More Plans And The Price Of Gas

End of meet, end of effort, new horse coming reflection time. Things were up in the air after Saturday's nice Wind breeze, and by Monday I'd decided to retire the old fellow.

Is there any more fun in the sport than having a horse working well, just about ready? I'd have loved to gallop Wind on through this week, and would have but for a busy schedule. There was that option of moving on with the conditioning and racing Wind at Blue Ribbon Downs Meet that concludes in December. Nice purses there with the slot machines.

All this was running through the RR brain when a small additional factoid reared it's unpleasant head. Blue Ribbon is a 700 mile round trip. Hmmm. At 7 miles/gallon in the old truck that's 100 gallons at almost $3/gal. Every race would cost $300 for gas + jockey mount, pony, motel, etc. And, quite obviously you'd do that if you had a chance to win instead of for the fun of racing.

So, the retirement decision was made, though as I post I'm equivocating again considering we have a very fit animal that I might go on with and tear up Eureka next year on conditioning alone.

There are plans, stable plans, lots of them. Since plans change I'll just keep them in my head, but, the hope is to be at the track full time sometime next year. For now, I'm waiting the Van driver's call on my Shore Breeze yearling en route to KCMO, and have both the excitement and bummer of a lot of work ahead with a couple of youngsters.

Training: Art continues at 15'3" instead of shrinking back to 15'2.5" as he'd done so many times. Art's been off two weeks due to deep mud and losing a shoe I never had time to put back on. But, it's on. Last night 15 min. of stop and go play stuff riderless and 10 min. lunge under 30 lbs. Astride. Art goes back up to #1 on the totem pole. He looks good and I expect quick progress!