By the time you read this, I'll be sitting in a booth overlooking the Bonner County Fairgrounds arena, calling in classes and giving instructions to "walk, trot, canter, etc." The annual Spots of Fun Open Horse Show starts today.
I do the announcing gig every year for my friend Moreen Leen who, along with her family, works really hard to keep the open horse shows going in the Sandpoint area.
Moreen does her best to see that the shows always have nice awards, that they're well organized, that there's a knowledgeable staff helping make the shows run smoothly and, most of all, that participants have fun.
It has become increasingly more expensive to put on these shows, due to a myriad of fees that get charged for fairgrounds maintenance, insurance, etc. Still, every year Moreen answers the call and sees to it that the shows go on.
It's always fun working with Moreen and the horse show staff, even though the days up there in the booth are long. I thoroughly enjoy getting to know the participants and watching good horses perform well.
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Yesterday's Space Shuttle mission went off without too many hitches, and my niece Laura has more to report about her group and their experiences with the historic launch.
So, check out her blog: http://cdarezshuttlelaunch.blogspot.com/
My friend Helen sent me a note yesterday reminiscing her experience watching an earlier Space Shuttle launch. I thought her description was definitely worth sharing for those of us who have never seen a launch other than on television.
So, I'll leave you this morning with Helen's note. Enjoy.
We were on site for the 2nd to last launch of the Challenger – its next flight was the fatal flight – glad we weren’t there for that!
We stayed in Cocoa Beach the night before and were up by 5 a.m. to make the drive of just a few miles. As we prepared to leave, we had the TV on and were told the astronauts were still asleep!
We couldn’t believe what we saw when we approached the exit from the freeway onto the Cape – the east/west free was packed as far as we could see – which in Florida is quite a ways because it is FLAT! We joked that the only “view points” in the state were from freeway cloverleaves.
We got to where cars are parked and boarded buses to go out to the viewing areas. There were a lot of people but also plenty of space to move around.
This area is 10 miles (yes!) from the shuttle but it was clearly visible because it is so HUGE. Sound systems were set up through the viewing area and there was a running commentary including the countdown.
When the blast off point was reached, nothing was happening. There was tons of steam but it takes a while to raise those millions of pounds off the ground.
Then it moved so slowly we thought it would topple over. And the sound didn’t hit us for a few seconds and then WOW!
Once it got going, it was out of sight in 60 to 90 seconds and it was a cloudless day. One actually sees a lot more watching on TV but doesn’t get that “live experience” that is seared into your memory forever!
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