Monday, February 08 2010
I forgot to mention that we went to the camel souk (market) yesterday to get carrots for Smitty. On the way there you can literally see 100's of camels that are in race training being ponied all over the place. We also went to a nearby stand that sells fresh cut Lucerne (alfalfa). It is super fresh, as in looking like fresh cut grass. Smitty likes it, he gets a handful each day.
At some point late in the night, like 12 am, we got a delivery at our room from the OC. It was a hat and jacket that had the race logo on it. I saw them when I woke up as I slept through the delivery! The jackets and hats were the right size and looked really cool. We also had a dinner party invite attached to this package. The party will be on Thursday night at he Endurance Village. This morning we woke up and had the buffet as usual. I did hear the main Chef coaching one of his guys on how the pastries could be rounder, etc. I then realized that all of the beautiful pasteries we made fresh, right here. This inspired me to try an almond and powdered sugar covered croissant. Awesome! Then we drove to the barn. I cleaned Smitty's stall and then we all went for a two hour walk. Jeremy went for a twelve mile run while we were walking. When we were done taking care of the horses we were able to leave them in outdoor paddocks for the afternoon. They liked that as they had unlimited rolling time. We were all itching for ice cream so we headed straight to Baskin Robbins from the barn. I must say that Jeremy has amazing will power when he decides to diet. He watched us eat our ice cream. I had "Love Potion 31", a Valentine's Day special flavor. It is a flavor that Megan Doyle hooked me on a few years back. It was great. They also had a flavor that I have never seen before called Hokey Pokey. I hope to find it in the States. It was ice cream with honeycomb pieces in it as well as something else, maybe caramel, I don't recall. We went back to the hotel and read our books and then had lunch. I was getting my food from the buffet (all meals are buffet style at the hotel) when all of the sudden I noticed that on one of the serving spoons there had a hot pink substance on it. I couldn't resist, I had to see what it was. I read the label on the display and it said it was potatoes. Well shoot, how could you go wrong with hot pink potatoes? Two great things combined, I had to try them. Surprisingly they tasted like normal mashed potatoes!! They must have had beets in them to make that color but you couldn't taste anything abnormal. Very cool, I might need to try making hot pink mashed potatoes next Thanksgiving! I also saw miniature hard boiled eggs. They must have been quail eggs or something. They were at the salad bar. I guess it is like having cherry tomatoes on your salad. In the afternoon we went to the barn. I saddled Smitty and Jeremy went for an hour ride while Ellen, Erin and I walked Zar for two more hours. All of this walking was helping us with our three buffet a day schedule. After this we headed to the Carrefour. The equivalent to Walmart. We bought any race food we thought we may need and looked at the interesting things available. There was a stand that made crepe covered hot dogs. Sort of like a corn dog but with crepe instead of cornbread. Interesting. There were also enormous amounts of grains and spices that were in bulk bins. Us girls were all dying for a Coke too so we took care of that. When we were in line there was a woman in front of us that unloaded most of her groceries onto the conveyor belt and then walked off to continue shopping. She returned, very much at her leisure and then proceeded to take forever to count her money (she actually couldn't count it) while talking on her cell phone. Very strange. Totally oblivious to the world. After the Carrefour we headed back to the hotel. It was now past 7 pm. We all unloaded our stuff and met back for dinner. I am not sure that I mentioned before that Ellen and Erin are identical twins. What are the odds that the two USA riders that got invited to ride here would both have identical twins? Ellen, Erin, Jeremy and I had great, and at times very funny conversations at dinner and then, after a long while, parted ways to head to bed. I am in the lobby right now as it is the only place to get free wifi. I need to go to bed as we have an 8 am photo shoot for the two horse and rider combos for the race program picture. Did I mention it is a bit chilly and windy during the day? It is supposed to change to nice sweltering heat just in time for the race though. Heather | |||||||
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