A No-Q Day

SUMMARY: Some highlights and lowlights.

I drove 4 hours today for about 2 minutes of ring time. Pretty crazy, huh? My general rule is that I have to stay at the destination for at least as long as my round-trip time to make it worthwhile going, and we were actually there for right about 8 hours. For 3 runs.

Got there in time to work the first class (not entered in Masters Challenge Standard) to earn a free lunch and raffle tickets.

Gamblers--opening started well and then she pulled off a dogwalk right in front of her, not sure why, then I couldn't get her into a replacement tunnel, but we ended up even so about where I wanted to be when the whistle blew, with her on the A-frame--but she came off the A-frame without being releasd and I had trouble getting her lined up and we in no way came close to getting the actual gamble. Still, she had two awesome sets of weaves.

After that, I got Tika out and we hung out in the shade watching the runs.

The Woodside site is known for being hot. Wasn't as hot as some times when I've been there and the paint is peeling off the roads (well--maybe not, but it should have been). But still, by the time I had finished lunch, it was hot enough an late enough (11:30 already) that I decided that I for sure wasn't going to stick around another couple of hours after Snooker to try a Jumpers run (last class of the day), so scratched Boost from that.

Standard--beautiful run, felt good; she came off the teeter without being released and I made her down for a moment as a reminder (then her dogwalk and Aframe were good and I held them a bit). And, dang, she missed her weave entry. After doing so well on them in gamblers.

Hung out with Tika again, getting hot even in the shade.

Snooker--well, crud, on the 3rd jump, I said "go hup" and she started towards it and I moved to get into front cross position and she pulled off it, then I got frustrated, like really WHAT does it take to get you to go over a jump, really???? and finally she did it but knocked the bar and it was all over.

At least it was a good reason to hop in the car and come home. Took about 20 minutes longer to get home through heavy Sunday-afternoon traffic heading back into the Bay Area than it took to go out thataway between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning, go figure. Glad I left a couple of hours early; got home after 5:00 as it was.

So, back to the drawing board, or try to find more specific things to focus on. Yes, I should be videotaping everything. Guess I should get out the new/used camera and figure out again how it works.