LaurenGallops

It’s been too long since our last post, but we have an excuse – endless deadlines. Now, we’re not complaining per se, we love to write. However, the pressure of making each story unique and special and fresh can be uber-challenging as well as extremely brain-draining, especially when you are writing about 3-day riders who hope to make the US eventing team for the 2012 London Olympics Games. There is only so often you can contact an Olympic-hopeful to acquire more quotes: she/he has spent years and years to get to the top of the game and therefore tend to be hounded by other members of the working press. We may be uniquely special, but we are not alone in this wordcrafting trade…

Uh-huh – you get the picture…

This is how we feel after writing five or six stories about 2012 Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, presented by Bridgestone and the quest for a berth on the 3-day team:

That dufus feeling brilliantly expressed by an ostrich.

This reminds us of the best birthday card we ever received – from a dear friend in Florida, who has known us since college days and appreciates the wacky existence of a person who deals daily with deadline dementia.

“Cowboy Frankie” – not his real name – found a card of an ostrich in full primal scream mode. Yep, head on to the camera, beak WIDE OPEN so you can almost see tonsils (do ostriches have tonsils?) and the moment we saw that image, we laughed until we cried. It was so special, so timely and it totally expressed how we felt, had been feeling, for so long.

We tracked down the photographer – being a photographer and knowing how easy it is for people to steal umm, borrow images off the internet, websites, FB, etc – we emailed and asked how much to be able to use that jpeg on our blog. No reply. We’re not sure whether the photographer has a spam filter, figures we’re not worth answering or what. But we did ask, and with no reply, we are left with that card propped on our drafting table where we see it all the time and it still makes us smile. The dufus face (go back and imagine yourself in that state of existence) is good, but that screaming ostrich is glorious. Actually, it’s an ostrich yawning, but it shouts SCREECH to us….

One person who has been as cool, calm and collected as a rider can be, galloping toward her lifelong goals, is Allison Springer – look for a feature about Allison and Arthur in July Sidelines.

Allison Springer and Arthur - Rolex Kentucky 2012 - when they finished second overall and earned the USEF National Four-Star championship. © Lauren R Giannini

Spent six hours in the car on Thursday after a marathon week to complete deadlines so we could head south to Williamburg (VA) for the American Horse Publications conference. Am here with Sidelines people – Sam Charles – publisher, Jan Westmark-Allen – editor, and Abby Westmark, who wrote as a junior about juniors for years until college called… L. A. Pomeroy is a pal, and we caught up with Emily from SmartPak (yay, we survived Rolex!) last night and today is the first day of seminars and lots of social/business networking and “pub” talk… It’s nice to park the car and ambulate from hotel to conference center… we’re keeping busy, hunting for good stories and posting and talking shop.

A veritable busman’s holiday!