Ladies riding trip to Ocala

Although I don’t plan on writing this blog in exact chronological order, it is worth briefly describing days 1 and 2, as they were days of exploration and planning. We had already signed up for “Love of the Horse 5K“, a fundraiser for the foundation arm of the American Association of Equine Practitioners. We planned on walking since we had not been training, but the race was advertised as beginning from the Equine Medical Center of Ocala and running through Ocala’s horse country. What a perfect way to start our experience in Ocala (even it started at 6AM Colorado time). We had a lovely time, got some exercise, and got to see some horse country. We got a fun and colorful medal to boot!

As noted previously, our travel to Ocala to ride was somewhat an act of faith, as we did not have a single ride actually scheduled, so day 1 was spent texting trainers and getting to know our current housing (and recovering a bit from the trip). We had been communicating quite a bit with Buck Davidson before we arrived, so we decided to visit his farm just to see if we could catch him and schedule some rides. We did find some humans at his place but the barns were eerily deserted and we heard that “Buck isn’t here that much” from the humans that live on the property. Hmmm, this was worrisome (turns out he was at a horse show). It was a beautiful property though, with a training track and a lovely cross country course in the infield.

Because Buck wasn’t there, we went back to our Airbnb to have lunch (leftovers from the plane ride) on our lovely warm patio and discuss our plans for the rest of the day.

We had also been communicating with Peter Atkins, an upper level event trainer who is a friend of a friend of ours in Fort Collins. He came highly recommended and so we were anxious to ride with him. He suggested that we meet at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala and watch the 200K Marine Corps Grand Prix together. We had a lovely evening watching amazing horses in an amazing venue and also getting to see 4 people parachute into a target in the arena. We also got to know Peter a bit. He asked us how good of riders we were (his wife admonished him for this) and I showed him the photo of me on Oysters pulling a snowboarder. “I’ll put you on the thoroughbred,” he said. One caveat from him was that one of the two horses we were supposed to ride was lame, so he would not know if they were both going to be available. More uncertainty, more faith.

Because we had a bit of trouble finding food at the venue, and we had been smelling Peter’s family’s delicious dinners the entire show, we stopped at a food truck on the way out. Lisa was so excited to find and subsequently order “buffalo cauliflower.” Sadly, she was a served a GIANT boat of BREADED cauliflower, which neither of us could eat because we are gluten-free. We dumped it, oh so sad! We drove home glum and hungry and had charcuterie and veggies for dinner.