Ridecamp: [RC] Tevis web coverage and Haggin cup clarification

Lucy Chaplin Trumbull elsie@xxxxxxxxxxxx
I'm still scrabbling around trying to get caught up on
the web site - another couple of days and I should be 
there. Last night I got my first proper night's sleep
since Friday morning, so that helped.

I haven't had a chance to look at any comments here on 
RC, except to scan the conversations about the pull codes.
Glad you enjoyed them. :)

To clarify why the pulls look like they do - by the time 
many of them went up, it was around 4 am and we'd been 
up 24 hours straight without a break. The ones that just
say "Pull" were ones that we found out about late in the
ride, but were never formally notified of. The other pulls 
came from the radio guys, most of who are not horse folk, 
let alone endurance, and I'm guessing they were handed a 
stack of ride cards and told to "transmit the pulls to 
race control". Having seen a couple of these ride cards, 
it's often really hard to see what the pull was for. I
saw one that said "Tack galls, lacerations, and tired".
Which one d'you pick? And once you figure out what 
caused the horse to pull, what classification does it
go under? What d'you put "choke" under? As for "tired"
and "injury" - I'm guessing sometimes it was referring
to the rider, not the horse, but we had no way of knowing.

Anyway, lucky Dana Baldwin got the job of inputting them - 
once she could figure out the handwriting of the radio guy 
at our end (let's just say, he could be a doctor). 

She handed them off to me electronically and I massaged
the file into a suitably sized and shaped "thing" to
go on the web. I didn't scrutinise them (no time for that!)

The work Dana did for me was an amazing help and she was 
a star (even if she and I did totally blank out at around 3 am 
and realise we had *no idea* what we were supposed to be 
doing. Can you say "fried"?). No only was she data-expert for
the day, she also drove for me, which meant I got a whole 
half hour nap on Saturday morning! ooh.

This was her first experience of Tevis and I think she was
a little shook up by it. I assured her that last year the
worst I remember hearing about was one of the sweep's horses
getting poked in the eye by a twig (although Sylvia reminded
me about Harca's fall. But that happened too quietly, so it
doesn't count <g>). I very much hope that she'll help me in
future years, because she was a great asset.

One email I did just spot:

Nancy Elliot writes:
> ...the horse is 
> important and the vets take this award VERY seriously 
> and are thrilled when there are several that look good 
> enough to be seriously considered, as was the case this year.

Gosh, she's right! If I had to say one positive thing about
this year's ride, it was that the BC horses looked amazing!

Bogus was just awesome looking and showed really well. He
looked like he hadn't done anything except stand around in
his paddock all day. He was nicely filled out, and had plenty 
of animation without being hyped (what a good boy). I came
away thinking "Hmm, must learn to present my horse that way"
(fat chance <g>). 

Except for one horse that was a *tiny* bit off, all 8 showed
no detectable signs of lameness. They were all cheerful. Several
of them were jumping around (trying to avoid being eaten by the
eye-plucker lurking by shade cover over Dr Barseleau). It was
a good ending to what was otherwise a pretty brutal, stressful
experience for many.
-- 
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Lucy Chaplin Trumbull
Repotted english person in the Sierra Foothills, CA
elsie@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Tevis coverage at:
tevis2002.quacky.co.uk
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