XC, Storms, and Dressage Pics

The pictures from Cadence and my first show are up at long last!

 Scary car down, scary photographer still to go.

(You can see me talking to her :P)

 Not exactly on the bit, but at least she's in the arena!

Gahh, hunter position... and look at those elbows!

I knew my position was going to suck, I'd jsut hoped it wouldn't suck this much.  I have this bad habit of concentrating solely on the horse, and then I end up riding like a hunter.  Grrrr....
Monday night my coach emails and asks if I can go cross country on Wednesday.  Well, I'm in my second last week of classes with waaaay too much work to do and exams that I haven't even begun to revise for... so of course, count me in!  We checked the weather multiple times after our somewhat disastrous last cross country attempt, and every website had something different.  Some said thunderstorms all day, some said clear and sunny all day.  I chose to believe it was going to be sunny, but the one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that it was going to be hot.
I went to bed Tuesday night, full of excitement and anticipation for the next day.  Now, in my bedroom, there's a window right behind my head.  I generally leave this window open to let a breeze in.  Back on topic.  So at 1:28 am on Wednesday morning I was awoken to a loud crack.  I look up and see a tree limb flying past my bedroom window, sheeting rain, hail, booming thunder, and... strobe lights? There were in fact no strobe lights (big surprise) but intense lightning that lit up the sky multiple times per second, illuminating the world in sharp detail.  I ran down stairs and unplugged all electronics, and then stayed up for another hour just watching the storm.  A part of me was too nervous to go back to sleep.  I love storms, especially thunderstorms but there was something... menacing about this one.  I sat there watching the huge old pine tree 15ft from my bedroom window swaying back and forth and thought 'If that falls, I'm dead' a tree that big just shouldn't move.  At ALL.  Eventually, I went back to sleep.  When I woke up I was surprised to find the power still on.  It did go off at some point during the day, but the storm didn't knock it out.
As I drove to the barn I saw trees toppled (one fall on our shed.  Thankfully the chicken coop was spared) along with hydro poles, limbs all over, and several roads closed from storm damage.  Apparently a tornado touched down somewhere near us.  This is extremely odd, because if there was in fact a tornado, it would be the second in one week for an area that doesn't get tornadoes.  Anyhow, the good thing about the storm was that it cleared the forecast!  Cross country was still on.
The lady who was giving Cadence and I a lift was late because the power had gone off at her place and her horses had been out in the storm all night, so she was held up a bit.  By the time she got her mare loaded and picked us up it was9:30.  We were hoping to arrive early to avoid the heat, but with an 1 1/2 hour drive ahead of us it didn't look like we were going to make it.
To be continued...