saddle pads (or red coats when things get a little more serious and the jumps get bigger…) the REAL competition comes on Saturday night.
The coveted ‘golden boot is awarded to the team who excels at the unmounted games. Creative rule appreciation, aka blatant cheating, is the norm. Last year my sister Shaye and I ‘brought it home for Team Canada’ with a combination of tequila shots and limbo. This year, the theme was a float parade using wheelbarrows. Thinking that we could influence the judges with a slightly larger wheelbarrow, my 1989 VW cabriolet was pressed into service:
Truthfully, it is a barn car–it has transported hay, horse shit and plenty of dog hair. Sounds an awful lot like a wheelbarrow to me! Add to this mix my prom dress (circa 1986–just imagine the STYLE points, and obviously my Mother saves everything.) Actually, we provided a few prom dresses for the hotly anticipated event. One particularly sensational number was navy velvet, and it seems that it was exactly the same as the bridesmaid dresses from a client’s first wedding probably 15 yeas ago. Fashion forward we are here in the West. You’ll notice John Merriweather of Merriweather saddlery sporting that fancy number:
I did get one scandalous photo of John crossing and uncrossing his legs, a la basic instinct, but since EN strives to be PG, I left that one out. Let’s just say Team USA #2 had thought of everything, and his garter was rather pretty. Leave the rest to the imagination, folks! Anyhow, the gist of the evening is that Team USA was victorious this year, and rightfully so. One of the two US teams had procured a pink dress involving considerable extra padding:
This rubinesque hottie entered the staging area (in the wheelbarrow of course) flinging corn husks (it was after dinner) into the adoring crowd. Team Canada admitted defeat mostly gracefully, but vowed to retrieve the golden boot next year in Whidbey Island by any means possible.
