[RC] Linda in Abu Dhabi - Day 6, part 3 - Jay Randle
We headed back into the vetting ring to see some of the action there as the horses weren’t that far from getting back. We caught up with Gilly Wheeler from enduranceworldonline and quite a few of the locals that Meg knew before seeing the horses come in. It was fairly busy in the vet ring with horses from the 1st leg of the 40km ride as well as the 80km ride and horses going through their pre-ride for tomorrow’s ride.
We saw Lightening vet thru so was pretty happy with that. I also saw one of the weirdest put together horses I have ever seen. It was a fairly tall horse with really long ears and a neck fairly close in length to that of a giraffe. It had a wither similar in size to a Brahman bull and then a dropped back that a 30 year old horse would be envious of. It’s body was sausage like (and if I was cheeky enough I’d say very similar to those wasp-bodied straight Egyptian show horses but I’m not like that!) and I can’t tell you what it’s back end was like because I couldn’t drag my eyes off the front end.
We had to leave to head back to the stable so I didn’t get to follow its fortunes in the vet ring. So we headed off and got onto the truck road. Over here they have these roads built specifically for the trucks to get them off the main roads. The only trouble with getting on the truck road is that you tend to drive three abreast getting past the trucks – the truck on our side of the road rightmost, us in the middle and the on-coming trucks barely giving us a hand’s breadth of space!
One of the more unusual sights on the way back was the F350 ute that looked relatively new. In the back of the ute was about 8 goats. No stock crate to keep them in the ute, no ropes tying them in, just these goats standing in the back of the ute. I can’t believe that none of them wanted to jump out.
One of the funny things we saw on the way up to the endurance village was the road sign – Beware Road Surprises. Not too sure what surprises to expect and we didn’t really see anything but it was an interesting sign.
Back at the stable we got through our chores as usual and the poor little gateman informed us that he hadn’t been fed all day and neither had any of the other gate people. These poor souls camp out at the compound and are reliant on someone else delivering them some sustenance and they’d obviously been forgotten. Unfortunately we didn’t have anything to give him so we’re going to buy some biscuits for him tomorrow.
Tonight is a quiet night – the other three have gone to the gym to do some work outs and I’ve decided to be a couch potato and get this posted off. Pre-dinner drinks are at 8 pm in Meg’s room where we’ll have a look at some of the photos we’ve taken and then head into the dining room for some sustenance.
Tomorrow will see us head back up to Dubai to catch some of the 1* ride. Sunday The President’s Cup for Arabian racing is being held so we’re planning on going to that event also and then Monday night we are going to Gilly’s place for dinner so the social life is booming!
