Egyptian Event Ride stories

[Rides 2 Far <rides2far@juno.com>]

> Would love to rehash some Egyptian Event Ride stories if possible.

It's "different".  We turned off a main thoroughfare into Kentucky Horse
Park, had to drive through a bluegrass music festival (with zillions of
campers) and a Saluki dogshow...then past the show ring with the
Hunter-Jumper show going on.  We parked right by the scoreboard for the
Rolex 3-day event by a lake with a big fountain in the middle.  

The course was marked with the little flags that are stuck to wires that
they can just peg into the ground.  We started on the steeplechase
course, which was a one mile grass oval with a hedge for the inside fence
and board fencing along the outside.  You did one loop around the course,
then took off cross country.  You were crossing wide open fields and
quite a few horses just were overcome with the openess of it (translate
that to mean quite a few riders got dumped).  Josie thought the course
was very monotonous.  Sometimes you'd enter a 40 acre field, circle it
along the fence line, then come out the gate you went originally.
(translate that to mean plenty of places to cut trail intentionally, or
even unintentionally).  I thought it was fun and scenic, but I was riding
a strange horse and that probably helped me not to get bored.  The
biggest danger was that this was farm country and some old fence lines
crossed trails.  There were sometimes hidden leg-breaker old post holes. 
We also had to circle fields that had high grass and you really had to
watch for stuff.

The excitement came when about 20 of the park's trail horses escaped and
joined the ride.  I'll bet they check the latches on their gates this
year.  The trade-show in the main horseshow arena was nice to
visit...lots of Arabian art, jewelry, books, etc.  The horseshow was
interesting.  I'd never been to a big all Arab show.  I was impressed to
see the top mare had lots of bone and a BIG trot that really came from
the rear end.  Management had nice awards but there was some confusion
just finding time to present them since they also wanted the Egyptian
bred horses who had completed to be introduced in the ring.  If you plan
to tell them your horse is Egyptian you have to bring his papers and
prove it to ride him in.  We didn't even know Josie's horse was Egyptian
until after the ride...turned out his sire was blue-list or whatever, and
his dam was Babson? (I know *nothing* of that stuff)

I wish we'd had time to tour the horsepark...but we didn't. Hard to
believe I've never been through the thing and it's only 5 hours from
here.  I thought it was a good ride and would like to go back. I think
Kaboot would love it.  Josie prefers more rugged terrain.

Weirdest story...Lois McAffee got dumped by her horse and it left the
park, crossed 2 farms and ended up at a Standardbred breeding farm. She
was running up front when it happened. Lois had hurt her ribs, but
managed to follow the horse. When she found it there were some
Standardbred breeders doing pregnancy checks on their mares who had
caught the horse and put it in a stall. They REFUSED to let her have her
horse back until she helped them finish checking the mares (hold this
tail please) because she had been so RUDE as to delay their work!  People
were out hunting for her thinking she was injured and she was helping
these jerks check mares to earn her horse back. Too weird.  We saw her
later in the ride and someone asked her if she was OK. She said she
thought she might have cracked some ribs. That was on the first loop. She
went on to finish. >g<

Angie
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