Bitter winter/Familiar Ways

Had my jump lesson on Saturday- finally! I felt weirdly anxious all day, I guess because it was off my routine? I don’t normally lesson on Saturdays, and I ride earlier in the day as well. Instead I had my lesson and it was after lunch, at 12:30pm. That for some reason really threw me off my game.

Luckily Oats is a great little guy and he was not off his game, just me! Hahaha. He was very quiet- almost too quiet- because apparently he was playing too hard with his buddies in the field last week. Naughty pony! Oh well, he deserves his fun I guess, haha.

So we worked over a pretty simple course but identified a thing that I wasn’t too pleased with – a swap left to right going straight over a single fence. And darnit, if we weren’t always doing it? Shoot!! Oh well. We did work on picking up that correct lead on landing, by really focusing ‘right’ and it made us land…straight. Ha. Oh well, I guess if it works, it works? I also am sort of wondering if it isn’t my saddle that isn’t super awesome right now? I have been waiting for the saddle maker who made my saddle to come back from his snowbird holidays to fix it/pump more air into it…It had a twist and I wanted him to review how it was fitting on old Oats…Might be more than time, I think. ARGH.

Also his canter feels excellent as a hunter canter but wayyy sucky right now as a dressage canter. It has been making me feel very annoyed, ha. And wanting to just jump instead of working on the dressage canter…

 

Show your PRIDE!

This past weekend was another long weekend for me! Yay! It was quite busy as per usual with a special highlight- my husband and I marched with Island Health in the annual Pride Parade! We had an absolute blast, it was so fun 🙂

The floats were awesome, and the ‘octopus’ balloons were just amazing. We marched to the park, and then enjoyed some of the vendors/swag booths set up at the park. The swag was the best I have ever seen- mini bottles of sunscreen, sunglasses, face paint, headphones, watermelon and cupcakes (!!) and so much CANDY!

We brought Gidget along to enjoy the festivities and she kind of hated them, ha. She was afraid of the balloon bears as they were kind of popping and squeaking…

And there were puppies corralled by the SPCA. Poor little guys, they were soooo tired. Adorable! My husband and I then went home and I went riding (in the field, whoop!) and he went out and we met later to enjoy some live music and drinks as Pride wrapped up. We had a lovely time and the bands were awesome. Bonus- we came late to the beer garden, and got some free tix by some partiers that had partied a ‘touch’ too hard… 😉

A fun weekend all around and I will definitely do Pride again!

Victoria Beer Week: Beer, Cheese & More Beer

I went to two beer week events this week but thought I’d review the one last night for your reading pleasure: Beer, Cheese & more Beer

Snapshot review: Go and be ready to hustle. Food goes fast!

Actual review:

A fun, if extremely busy event at the Victoria Public Market. The beer token allotment is VERY generous (like 8 tokens?) it was definitely enough beer sampling for me.  Vendors brought their most interesting beers, heavily featuring ‘Bocks,’ German-smoked beer, some cask-aged beers, including a highlight by Daagerad- their 6-week ‘labour of love’ that I had two samples of!

And it wasn’t just cheese either, though some beer vendors had cheese displays on their tables, there were food vendors too. Victoria Pie Co, Very Good Butchers, a deli, etc. You could also get beer & cheese soup, a flatbread sample, vegan mac’n’cheeze (it was good, not great), samples from a deli (AMAZING), raclette with sausage, the sourest gherkins ever, so good! Olives stuffed with cheese, and vegan pizza rolls.

There were definitely crazy lineups for the food options- you could eat as much as you want but the catch is this- they run out FAST. And stop replenishing the cheese/most food options after only 1 hour! So yeah you have to move quick and prioritize.

I did try a very mild green(???) cheese from the deli, and Ian tried a cheese that looked innocuous- like cheddar, but that I heard one girl describe as ‘fish and peanut-butter’ hahah ew.

So go, it’s not too expensive for the fun options you get- (beer and food and it costs with tax per person about $31.50) but be ok with crowds and getting your beer elbowed a lot. It was such a busy and fun time that it made me forget that Ian and I saw a guy get hit by a car on our way there. That was actually really frightening, the guy got up and was ok – it was not a hit and run, the car stopped, etc. But still, jesus.