Parking, party buses, and mad golf cart rides

So, did you follow our Sound of Music performance? It went wonderfully each and every time we did it - and it got better each time!

Our horses, while maybe not thrilled to be hanging out in stalls all week, were well-behaved and settled in nicely as the week went on. However, there was lots going on outside of our Haflinger Heaven.

To give you an idea of what the WEG grounds were like, imagine perhaps a space the size of a small town. This was our venue. It was literally miles of walking to get anywhere - good thing we brought nice walking shoes! It was a hike to get just about anywhere - to the shopping, to the competition venues, to the Equine Village (where we performed), to the food, to the bathrooms, to the parking...the list goes on. The Kentucky Horse Park is a big place, and while it did take awhile to get from place to place, the good news was that the venue was never crowded to the point of claustrophobia.

There were events going on constantly. The shopping was open all day, competitions were held every day of WEG, and the Equine Village always had something fun to watch. Apart from our act, there were world-class clinicians teaching audiences, drill teams, demonstrations, and other performers. I have to say, among all those different entertainers, I think we had the best costumes :) (And possibly the cutest horses, too!)

One difficulty was that it was hard to get from place to place due to inadequate maps and directions. Many people did not even know that the Equine Village even existed, let alone how to get to it. There were volunteers everywhere, who were usually woefully uninformed.

But let me tell you about those volunteers: they were the nicest people I have ever met. Every single one of them, and there were thousands. Even if they didn't have the answer or were asking you to do something unpleasant, they were so friendly, it was impossible not to like them. It didn't matter where they were working, they made life great.

Possibly the best people working there were the parking attendants. They are an interesting bunch, and we studied them scientifically with these results:

1. They travel in herds, preferably in unneeded positions. For example, it usually took thirty of them to help each car make its way to the designated parking spot. Entertaining? Of course. Necessary? Not quite.
2. Flag-waving styles can be classified into about twenty different groups (see Brenda for full list of styles). These include, but are not limited to: the golfer (big swings), the cheerleader (moves flag in spastic fashion), the Statue of Liberty (stands stationary with arm raised), the windshield wiper (self-explanatory), the windmill (you can picture it), etc, etc. Do not underestimate the creativity of these people.
3. Which leads me to my next point: they are the most enthusiastic people you will ever see directing you to your part of the field. They danced, they ran, they hollered, and generally just made an organized ruckus, which we absolutely loved.
4. And they are just as enthusiastic with the naughty cars, those rebel autos that decided they did not need a pack of two dozen parking attendants to gently guide them to their pre-determined spot. This pisses off the parking police, and you will hear about it.

One parking predicament was that we had to park where everyone else parked. This made it a little tricky to get in morning and night to feed our horses, and ultimately led to a massive crisis (more on that later). However, it did lead to some unexpected bonuses.

Kate, Clare, and I returned to WEG after dinner Wednesday night to feed, water, and muck before retiring for the night. After being redirected to several parking lots, we finally parked the truck and started to make the miles-long trek to the barn. A kind volunteer pointed us in the direction of the shuttle when we were overtaken by a golf cart.

"Do you vant a ride?" called one of the girls in the cart. Um, was that even a question? I plopped next to the two ladies in the cart while Kate and Clare climbed in the back. And we were off.

Turns out, they were Swedish eventing grooms who were as excited to be at WEG as we were. When they weren't chattering in Swedish, they made race car driving noises while urging our 8mph top speed golf cart onward as though it were a Formula One vehicle. They also regaled us with other golf cart adventures, like how they piled sixteen people onto the poor sucker and it reared and nearly threw them all off. When they dropped us off at our spot, we were thrilled - we were officially hanging out with international competitors - how cool was that??

And it just got better from there. After we cared for the critters, we began walking back to the car when a big white van pulled up behind us. "Come on in!" called the driver, a middle-aged black man driving a "Grooms Shuttle." We hopped on immediately, and as we entered, he clarified: "Come on into the Party Bus! I'm Ray, the Party Animal!"

Indeed he was. He turned up the jams and began rocking out in the driver's seat, alternating dancing in his chair and asking me questions about how much I party. Obviously, I don't party as much as Ray, who insisted that I party with him. "We party all the time here, this is the Party Bus, yo!" He partied us to our car and we kept the party going back to the hotel, thus ending our first full WEG day.

If this was WEG, this was awesome.