I'm in Chicago, Trick!

We made it! Last night, Gogo and Alex and I pulled safe and sound into the Lamplight Equestrian Center after a long two days of travel. Really, it wasn't nearly as long or miserable as I expected - in fact it was really quite a lot of fun.

On Tuesday, I woke up early and scrambled around trying to get all the last of my preparations done. I was a little waylayed after Shan discovered I left my shipping boots outside and they had gotten covered in dew - d'oh! - but after a little lovin' from the dryer everything sorted itself out and we rolled out of the farm at around 8:15am or so. It was REALLY FOGGY!



But it lifted and the drive through PA was gorgeous, albeit reallllllllly long:



Gogo and I stopped at a highway rest area around 1:00pm or so to unload and go for a little walk. I'm pretty sure there isn't any other horse in the world that I would do that with, but Gogo always hops off the trailer and looks around with mild interest, and that's about it. She wandered around with me, ate some grass, drank nearly a full bucket of water, and let a family with kids fawn all over her.





I love the one with the Pet Area sign, she looks so quizzical. The drive was loooooooooooooooooooooooooong, and as we drew closer to Alex's house we of course found THIS waiting for us:



It poured so hard I literally had to pull over, which I NEVER do. I just couldn't see the road at ALL. And when you can't even see the white lines, well, you know.

But the storm passed, and the sun even came out. We pulled into good old Chardon, OH at around 6:30pm, and brought Gogo into the barn to have a blissfull reunion with her old friend Sinatra. Now, I think I should mention Gogo hates geldings, chesnuts, and Paints. Sinatra is a chesnut Paint gelding. But apparently, when Gogo is in VIOLENT FLAMING HEAT, chestnut Paint geldings that you used to get turned out with and beat on a long time ago are the best things ever after a long hard day:





Of course, that adorable-ness came hand in hand with nonstop squatting and peeing, probably allllllllllllllllll night long. Nice. They settled in, we fed dinner and then her later night check, and crashed, ready to wake up bright and early the next morning.


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Man that whole waking up the next morning thing SUCKS sometimes! Neither of us really wanted to get up when the 5:00am alarm went off, but we somehow managed to crawl out of bed by 5:45am or so, lol. We fed, finished packing, and then tossed Gogo on the trailer for another shuffling around - Alex and I still had to go clean stalls at the barn where she works, so we brought Gogo with us and turned her out in the big grassy field to let her move around and stretch out before yesterday's long, long drive. Now, Gogo's not friendly to other horses. In fact, she'd really rather just kill any horse that comes remotely near her. However, she and Alex's mare Polly used to go out together, and they fell in LOVE. CRAZY MAD MARE LOVE. Or at least Gogo did, Polly was more like "uhhh..." at the time. Polly is currently at the facility where Alex works, so we figured that they would love to go back out together for a little while and have a happy reunion. And just look at Gogo's reaction to when she sees Polly:



Totally anticlimactic at the end but look at her wheel around and scream!! You can't hear it very well, but she was nickering to Polly the entire time. At some point, however, Polly decided she was not going to play turnout anymore, so Alex had to bring her in before she started running. Which of course, got Gogo to start running. So I had to bring her in and put her in one of the empty stalls in the lower barn, which she did not like at all, but she finally stopped hollering for Polly and settled down and ate some hay. Unfortunately now that she's seen Polly and had friends for 2.5 seconds, that's ALL she can think about now! We don't normally let Gogo have friends of any sort because a) she likes to EAT them and b) she then gets abnormally and irrationally attached to them. Oh, Gogo, why....




Back on the trailer at around 10:00am, and after about 10 miles Gogo FINALLY stopped screaming for Polly. We continued from there, and the drive was totally fun and felt a lot shorter because I had Alex there with me to keep me company. At around 2:00pm, we decided we needed to stop and let Gogo go for a walk, at another truck stop of course:







Again, I am pretty sure Gogo is the ONLY horse in the world I would do this with, but then again Gogo is the only horse in the world I would actually take this far on a trailer trip because she ships so easily. Any other horse would have had a really hard time. Gogo really just took it all in stride.

Finally, we pulled into Lamplight at around 6:00pm Chicago time - PHEW!! We unloaded (and Gogo then started screaming hystically, looking around for Polly, although she thankfully quieted when she realized Polly wasn't anywhere to be found), unpacked what we needed to unpack, unhooked the trailer, let Gogo roll in her stall and have some dinner, and then took her for a nice long walk around the Lamplight grounds, up near the dressage arenas where everyone was schooling.




We bumped into some of our readers - hi guys, you know who you are! - who Gogo then promptly tried to kill in perfect Gogo fashion, not once but TWICE as she spooked at a random piece of caution tape and went bolting sideways (and backwards) into their horses. Oops. The second one was my fault - I held up the caution tape and was rubbing her face with it, and she put her head down and got her ear caught in it. Yeah, I'd probably go backwards too! Thankfully all three horses got over the horse-eating tape, and Gogo was even friendly enough to bite one of them on the nose, what a sweetheart. I think she's feeling bitter because Polly is secretly in love with another gelding. We headed back to the barn to get tucked away, and she was fine and dandy later on at night check - her night check paper said that shortly before we arrived she had been taking a nap - and she ate with gusto, drank two buckets of water, and tried to kick her neighbor Tessie in the head. Nice!


We're up and at 'em this morning, getting ready to go feed. Today we'll do lots of handwalking, give her a bath and make sure she's all clipped and trimmed, walk my XC course, watch some Advanced dressage, get my packet and bucket o' goodies (show office was closed last night), and hopefully get to go see the Shedd Aquarium and Navy Pier if we get some time. The weather is supposed to be GORGEOUS all weekend, and I am VERY excited to see what my course has in store for me.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaay AECs!! Come stop and say hello if you can find us, we're in the front tent!