Sae, NC gymkhana roadtrip & other fun things

I’ve finally got a moment to myself to relax and update, so, here goes!
Friday night we went out with a bunch of friends to celebrate Sae’s passing away two years ago (Sept 29, ’06). We went to Hae Woon Dae for Korean BBQ as it was one of Sae’s favorites and drank lots of soju in his honor. After we went to Happy Karaoke and watched Ray and Marty “sing” some terribly amusing versions of whoknowswhat.
Saturday morning we woke up early and packed up the van. Tony came by to drive up with us and we all headed out to Greenville, NC. Stopped off in Raleigh to visit Rob and have lunch in Chapel Hill at this really nice small-town local bar-burger-place which was actually really good. Hung out around there for a bit then drove another hour or so to the hotel where we unloaded and went out in search of food.
We found a local Mexican restaurant in Wilson (small town, USA) that seemed to be the place all the “locals” were at that night and figured how bad could it be? We were seated and 20 minutes later still didn’t have silverware or water nor had our waite
r stopped by. I finally chased some girl down to tell her and she eventually brought us two waters (for four people). Another 30 minutes went by and a waitress from a different section came over and asked if our waiter had come by. He hadn’t. She took sympathy on us and took our orders (we’d been there almost an hour at this point). Another 30 minutes and our food came out… except Tony’s. 10 minutes later his showed up and it was wrong. The food itself was really mediocre. Well, we waited another 15 minutes after we had all finished eating and our waiter STILL hadn’t come by (not once. at all. seriously.) so we just said screw this place and walked out. I’ve never walked out on a meal before. Ever. But this place was absolutely so incredibly horrendous and treated us like we didn’t exist at all and we were all so angry that we didn’t feel like waiting another 2 hours for a damn check. So, if you’re ever in the Wilson, NC area and don’t mind waiting an exceptionally long time for pretty boring food that you don’t have to pay for, this place is definitely for you.
Sunday we got up around 5:30am and drove through Farmville (yeah, that’s the actual name of the town) to Greenville, NC and set up the gymkhana course, timing equipment, etc. We had a pretty decent turnout for this event- about 25 drivers. Everyone had a really great time and all of the drivers made significant improvement throu
ghout the day, averaging about 20-30 runs per person. We finally packed up and left around 5pm and got on the road for the 7 hour drive back to Atlanta. Ugh.
Funny thing to note: on the way home we were on the highway and came up on a convertible Corvette with the license plate “earlstoy”. Tony grabbed the bullhorn and shouted out the window “Let’s go Earl! Step on it!” The guy looked like he was about to crap himself, but it was absolutely hysterical to see the expression on his face.
Anyway, we got home about midnight which wasn’t too bad except for the fact we’d been in the loud diesel van for 7 hours and had been up since 5:30am. I took Monday off from work to sleep in and unpack and go to the dentist. Got two old cavities filled and left there around 3:45pm with the intentions of heading to work for a few hours. Bad idea. I could barely drive from all the novicaine and nitrous. I wound up sitting in my car for an hour and a half just staring at the parking garage wall until I was slightly more coherent. Fun.
Drove up to Huntcliff for my weekly lesson and rode Danser again. He’s such a cutie. We worked on more dressage techniques for the first half hour and then jumped the rest of the lesson. Danser got so excited to be jumping “real” jumps (2-2.5 foot verticals) and Miriam (my trainer, his owner) was laughing and saying how she’s never seen him get like that before
and how he was having the time of his life. Aww 🙂 Erik cantered for the first time (second time ever if you count the trail ride we went on a few years ago) and I couldn’t be prouder.
And that brings us to today… as I was leaving for work this morning Erik noticed that the Subaru was sitting kind of wonky in the driveway. Ugh, flat tire! They had just re-planked a bunch of the stalls at the barn and I was lucky enough to pick up a 3″ screw in the rear driverside tire. Faaaantastic. Erik, my hero as always, took the Subaru to get the hole patched ($12! yay!) so we wouldn’t have to replace all four tires (stupid AWD) and I took the BMW to work. Crisis averted. I ❤ my man.
Well, in the 10 minutes it took me to write this my work inbox has filled up. Time to get crackin!

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Fried chicken truck explodes on 285 (seriously).

I am starting to get used to this weekly-Tuesday update thing…
So last week Maty (one of my BFFs from the good old NY punk rock days who I’ve known for about 11 years) texted me to say he was going to be in ATL that night for work. I was super excited since I hadn’t seen him in ages and we made some plans to grab dinner later with his coworker. I took them to the Vortex where I (very carefully) tried to eat solid food but failed due to the braces hurting (yes, you all told me so. I concede, you were all right). We spent a few hours there just hanging out and having some beers and catching up and damn I really miss him… I love you Maty!!
This past Friday we had a mini ATLGs meet at Brian’s house in honor of Gerard and Ronny’s birthdays and Gerard, who is the biggest redneck I’ve ever met in my life (and he’s damn proud of it) even though he’s Asian, suggested we take some funny “southern” photos. Yes they’re probably offensive to a lot of people so Disclaimer:
These are not intended to piss anyone off. They are a result of Gerard being retarded and us just being silly. If you want to see what I’m talking about (because I am not posting the actual images themselves on here), click here (note Gerard is peeping in the window carrying a Ruger 6-shooter) and here. Yes those are real guns, no they were not loaded.
Had my second riding lesson yesterday at Huntcliff and much to my relief I didn’t fall off this time 😛 I rode my trainer’s ex-eventing Arabian named Danser who is a total sweetie. We mostly worked on collection and transitions and bending with a bit of jumping at the end. FUN!
Erik had his very first English riding lesson on this adorable pony (yup) named Buttercup. He was on the lunge line learning to post and find his seat and it was seriously the cutest thing ever. I’ll have to get some pictures next week. I’m so proud of my little man!
This morning was interesting for sure – I left the house at 8am to go to work and it honestly took me 30 minutes to go 1/2 mile and then I heard on the radio that a fried chicken truck (seriously) had *exploded* on I-285 and it was completely shut down from the exit I get on to the exit I get off for work. Turned around and worked from home until it was cleared up (took until 11:45am!) and went in for the afternoon. Crazy!

Other than that, not too much going on here. Made some progress with The Project (we finally got a logo from the company I hired to do the design and I love it! I’m so excited!!!) and I’ll be in Greenville, NC this weekend for a DGTrials Gymkhana event. Stop by and say hi if you’re in the area!

a big day for me…

First off, congratulations are in order to my good friends Max & Ermite, married on Sunday. The wedding itself was very lovely and the two of them are absolutely adorable together. I wish them all the best and a lifetime of happiness.
Yesterday was a big day for me. I had my first orthodontist appointment at 8:00am and walked out of there well on my way to being able to smile for the first time in 10 years. I got brackets put on the back half of my upper teeth and will go back in 6 weeks to have some crazy metal screw thing inserted into my gums/jaw and then after that I’ll get the rest of the braces put on. They said it’d take 18-20 months and I am so incredibly excited (except for the cost… $6k out of pocket. Eep.) Best part is I am not in any pain at all. Other than being able to feel that there is physically some extra “stuff” in my mouth, I can’t even tell they’re on. Yay!
Later that day I had my very first riding lesson in over a year at the Huntcliff Equestrian Center.
My instructor is really nice and knows her stuff. Every other rider there looked absolutely fantastic. A-rated hunter show fantastic. I’m super thrilled about eventually looking that good as well (I hope).
I wound up riding this nice chestnut horse named Copper who normally goes in a Pelham bit but the Pelham had “disappeared” so I rode him in an eggbutt snaffle instead since it was the only other thing around. Disclaimer: I know I’m super rusty and totally out of shape and my muscles/seat suck due to lack of riding and I need a lot of work before I can even be decent again. Anyway, so Copper started to get a little excited and get away from me and the instructor had me switch horses with the other girl in my lesson so I didn’t have “a miserable first ride”.
I guess the mare I had just gotten on could feel how tense I was from Copper and that wasn’t good. We did one lap around the ring and took a small triple combination (three fences all in a row: jump-land-jump-land-jump). Well, after the last jump the mare ducked out from under me and cut to the left and I kept going straight. Oops. I fell off but it wasn’t bad at all. I managed to do some combination fall-off/emergency-dismount thing and landed on my feet and then fell onto my butt. It was pretty funny 🙂 Got right up and hopped back on and did the three again, more relaxed and much better the second time.
Surprisingly en
ough, I’m not sore at all today. Not from the braces, not from falling off the horse. Typically the day after you fall off/get thrown it feels like you’ve been hit by a Mac truck, but I guess my awesome landing-on-my-feet trick saved me from having to suffer. My legs are a little sore from riding but not terrible. I already can’t wait for next week’s lesson. Hopefully I stay on this time! 😀

me and Erik being cute at Max’s wedding.

NYCGs reunion!

Saturday afternoon Erik and I flew up to NY for my friend Dave’s wedding. I Met Dave along with a bunch of other guys in 2001 at a local NYCGs (G20.net) meet and we’ve all been great friends ever since. This is the same group I’d go to VABeach with every summer. Unfortunately, due to us all growing up and moving away, we haven’t had a real NYCGs meet in about 2 years.
We got lucky with the weather- Hanna let loose with a deluge literally two minutes after we had stepped out of the airport. Went out to dinner with our families on Saturday which was nice, then went back to Erik’s dad’s house and called it a night.
Sunday we woke up early and drove over to the hall. It was really funny when we showed up because these guys are used to seeing me scrubbed out in car-clothes or chillin on the beach… they’ve never seen me “cleaned up”. It took pretty much everyone there a few seconds to realize who The Girl in The Dress was. Ha!
Anyway, the wedding itself was absolutely lovely and the ceremony was beautiful. The guys had a pool going to see how many times Dave
(the groom) would cry during the whole thing. I don’t know what the final count was but I know it was in the double digits. After the ceremony they had cocktails and some hors d’oeuvres and I had a blast catching up with all of the boys. It felt so good to be with the Gs again. Two years is too long.
The reception itself was nothing short of spectacular. Great music, great food, great surprises. At one point a grand piano was wheeled out onto the dance floor and Dave surprised us all by not only singing a song to his lovely new wife Erika, but playing it as well! Another great surprise was when they opened up the adjoining reception hall to ours to reveal one of the biggest desert buffets I’ve ever seen- complete with a cotton candy machine, fire performance and Metallica’s Enter Sandman being blasted over the PA. Pretty cool 🙂
Other highlights included: Tomas (who flew in all the way from Sweden) catching the garter and having the most perplexed look on his face when putting it on the maid of honor (“I do WHAT with this?!”), DJ Chino (Dave) getting the party moving, some drunken bridesmaid’s boobs falling out of her dress while dancing and her not noticing at all, shots at the bar, Sparks, and of course, my NYCGs!!

Dre, Bruce, Dan, Bernie, Me, Dave (groom), Tomas, Juan and Kevin
Click to view more photo fun
NYCGs for life! 🙂