History and Horses and Fencing and more Horses

It was one of those weekends that makes going back to work on Monday look like a break. Friday night Breck and I checked out History at Sunset, a program by the National Park Service here in Fredericksburg. I deeply regret somehow missing out on this prior to this year. Every Friday night during the summer Park Rangers provide detailed walking tours of subsections of the battlefields in the area. This weekend, it was Bernard’s Cabins and Latimer’s Knoll, the site south of the city of the near Union breakthrough of the Confederate lines during The Battle of Fredericksburg. I learned more about that battle in 90 minutes than most school kids get in a year of history class. The session was led by Ranger Frank O’Reilly, who wrote the book on the Battle of Fredericksburg. Even the young kids that were dragged along by parents were enthralled by Frank’s descriptions of what happened. It was professional storyteller quality, except it was all driven by a very obvious deep, deep passion for the history of this area. An older gentleman thanked me for bringing Breck – commenting that the the younger generation just doesn’t seem that interested. I decided it was not the time for a rant on that being the fault of how our schools teach history. However, I will say that I was probably below the median age of the 150 odd attendees for the program. It was definitely an older crowd.

We did two horse shows this weekend, neither with Skip. Saturday we left the house at 5:15 AM to head to the Upperville Colt & Horse Show, where Delaney was showing a 2-year old Cleveland Bay in-hand. Cleveland Bay horses are critically endangered. There are only about 600 left in the world. Upperville is the oldest horse show in the US, and maybe the most prestigous. It is sort of the Wimbledon of horse shows, or maybe that should be US Open. Or The Masters? I don’t know, it’s a large, very well known horse show where you can earn $100,000 if you win the big jumping event. Just being there and participating is something a lot of horse people never get to do. I was surprised at the laid-back vibe of the pace. I’ve sensed a lot more tension, and seen a lot more crying kids and screaming Show Moms at a 4-H horse show than we saw mingling with the crowd of this AA rated show. I asked Delaney if she wanted to bring Skip next year to jump and she said no. We didn’t see many (any?) Palomino horses. It was all expensive hunter and jumper horses, probably Thoroughbreds and Warmbloods. Not Skip’s crowd I guess.

Sunday was split parenting day. Michelle and Delaney went to a local show to jump the Mustang Pony she is training for the farm. Breck and I went fencing. For the 3rd or 4th consecutive time events conspired to have Breck’s placing not be a good indicator of how well he fenced. In this case, somebody that should have been seeded 1 or 2 came out of the pools seeded 11. Breck’s reward for fencing well and being 6/17 was to fence #11, who should have been somebody he would be expected to beat. Instead it was somebody that was a serious threat to win it all. So instead of top 8 and winning a nice sharp prize, he’ll end up 9th. I think next season Breck will be greatly improved for the beating he is taking this Spring at the hands of higher rated fencers, bu his ego would prefer a top 3 finish now. We’ve skipped a couple of lower rated events in favor of the tougher ones. In retrospect maybe that was a mistake. Oh well, I was never a competitive teenage athlete, so this is all new to me too.

How was your weekend?