The title was a comment on an Instagram/Facebook post about Stella's and my most recent excursion. By ballet she means dressage; by parkour she means the negotiating the indoor Mountain Trail Championship course at the Oregon Horse Center in Eugene, which we did with the 'Mustang Gang' on November 17.
I've heard about this cool installation for years, but hadn't really looked into going. But when the head of the Mustang Gang proposed signing up as a group (you 'rent' an hour on the course), I jumped at the chance.
The plan was to get there an hour before our slot started to have plenty of time to tack up and warm up. But I was uneasy about the amount of air in my trailer tires, especially for going down the interstate (things are such that I can't access our air compressor at home right now), so I stopped at a station on my way to check. All four tires were at less than 50% of max. 😳 Of course I aired them all up with the puny (and spendy) compressor even though it took all my warm-up time; safety first. Well, at least that aspect of safety; one could argue that unloading, saddling, mounting, and heading right into a challenging new environment with a hot horse may not be the safest thing. 😉
But Stella was a ROCK STAR once again. Head up (always), very alert, a little leery, but willing to try, and eventually DO, everything without too much persuading. By the end, we were asked to lead one of the mustang gang on speed round of all the obstacles in the big arena in order for her horse to gain more confidence!
I took lots of photos of others (and only one of Stella from the saddle), and got some photos of us that others took. Unfortunately, no one got photos of us in or around any of the water obstacles. 😢 Guess we'll have to go again to capture those moments. 😁
I'm just going to dump the photos I have below; enjoy!
|
The course in the smaller arena |
|
The 'waterfall' course in the bigger arena; click to biggify. |
|
Stella and I on the small course |
|
Our 'speed round' buddy on the small course |
|
The 'high bridge' |
|
Stella and I on the high bridge |
|
A group photo at the end |
4 comments:
This is SO. COOL!!! What a great place for you guys to go and parkour! Seriously! You look so happy in the group photo :-)
It was SO FUN, A! I wish it wasn't such a long drive down the interstate; I spent far more time behind the wheel than in the saddle. But I definitely want to go again! And Stella really does shine at parkour. 😁
You are not the first blogger I've seen post about that place, and every time I'm so jealous we don't have that here! What an amazing resource.
It is, Jen, and I'm so glad to have finally experienced it!
Post a Comment