Both of their tests were lovely! Connor is just starting his partnership with Bruno, but Sallie has been kicking our a**es over here in Aiken, and it paid off for Connor – he got a 20 and started in the lead! Skye has been working hard on keeping Tika in that calm, quiet rhythm, and it really showed in the ring. Tika has had almost 6 months off, so seeing her knock out some beautiful mediums and float through her lateral work left everyone smiling. It was a great day for Angelica Run! The rain returned, so show jumping was moved to the following day. Consequently, Sallie and I had no reason to stick around; my cheering was done, so we headed off.
Neither Sallie nor myself got much sleep that night, and we had been up since 3am. We were both feeling a bit under the weather, and just wanted to get home and get some sleep. We were having a pretty decent drive, except that every gas station we pulled into was out of gas. Literally. We were getting REALLY low when we found a large Shell station, so we hopped off the interstate and went in (any readers familiar with the Fort Benning exit?!). The lady behind the counter immediately barked, “Oh honey – I ain’t got anything but what you see in this store!” “So, you have no fuel?” “No baby, nothing.” I thought Sallie might tackle this woman in our exhausted frustration, so I shuffled her out, and we went down the road to a station that did have gas. We filled up, hopped back on the interstate, and got settled into our trip. It was the darndest thing, though, because her in-dash GPS told us to get off on this random highway exit. I checked the google maps on my phone to confirm that exit wouldn’t take us anywhere, so Sallie told the GPS it was a stupid wench, and turned it off. Mistake one.
We drove for a couple hours. The sun was shining, it reached 78 degrees and we worried if the horses in Aiken were too hot, and I did a little rendition of “Here Comes the Sun,” complete with clapping. In the midst of my joy and delirium, Sallie suddenly grabbed my arm, turned white, and said, “Kristin... where are we?” “Well I am not sure exactly, let me check my phone.” And so I pulled up my google maps on my iPhone, which had our beautiful path in blue, and I waited for that blinking blue light to show up that indicates our exact location. “Hmmmm, we must not have good satellite, one second….I am waiting for the blinking blue thing to show up.” So I waited, and waited, and then suddenly the panic Sallie was in hit me. WHERE WERE WE? So I silently zoomed out, nothing. I zoomed out more, nothing. I zoomed out more, and saw the perimeter of our blinking dot. OH GOD. I zoomed out more. Here is what I saw:
I didn’t know how to tell Sallie, so I didn’t. I just had a nervous breakdown. In reality, I sat there rocking back and forth, repeating, “I just can’t do this…” while Sallie yelled, “WHERE ARE WE?!?!” In my mind, I simply unbuckled my seat belt, took a deep breath, opened the door, and hurled myself into ongoing traffic at 80 miles an hour. When I finally snapped out of it and told Sallie that we were somehow in Montgomery, Alabama, we turned around. I think we were both so delirious and tired it was just too much. We turned back on the dashboard GPS. As soon as we were going the right direction, we saw the dark clouds and the temperature dropped, and we took a deep breath and prepared for the drive. An hour later, we saw a STUPID “Welcome to Georgia!” sign. I wanted to DIE. When we got back to the Poplar exit, this storm hit that was so awful we could barely see, but Sallie and I just wanted to get home! Mistake two. We thought we heard some kind of bells, but also knew we were going insane. We passed a cop hiding under an overpass, and said, “What a wuss!!! Can’t even drive in the rain!” I then commented that it was like, totally, almost tornado weather, and wouldn’t that be something?!?!?! TOO BAD IT WAS:
OMG WE WERE SO STUPID. Somehow we managed to not, ya know, die, so we chugged along to Atlanta. When we got there, we decided to eat at Waffle House, again. We walked in looking like two chicks that had been on a meth binge for three days, and ordered our food. I ordered the steak and eggs. “Hash browns or grits?” “Hashbrowns.” “How would you like your steak?” “Medium.” “How would you like your eggs?” “I GET EGGS!!!!!??” She just stared at me. Somehow when I ordered the steak and eggs, I forgot there were… eggs. Our waitress did not find this amusing. We did get our food, it was amazing. We tore it down, and then promptly went into food comas. Sallie was slumped over in her baseball cap, and I had to tap her to make sure she stayed conscious. The waitress and other patrons just stared. WE were actually the weirdos in Waffle House.
Among a million other awkward and comedic and tragic moments, we finally made it home. 747 miles later. THINK ABOUT THAT. It should have been a 450 mile day. We were so tired, and so gross, and all Sallie could say by the time we reached our exit in Aiken was, “KRISTIN, we just traveled over ten hours…………AND WITH NO SNACKS!” Ain’t that the truth.
Skye and Connor both did amazing clean show jumping rounds, and clean cross country. They had to go slow since the ground was half washed away. Bruno and Tika are officially in their 2012 season, and the rest of us will enter it shortly! As for Sunday, Sallie and I slept.
Holla at our troops abroad! We are honored to have you as readers! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment