Catching Up

This diagram illustrates what I've been about the last few days as I've been distracted from the blog trying to get my various vehicles up to snuff. Old equipment produces sudden repair problems, and this time problems with car, truck and tractor have struck simultaneously.

With the truck it's the cooling system as shown in the diagram. There's a lot of possibilities there for a highly expensive repair job. But, thanks to the info available on the Internet I'm able to instruct to Midway Ford specific trouble shooting instead of giving them carte blanche to charge me whatever they please to find the problems.

So far we've by-passed the heater core (see diagram) which was leaking. This failed to solve the overheating, and so today they're draining and flushing, and checking the thermostat. The order taker assured me they have a technician who knows both that you drain and flush engine and radiator, and also how to do it. I'll have to take that on trust, and am waiting for their call as I write.

While I'm waiting a few thoughts:

1. Good to see 60 year old Early Fires in great form in Hashin at Arlington, which was also a really nice race on the new polytrack, which looks great. Early still looks like a kid on board, and since I'm a little too close to that exact same age it does the heart good to seem him still going strong.

2. Will polytrack overcome mindless idiocy: It seems otherwise as we have the example Great Hunter out of Belmont. Let's see: Derby 5/6. Next breeze is on 5/24 in 1:00. Injured. What a surprise. But, you can still maintain a trainer's license even with this sort of unbelievable stupidity.

3. How is little Art doing? In a word, well. The training is set out below. Let's say that in terms of natural ability, we're in this thing. The young fellow flashes it every day. Typical Storm Cat--strong shoulder, perfect rear end, nice balance, lots of natural energy and speed. Now, if he'd just grow. We're back to 15' 2.5" at the moment. The height seems to fluctuate day to day.

Today's Training:
5/22/07 Tues. Day 3 Burch 4 x 1f riderless at about 90% speed. Looking good.
5/24/07 Wed. Day 1 Burch: threat of rain. all horses off.
5/25/07 Thurs. Day 2. Burch: 1.5 miles riderless gallop intermittently about 2f at a time. Nob rides three a day, and this is Art's scheduled "off" from tack work.
5/26/07 Fri. Day 3 Burch: 4 x 1f riderless at 85% speed. Was looking forward to this one sincce we just replaced the queens plates with level grips. But, after the nice fast work Tuesday, the horse looks flat today. Whoops, forgot to pick the hoofs before the work, and mud is packed in there, which explains his lack of footing. Too dark for tack work,
5/27/07 Sat. Day 1 Burch: Scheduled day off, but with incoming weather all the horses are bouncing including Art. So, let him gallop in the paddock on his own, and he motored around there riderless for about 5 min playing all the way. Loves to run. Started raining just before the tack work. So, again, no tack. We've had about 7 days of scheduled rain and got very little.