Happy New Year!!!!

Just imagining what a year it may be...   Definitely an adventure for Mackenzie and myself...   New step in her career and something tells me that I may never return to the live I have loved in PA... If I don't it will be because of the options discovered in FL...  time will tell.

Had that conversation yesterday with my neighbor house-sitter Karl, and this evening with my sister Pam...  time will tell.  I expect to have a pretty good sense of things within the current 3-month window.

The house plants are all tucked away under lights in the basement.   most are in open-top styrofoam coolers with a healthy batch of water.  Will say prayers for them and wish them well.

Returned almost $100 worth of plastic pipe and fittings to Home Depot and Lowes today.   Parked the motorcycle trailer out back.  Hauled trash cans and bottles to the recycle place.  Emptied the freezer and took remaining food to the neighbor who has a key and will keep an eye on things.

Had a call from a Real Estate Marketing company in Ocala today... Job interview next week... who knows... today conversations with friends and my sister toyed with, "What if I don't come home?"

Without Mackenzie in the area I have no roots here... My good friends nearby are business friends, not family.  With a couple weeks work the house could become a rental property...   Great place to raise a kid.

Will miss the foot deep composted garden beds.   The shrubs that I have places around the property...   the groundhog... 

Time will tell.   All is good.

Happy New Year!  Jeff
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Dec 30th...   BMW loaded onto the trailer!!!   Not bad...  Strapped to the center pole in front and two straps to the butt bar.   My luggage and tools are to the right of the bike where they can roll around.   Total weight is less that #700.

We'll see what the horse thinks on Wednesday morning.
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Headed to horse barn to load the bike to the travel trailer...   "I'll be fine.  Will leave early..."   NOT!  Drove to the corner and u-turned.  Too icy and no plows...   Returned having to shovel and cinder the drive to get back off the road.    Delaying transferring the bike to horse trailer until tomorrow.

Eventing includes a dressage test, a stadium jumping (similar to a hunter show) and timed cross country test.

Here's an example of a cross country round from Plantation Fields this summer:

It's always a challenge to balance speed and being aggressiveness to complete a clean round within the time minimums and maximums.  They were fine here tight up toe the LAST obstacle...   Heartbreak.

Background:   Here's a Hunter round from last fall.   Over fences and rails in a closed ring.   Not usually indoors.  This was at Birchtown Stables, Forrest City, PA.  The first rider is her best friend Taylor, followed by Mackenzie on Stella.


Mackenzie and Stella had a good year at hunter shows... high equitation scores and everything.



Takes FOUR things to have a good day at a Hunter Show:

• A talented horse
• A talented rider
• A good day for both
• A judge who likes your style and is having a good day.
• Note:  if ANY of the above are missing it's not going to be a good day at a Hunter Show

PS:  She has the blue ribbons and the tears to prove all of the above.

• 
  

Stars of the show:

This was their holiday pic which I just found on FB.  So creative!

Mackenzie is 19, graduated from PA Cyber School and has worked at local horse farms since the summer of her Sophomore year.  She has been riding since she was 7, originally studying dressage and hunter jumper disciplines. When they discovered Eventing, through her activities with the United States Pony Club, she was hooked.

She and her Welsh Pony Harry Houdini learned together from the time they kids (they were the same age) and went went to the top of the charts nationally in USEA and were featured in a 4-page story in Chronicle of the Horse in July of 2010.  They rode as part of Lendon Gray's pony demo team at Dressage at Devon and won the Prix Caprilli class at Lendon's Youth Dressage Festival at least three years on a row... (I loose track!)

Harry retired in 2011, having brought home blue ribbons at every show until his last at the Dalton Fire Company Hunter Show in 2011.  She put him down in January of this year do to a health issue.

More on Mackenzie and Stella's first couple years and their next adventure in future posts.

On January 2nd, 2013 my daughter Mackenzie and I are loading her warmblood mare and my BMW motorcycle into the Brenderup horse trailer and head south to her new job in Ocala, FL.

She will be working for Ashley Leith at Ashley's eventing barn and continues (with a giant step) her pursuit into a full time equestrian career.   More on this in time.

I had planned a winter in AZ touring on my 2012 BMW G650GS Sertao on my first real life adventure.   When the opportunity to chaeuffer Mackenzie to FL came along I just changed the pointer on my adventure to the deep south.   She will have an apartment, I will have a tent...   we'll see how long everything lasts.

The last two months for me has been making lists, preparing the bike to carry my "sustainable wardrobe" and enough camping equipment to get by.   Took on a bunch of work assignments to feed $'s into the checking account.  Will be working P.T. once I'm there on merchandising, product demos and mystery shopping,  all of which I have done for more than a year now.   Interesting and flexible biz model.

This blog is intended to share out day to day adventures and, hopefully, entertain you with links to my other blogs and social networking posts.

Happy Winter!

Jeff Kurtz

aka:   www.KurtziInPa.com
Follow me on Faebook <<<
Mackenzie's original blog with history of her and Harry Houdini<<<
Mackenzie's newer blog about starting out with Stella<<<