Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Home from Quiz Championships in California - before that, I was teaching our Pony Club's summer camp - before that, Rebecca farm, and before that the annual band leadership camp. The best part? I am literally home for a week, then I leave for a 10-day trip to Taiwan, then I'm home for four days and I go to groom at Aspen.

This is easily the busiest summer I've ever had. Lots of fun, and a good variety, but I am ready for a break. Thankfully September is a little more laid back (and by laid back I mean I'm spending one weekend grooming, one weekend at an eventing rally, and potentially one weekend at an event derby).

Quiz was extremely fun. Western Pony Club Champs were held down at the Woodside Horse Park in California this year, which is a lovely huge horse park with approximately a zillion arenas and a big XC course with nice fences. All the grass is brown which is weird for me, but the footing looks great, nice and sandy. Unfortunately the riding parts of Champs didn't really start till after we left, so we got to watch a few Show Jumping rounds and that was it.

My team ended up with 5th out of 7 in the Senior C division, which is actually a big accomplishment. We were a "short team," which means we only had three competitors - and we were the ONLY short team, as all the rest had four. This is a major handicap because in every round of individual competition (two Classroom phases, Mega Room, Barn, Written Test), the lowest score of the four is dropped. But if you have a short team, you never get a dropped score. So, considering that, the sheer fact that we did better than two teams was impressive.

I learned a lot, as usual. Studied 90% of the B/A Pony Club manual on the drive down there. It's almost 500 pages and has some serious thickness of material, so that was entertaining. Learned the major bones in the axial and appendicular skeleton, some major muscles, all the parts of the digestive system (small intestine has weird names!), lots of Polocrosse and Tetrathlon rules, tack stuff, disease stuff, teaching stuff. Retained a lot of the things I memorized, so that'll come in handy for future studying for my next rating, the HB, which is almost all knowledge-based.

Also learned some things during the test, like: in an ABC fire extinguisher, type A puts out wood/paper fires, type B puts out flammable liquids like gasoline and oil, and type C puts out electrical fires. (D puts out chemical fires and is not included in most fire extinguishers). Why did I learn this? Because I missed a 15-point question asking what the B of an ABC fire extinguisher put out. Ugh.

Car ride was long. Glad we weren't pulling a  horse trailer. Rode in a fellow clubber's motorhome, played lots of cards and drawing games and 20 questions, read a lot, tried to sleep but it's difficult at a small table. Got home at 2 or so to a very insistent cat, who also woke me up at 8 with some serious nose-in-face and claws-kneading-on-skin action.

I'm sleepy.

But I am glad we went. Learned lots. Enjoyed my team. Bought a saddle pad and a USPC sweatshirt.

Kicking around ideas: new thoughts for playing with McKinna's training, writing a letter to USPC National with suggestions to improve the quiz rally experience, I am hungry and want some breakfast, need to get kicking on some old blog post ideas that are clamoring for attention, maybe talk about the club's camp a bit.

Pictures soonish. We took some good ones out on XC at Woodside. Big fences out there.