Murphy’s Law
Yesterday, I headed out to the barn with A Plan.
In retrospect, I really should know better.
First I stopped at the store to get a better memory card for my camera. I’ve known, in the back of my mind, that my camera is old, possibly bordering on obsolete. I bought it in… I think… 2004. So seven years old? In technology terms, that’s practically prehistoric.
For some context, the memory card has 512 MB of space. I’m not sure you can even buy 512 MB SD cards these days.
Actually, I’m not sure you can even buy an SD card. All I could find were SDHC cards, which my camera can’t read. I know this, because I tried one, and my camera responded “Does not compute.”
So, I guess I will have to make do with 7 minutes of video until I find a store that sells SD cards or until I can buy a camera that is more up to date. Which would be pretty much any camera out there, apparently.
Never mind. Little bumps in the road couldn’t deter me. I had A Plan.
I headed out to the barn, with visions of judges’ booths in my head.
See, I went to a schooling show the other weekend to watch a friend ride. When her normally steady horse got a little looky about the judge’s booth, I realize I ought to start working on that with Ro. I’m not too worried about permanent booths or even those tent pavilions, but sometimes shows will use a trailer.
I don’t think Ro will react kindly to a trailer as a judge’s booth. In fact, I think her reaction would be along the lines of A Enter Centerline Serpentine, X Halt and Back, D Proceed Centerline Serpentine, X Halt and Snort, G Spook Left…
But it was a Sunday afternoon, and Sunday lessons at the barn happen in the mornings and evenings. I figured I would have the arena to myself, and we could practice Riding Past The Scary Thing.
It was a good plan, foiled only by the presence of a birthday party at the barn.
Never mind. We had a nice ride anyway. Ro decided she would help me out a little with my plan, so we practiced Riding Past the Scary White Blocks Outside the Arena, Riding Past the Scary White Poles Outside the Arena, Riding Past the Scary Black Barrel, Riding Past the Scary Bushes, and Riding Over the Scary Wet Spot In the Arena.
All of these are things that are in the arena every day and not related to the birthday party, but apparently they were especially exciting yesterday.
There were some good points in the ride, though, so I was pretty happy with it. And I still had one last part of The Plan to pursue. I was sure I could be successful in this, at least.
On the way home, I bought 200’ of rope, some snaps, some markers, and some duct tape. The cashier gave me the WTF look that I so often get when buying random things for the barn and cautiously wished me a nice day.
At home, I sat down and prepared to make myself I rope I could use to set out letters for a dressage arena.
We marked the fence previously, but some of the markers have disappeared. Plus, it’s harder than you might think to lay out cones in a straight line away from the fence, so our inner long side was a bit… slant.
With a rope, I can just tie one end to the fence, walk down putting out the letters, and then do the same on the inner long side. Since the rope is long enough to go end-to-end in the arena, I can actually tie it off while I put down the inner cones, ensuring they are straight.
This is the quickest, easiest way I can think to quickly set up an arena in a space that doesn’t allow for the cones to stay out permanently.
It’s a good idea in theory.
When you are trying to mark out 90 meters of rope using a 3 meter measuring tape, it’s less brilliant. When you mark out your rope and then discover you’ve marked out a 40 meter arena, not a 60 meter arena, it is even less brilliant.
When you go back to add in the markings for the 60 meter arena and realize that you have 200’ of tangled rope because you just tossed it in a pile instead of winding it up as you go, it starts to look like a brilliantly stupid idea.
Nevertheless, I eventually got my rope made.
Hopefully the barn will be quiet tonight and I can set up the cones. My biggest challenge is that if lessons are going on, they need the full arena for the barrels—I can’t set up the arena around those, since I end up with a barrel somewhere around X.
Somehow I don’t think “turn second barrel” is part of the dressage tests.