Let's begin this portion, which will hopefully be shorter than the novel I recently posted, with the map that Google presented to me when I looked for routes between my barn and the show grounds.
In an effort to save gas and therefore money, I thought taking the direct route would make sense, since I would be driving slower and for a shorter distance than if I took the interstate. Now, I am sure all of you who have sensible thought processes are thinking to yourselves, "But Grace, you left for a very long drive at 7 PM. Why would you take the back roads? What if something happened?" The answer to those questions is that I had not remotely considered that Route 15 was as much of a back road as it actually is. I was expecting it to be either 2 or 4 lanes, designed to be wide enough to accommodate trucking traffic, and the normal infrastructure that goes along with that kind of road. There are plenty of highways in the area like that, so it was not a total figment of my imagination, but it was really stupid of me to assume that just because the roads are under the same classification and have the same size line on a map, they are therefore somehow equal. No. In my defense, I will say that another competitor from my area who drives horses to that facility regularly uses that route and likes it, so maybe my issues were mostly related to the dark and not knowing what I was getting into.
Pictured is the portion of my route that travels through an area that is so rural that I was sure I had accidentally been transported to North Dakota or the surface of mars. My father, ironically, called me repeatedly on my trip down to check on my progress and lecture me on driving so late at night. (Hmm, why did I get on the road so late again?) My mother decided that I was, in fact, traveling through a dangerous war zone, and called about every 30-45 minutes. Both were following me on Google maps and would demand my location each time they called, so that they could inform me what I had just passed, (I know, I was there) what is coming up, (Yes, I have seen the sign that says Boomfuckville is this way) and then offer directions to me, as though I would stray from my printed out route while I was in the middle of nowhere in the night. The absence of cell service in the above pictured area of Virginia was particularly distressing to both of them, since it was one of the points of the trip where both were trying to reach me simultaneously, and neither could reach me. This of course meant that as soon as I reached Clarksville and got a signal, I had a barrage of text messages coming in from all sides which grew increasingly distressed. I adore both of them, and know that all of it was the two of them worrying about me and being unable to assist me in any other way, and looking back on it I am laughing, but at the time it was a lot to handle the truck and trailer, unfamiliar back roads at night, trying to find a gas station when there has not been a town for 20 miles and won't be another for 30, spotty to nonexistent cell service, and two parents to reassure. I suppose packing everything up and driving far away to a horse show is no longer a normal occurrence, which is why they both decided that this was the trip to be really worried about me, even though I have been driving horses to shows since I was 17.
Once I got to the Raleigh area, everyone had a big deep breath and a sigh of relief since I was back in populated areas. Wagon Wheel came on my playlist, and I took a second to be a loser and giggle that I was in the song. Everything was smooth sailing until I was close to the horse park, which is very far into the country. My friend, Megan, had called ahead of time to let me know that I needed to follow the directions on the website, not the ones that a navigation system sends you to, since that will be wrong and send you to the offices or something like that. She had also helpfully gone to find my stall assignment, which I appreciated immensely. I had called the show office earlier in hopes of finding that piece of information, and to confirm that my shavings would be waiting for me, and the lady in the office assured me that the stall chart at the entrance would have my stall on it and that the shavings would be there. Megan had also let me know where her stalls were, and warned me that the stabling situation was rather volatile and that everyone was moving around. She suggested that I claim that someone else's things were in my assigned stall and instead put my horse in the empty stalls on her aisle, which were vacated by the barn which was supposed to be there because of a broken board or something. I wasn't about to drag 8 bags of shavings across three barns when I got in, but I promised to consider it once I could scope out the situation.
I finally arrived at the show grounds about 5 minutes after I decided to find somewhere to turn around since I must have passed the place, and found the stabling chart. Of course, my name was not on the chart. It was not on C-22, which was the stall which the office had told Megan, but I decided to go there anyways, since there would be a big pile of shavings bags that would confirm that it was my stall. Although unoccupied, there was a dirtbike parked in C-22 and no shavings bags to be found. I therefore assume that it is not my stall, and proceed to walk around the barns while ranting on the phone to my dear Jacques, looking for the big pile of shavings bags that would mark my temporary home. I promise you, readers, that there were four bags of shavings in the stabling complex at 1 AM, all of which were scattered and obviously belonging to one barn or another. This caused a complete hissy fit worthy of any hunter princess. I was apparently loud and bitchy enough to alert the braiders, who I overheard asking each other who just pulled in and what her problem was. I thankfully had a spare bag in the truck from my morning errands, and the stall next to Megan's had a bag spread in it, presumably before the barn decided to vacate that block. Two bags, while unacceptable in comparison to my usual 8-10, is not COMPLETELY unacceptable in the way that bare ground would have been. I'm stabling with my friend after all, and if the office is upset in the morning, I had all kinds of pent up rage that was fueled by sleep deprivation that really needed a point of delivery. I hastily unpacked most of the trailer and threw everything but my trunk into the next stall down, deciding to use it as a grooming/tack stall and hoping that no one would notice since it was vacant anyways.
This is the point at which I would generally park the trailer, but we have that whole "trailer can not be detached from truck" issue, so I put the ramps back up and punched my hotel into my phone and headed there for a few hours of much needed sleep. I think I finally got to sleep at 3 AM and decided to "sleep in" to 6:30 since the ring started at 8. A quick check of www.horseshowsonline.com to see if the show had even received my entry informed me that the rings would be starting an hour later, which was a very welcome extra hour the alarm could be pushed back.
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