Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The drive to Del Mar and resulting recuperation day

Yesterday we made the drive from Santa Rosa to Del Mar.  We left Lilo Fore's facility at 7am, and finally arrived at Seabreeze Farm in Del Mar at around 8pm.  It would have been shorter had I not (a) taken the long way out of the wine country, (b) taken the long route around the bay area in an attempt to avoid bay area traffic, (b) taken I-5 instead of Hwy 99 through central CA, which is much more windy and hilly and (c) hit Los Angeles during rush hour.  Ick!  I was exhausted by the time we made it to Del Mar, and the horses were pretty pissed off.  Majek spent much of the final few hours kicking the crap out of the horse trailer to express his displeasure with the whole situation.
I did have a minor emergency this morning when I discovered the in-room coffeemaker was broken.  Trying to get going in the morning without coffee doesn't happen in my world.  Luckily the issue was very quickly resolved by trekking down to the lobby for my coffee.  First world problems and all. 
The boys seem very happy in their cushy stalls at Seabreeze Farms.  The stalls are 12x16 feet and bedded with probably 10 bags of shavings.  They better not get too used to this much luxury!  The manager is extremely nice and very accomodating, which always makes traveling much more pleasant.  We hand-walked them this afternoon around the show grounds, and they were all pretty impressed by the big palm trees and activity.  The dressage arena is set on a small hill-top, on three sides outside the fence it drops into a ravine.  Don't jump out of that arena!  There are a couple of jumping arenas as well.
We also wandered around and found Albert Court, which is where Christine Traurig and Guenter Seidel are based.  I'm going to take a few lessons from Christine while I'm down here and see how that goes.  Thank God we figured out where the farm is before I tried to drive over there with my horse trailer, as my initial directions sent me right into downtown Rancho Santa Fe.  I've gotten very, very good at steering the 5 horse trailer around, but not that good! 
We are having some water problems in the hotel room.  I love having an Extended Stay hotel, as they come with a full size fridge/freezer and stove top for cooking, but sometimes they are a little cheap.  I finally figured out how to turn the water off in the bathtub.  Unfortunately there is water leaking from the fridge.  We have a nice puddle under the fridge.  Hopefully we can get that fixed tomorrow.

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