Spring break in the Bahamas

As promised in my opening statement, this blog will mostly be about horses and travels, my two main hobbies. The previous post was about horses, so it is only natural that this new post will be about... travel!

This time we headed for a quickie in the Bahamas. This week was spring break, and wile it shouldn't really have mattered to us (we don't take or TA any classes this term) we decided this was a good enough excuse to pay another visit to Logan.

On Monday morning we left on a direct flight to Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. There we spent half a day and one night in Cable Beach, one of the two main resort/hotel areas on Nassau island. Our hotel was so-so, but OK for it's price and for just one night. The beach itself was fine, and the best part was the water - the color was just amazing!!!

On Monday night we had the pleasure of joining the American college-students on spring break in the only club that was open on a weak Monday night. It was actually not as bad as we expected... Maybe because the drinks contained more sugar than alcohol.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday on a small island named Harbour Island. It is really small (5 by 0.7 kms) and located near the north tip of the longest island in the Bahamas - Eleuthera. The main attraction of Harbour Island is Pink Sands beach, which is, basically, a very pretty beach with pink sand. It is a very quiet and romantic island, without the crowds of Nassau and Freeport (but also without the activities). We were hoping to do some snorkeling, as the underwater world on the Bahamas is supposed to be great, but the weather was very windy and the sea too rough, so we sadly decided against. We had some nice food (mostly sea-based) and drinks on the island. We stayed in a cute "zimmer" with our own kitchenette and friendly owners - more fun than a grand hotel in Nassau, for sure.

On Thursday morning we flew back to Nassau, where Yossi spent a couple more hours on the beach and in the casino, and I went exploring the fish market in downtown Nassau. It was fun although most of the stores were already closed. I was brave and tried a conch salad made of fresh conch, onions, tomatoes, green pepper, cucumbers, sea-salt red hot chili pepper (she only put the tiniest piece in mine and it was still really spicy!) and lime and orange juice. It was really good.

Over all - the Bahamas are really pretty and the people are very nice. If we'd planned more carefully maybe we would have been able to make more of it (e.g. go scuba diving, jet-skiing, etc), and one should take into account that the islands are expensive.

You are invited to visit our Picasa web album and take a loot at our pictures from the Bahamas!

Riding clinic with Sue

Today was a riding clinic at the barn, which means that a special trainer from outside came and gave private lessons to some of the riders. I rode Tasha at 9am. She was relatively relaxed and did not pull any door-related tricks. The beginning of the ride was the most different part compared with Rachel's lessons - Sue made me go real fast around the whole arena many time, first in the canter ("think like trail-riding!") and only then in really big trot. I was supposed to not care about the collect-ness and position of the head. She also didn't let me do any circles for the first 10-15 minutes. Only go around and change directions all the time.
Then I made the reins shorter and we started working more collectedly, but still I had to keep her really forward and keep the strides very big. We did some trot sitting, after which Sue made me shorten my stirrups by one hole each (I put both them in #5, so now i guess they should be in #6). This made my leg more stable, which helped me sit a little better. Sue said that my seat is very good but that I put too much weight on the seat and too little in the stirrups, and I should NOT work without stirrups because it keep my legs weak and I need to learn how to deal with putting more weight into them ("you need to marry them!"). Sue made me take the legs out of the stirrups, lift the knees half-way up, then release VERY slowly! after a couple of these my hip-flexor started aching, a sign of how weak it was...
Another issue we worked on was the straightness and how to make Tasha bend from her rib-cage and not from the hips or neck. Sue claims that the rib-cage is the source of her flexure problems, not so much the hinds. To do this, I did some 20-to-10-to-20 meter circles, transitioning through leg-yields, which helped get her to bend. But her head needs to be exactly in between her shoulders! When Suzanne was riding her after me, Sue taught us them "Shoulder-four". It is a baby version of shoulder-in, and basically it means that the haunches stay on the track, the shoulders come slightly off it to the inside, the angle of the body is no more than 10-15 degrees, and the body very straight. For Suzanne, Tasha's head was too much bent inwards to the left, which made her shoulders pop to the right. The other direction was better. When spotting a shoulder-for from the ground, it needs to appear that the hind inside leg is showing between the two front legs, but not stepping between them. It looks from behind like the inside hind leg is lifting diagonally under the body (which makes it look like good circle steps?). When Sue explained to me the idea of bending from the ribcage instead of from the neck, she demonstrated it by putting her hands between her shoulders and ears. "This distance must stay the same at all times".
In the end I did some shoulder-ins and leg-yields which went very well. The first one did not go so well and lacked energy, but once I big-cantered again they all became very good and forward.

So major points are:

1) Forwardness!! from the beginning. Make her run and sweat and become active and through. Key exercise - big canter, big trot, no circles. If possible - work withput the draw reins.

2) Straightness and place of bending in the body. Key exercise - shoulder-for, shoulder-in. 20-10-20 circles with leg-yields, keeping the 10-m bend on the straight line.

3) Putting more weight into the stirrups so that the weight in stirrups is equal to weight in saddle. Key exercise - make my hips stronger off the horse, make the stirrups shorter, on the circle turn body outwards pressing the inside leg down to the ground. She suggested doing a few
lounge-line lessons to work on this (blaaa...)