I wanted to give a little background for my second blog post, but "background information" made me feel so like I had a tedious form to fill out that I was avoiding my blog. So I will skip that for now and move right into what I've been thinking about today... riding in the indoor. That's right I replaced the boring background information with soemthing that FANTASTIC. Now I'm not going to say I miss the indoor or make anyone up north really angry by complaining about winters in Florida, but I did have a really good 'Riding in the Indoor' experience when I went home for christmas. When I went home I got to take a nice break from riding for about two days and then it was off to the barn to see Minga and Theo with my mom and sister :) Being back in the indoor reminded me of 1. how I looked on a horse. Being outside every day I hadn't seen myself ride in a while and it was nice being able to not just feel but see how much angle I had in a shoulder in or how my elbows were sneaking out... The hard part for me is balancing seeing myself and wanting it to be perfect and just getting on with the ride. Second, when you jump in an indoor, you HAVE to turn. No jump, land canter 10 or 20 strides and oops I'm on the other side of the field I'll be back soon... in an indoor bam you hit the wall. (No I didn't literally hit the indoor wall; there was a loud crash involving a bedroom door recently but this blog post isn't about that and the bruise was luckily easy to hide...) The thing a large solid wall of wood does to you is make you pick your line and stick to it, and see if your horse is really on your aids, which was a good wake up call as it can be nice and easy at home to wait and make a nice sweeping and inefficient turn. So, did I miss the icy north and its panorama of snowy beauty with barns and indoors nestled cozily into hillsides? Even though I abhor winter and consider any temperature under 60 frigidly cold, I really did miss it. Now, I'm off to bed and excited to watch the super bowl / commercials tomorrow. GO PATS!