Woodford Reserve Distillery Kentucky

Pictures

I've finally started to get some pics up.

First lot are at Red Hills

LAST DAY

Last full day in the USA

I have spent the last two days in Lexington Kentucky, the home of Rolex and WEG. You may also know it as the home of Thoroughbred Horse Breeding in the US.

Yestrday I spent leisurely morning cruising a couple of malls, mostly window shopping as I had already had a good crack at shopping. Walmart is cool, there is almost nothing you can't buy at Walmart.

I spent the afternoon with Joe visiting Woodlands Distillery and Keeneland Race Track. Both are beautiful places and definitely should be on the agenda of anybody planning to come to WEG.

Today however was a real treat, I spent a couple of hours tagging along with Mick Costello. Mick is the Rolex and WEG course builder. He know this place so well and I got to see a lot of both tracks being put together. I also got some great pics of a new fence in it's inception. It is a jumping fish and I got to see it come together, I will upload some pics later on.

I then had a good wander round the Horse Park and finished in the gift shop where I picked up the requisite caps.

I finished my visit to the Horse Park with a stop at the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF), similar to EA. I met with Shealagh Costello, Director of Eventing, National Programs. Shealagh was very generous with her time and it was great to spend some time learning about US Eventing. Tonight is my last nightand then I begin the grueling trip back to Sydney including a nine hour stop at LAX.

I have had an amazing trip, met some wonderful people and have been absoloutely spoilt rotten, we are all involved in a great sport and are passionate about having a great time.

One promise that has been toroughly broken during this trip is that to write regualarly, it has been very tough. I have no excuse other than the fact that I have had a great time and enjoyed every minute, including going to dinner or a party almost EVERY night. I am looking forward to a quite time when I get home. I have missed my bozo and my boys terribly.

Wed 10 Mar 2010

Red Hills wrap up

Red Hill has been run and won, World Cup class was one by Mara Dean ahead of Phillip Dutton. Going to spend some time later today doing a proper wrap and will more detail then.

By from Tallahassee Airport!!!!

Off to Lexington Kentucky.

Red Hills is ready

Wow the week has gone fast, it is Friday morning and first horse starts dressage in less than 3 hours. I have had an amazing time so far. Everybody on the team is welcoming friendly and above all focused on making this event the best possible. There is no doubt that the Red Hills Team have an event that is world class and strive to exceed the high standard they have set in the past.

Unfortunately the ghost of Red Hills 2008 hangs vividly in the memory of the team and we all have worked to ensure that 2010 is a re-birth of this wonderful event. I have now moved to the Mistletoe Plantation which is about 20 mins north of Red Hills just across the Georgia State border. This vast property is very nice and Andy Griffiths and I are sharing a 2/3 bedroom cottage equipped with everything we could possibly need.

From a technical point of view this event is very similar to any other FEI event I have been to in Australia, but there are some major differences. For starters yesterday many of the riders were out hacking or doing flatwork. Perhaps 90% were wearing old school skullcaps, with no chinstrap. In Australia this just doesn't happen. The other one I struggle with is everybody has motorbikes and quads. They are being kept at the Stables, anyhow it is the differences that help us to learn.

I aCIC 1* class and have 22 starters to look after. My ground jury consists of Uli Schmidt who is an American born in Germany and Joe Dimmek a German judge. So anyhow my entire team including myself has German roots. There is certainly a plethora of overseas offficials with a judge each from Germany, Scotland and Hungary as well as myself and Andy Griffiths from the UK. It is great to have that level of experience on the team and I am learning a lot.

Every single night since I arrived has involved some sort of function and that continues right through. Last night was the Competitors, Officials and Volunteers Welcome. Tonight we back up with the sponsors party and tomorrow night is the competitors party. On Sunday we have a wrap up dinner back here at Mistletoe. And then I'm off to Lexington Kentucky with Joe Carr. Joe is here and just loves to stir everybody up, as I said we are having a ball.

The other day I went along with Andy and Hugh Lochore the Course Designer to do some radio interviews to drum up spectators for the event. Given our exotic accents in Florida we were told we very popular, if that helps get bums on seats great news.

Today we will do final checks on the XC course and meet to ensure all safety and response plans are in place.

I look forward to watching and meeting some of America's top riders over the next few days.

Bye for now.

5 March 2010

Red Hills Wow

What an amazing team here at Red Hills place looks great. Such a fun and organised team here, I am going on Radio today to help drum up crowds here with my exotic accent should be fun two different stations in 1/2 hour. Will do more later today bye all.

It's Sunday I think - Definitely out of whack

Wow, it's currently 3.45am here in Tallahassee I arrived here yesterday at 8am. First up, I love this place and the people, it reminds me a bit of the UK here but that isn't quite right, lots of oaks and woodland, very different to our bush.

My computer is telling me it's 7.45pm at home which I think means it has only been about 47 hours since I flew out of Sydney. So let's start there.

I flew with VAustralia from Sydney to LA, it's about 14 hours and we left Sydney a little late due to paperwork issues, apparently US Immigration Officials can be a little anal about paperwork, this was drilled into us 13 hours later - but I'll get to that.

The flight was great, the Boeing 777 is a 3 - 3 configuration as I had a window seat. Thankfully there was only 2 of us to the 3 seats so we had the greatest luxury in economy class room to move. I tried really hard to sleep and think I managed a couple of hours of real sleep interspersed with dozing so on the whole the 14 hours passed well. We arrived in LA 1/2 late but no big deal as I had a scheduled 6 hours layover.

On approach to LA they handed out the immigration forms to us and drilled us that it must be perfect no error at all, "don't cross anything out ask for a new form", so anyway between my two forms I had what I thought were two very minor typos that I had been able to fix. I asked a hostie to check them out and he said one was fine but the other needed redoing but they had run out of forms so I would need to find one on the ground.

THE V crew were very good and really did focus on trying to let everyone sleep as long as possible.

So I've heard all these horror stories about US Immigration, up to 3 hours to clear, humorless people showing no initiative. Well my experience was great, there were plenty of people pointing us to the shorter queues, everybody was quick and efficient. I had cleared immigration, collected my bag, cleared customs and then dropped my bag back on the transit belt all within 1/2 of landing, it doesn't get much better than that.

Next trick was to get the US sim card I had bought on ebay working and call home to tell Kim I had arrived safely. It took me 1/2 an hour, I would go through the automated activation process up to 3/4 of the way and then the system would direct me to the "next available operator", I would then try to explain my problem and they would put me back to the automated system. It was like an endless roundabout. Eventually I spoke to someone and begged her no matter what not to transfer me but stuck with me til it worked, 2 mins later I was fully sorted although I think she set my default language to Spanish not English because I cant work out the menu options to add the other $10 credit I have.

This sim card is from Tuyo mobile which offers really cheap calls in and around the US . The best thing is you are able to select your local area and get a local cell number (In the US the mobiles have an area code prefix same as the homes and businesses for the area, not like our ones that mobile is mobile nation wide) So now I have a Tallahassee local cell number.

My first impression of LAX was what I had heard, desolation, initially it did remind me again of Sydney airport 20 years ago. That is until I found the upstairs in the Tom Bradley International terminal, this is really modern and in the final stages of a major upgrade. 1/2 a dozen places to eat, a few shops and room to sit around and free wifi. So I was able to check messages and a few other things.

It was about this time my trusty new laptop started having a heart attack, the wifi seemed to put it in a endless loop of boot, fail reboot. The only way I could stop it was to turn the wifi off but that also meant I couldn't look up the issue easily on the net. I was able to do a system restore from a week earlier but I'm still not sure if it was the restore that fixed things or that something in the airport wifi was causing the problem.

I had Mexican for dinner was quite good. I have vowed that while in the US I will not eat things I can get at home especially junk food, why eat McDonalds here when I can try Wendys or something else so Mexican it was. I tried to walk about as much as possible , after 14 hours on my butt I needed it.

Next stop Fort Lauderdale, well the Delta flight was at 100% capacity. It was a little different, the crew asked for our help in ensuring the flight left on time, asked us to sit down. My experience in Australia and with the asian airlines I have flown, the crew tell you what to do and you do it. There is no negotiation, if you don't like it you can be escorted off the plane. It seemed to be all about winning our help.

So the plane is chock block full, again 3-3 configuration with me on the window, I'm a windows all the way type of person. When I board there are already two people in my section, so they get up I climb in and they sit down. Well the bloke next to me is a big boy, not fat actually mostly muscle, but he is overflowing into my seat and that is the way it stays. Thankfully it's only a bit over 4 hours of flight and after trying to sleep for about an hour I give up and watch a movie "Dukes of Hazard" perfect no brainer movie for when your brain isn't sure what day or time it is.

After arriving in Fort Lauderdale I have only 45 minutes til my next flight so I took the time to call Kim using the free wifi in the airport on Skype from my iPhone. It was crystal clear, we could have been in the next room and what's more totally free. The flight up to Tallahassee is in a little tiny plane about the size of a corporate jet and I think I actually slept for most of the hour we were in the air, about bloody time.

Tallahassee airport is a nice little regional airport and I only waited about 10 mins for my luggage to come through with the 2 other people who had checked luggage and then I finally meet Jane Barron. Jane is one of the key organisers at Red Hills and although we've only been emailing I feel like I know her already.

So after a nice drive back to Jane's house in her pickup truck I get to have shower (how good is that after over 30 hours of movement) and sit down for a good hot breakfast. Now house really is the right way to describe Jane's place, it is an old plantation house with a lot of history and is nestled on only 200 of the original 10000 acres. The driveways, I've been on two so far and not sure if there are more are over 1/2 a km long.

So now I'm ready to rock and roll I am issued keys to my very own pick up and I'm dropped in the deep end. We head out to Red Hills, I'm driving on the wrong side of the road, in a massive pick up and I have been to bed in over 40 hours. Red Hills Horse Trials is set in a beautiful public park and on some adjacent private land, it is undulating and quite wooded. The undulations sort of remind me of SIEC but as open as SIEC is, Red Hills is the complete opposite.

I spent most of the day working with Hugh Lochore who is the Course Designer, I even learnt how to dress an Aintree fence, I wont try to explain but will upload a photo after I take some, left my camera behind yesterday.

So after we all finished up at about 6.30pm we went to a local restaurant, I cant remember what is was called something fish, I will check it out today, The food was great, the BANG BANG SHRIMP was awesome fried shrimp (prawns for us Aussies) in a light batter and a chili mayonaise sauce, yummy. I also had a sirloin steak with crab cake. really good and I tried a local beer also I cant remember the name but was a great beer with flavour. Great service and overall a really nice night with great company. After dinner the four of us going back to Jane's each hopped into our own pick ups and drove home. Was pretty tough after nearly 60 hours without a bed.

I came home and crashed and slept really well til about 2am, now I'm not sure if I'm out of wack with the times or I'm fully acclimatised and just doing my usual thing of waking up early. It's nearly 5am I'm gonna try sleeping again, I have been chating to mum on the FB chat for the last few mins. good night all.