A night in the desert

["Tony Pavord" <tpavord@dial.pipex.com>]

Hi Ridecampers
As a fairly new digest subscriber I'm just catching up on all the post-Dubai
and post-Christmas news but I had to pick up on this one from Steve: On 17th
December you wrote

"The Best Condition Judging was postponed from 11:00 AM to 12:00AM (Like
everything else the entire week).
Here's why they changed it!
Late, late at night they were finally shutting down the race site and
vet check out in the middle of the desert. By the way this site for all
of us was a hour and twenty minute drive with absolutely no signage on
how to get there. On race day it didn't matter because the dust was so
thick and in the dark you wouldn't have been able to see the signs any
ways. But it was not too hard to find the vetcheck, you simply followed
the path of cars stuck in the sand, many abandoned with their flashers
on. It only took my car two hours to find the vetcheck/race site and I
had been there once already. But back to the race officials shutting
down the vet check. All of the last vets, timers and officials were
ready to leave for the hotels and barns. Jim Bryant says "I know the way
on the ‘new road' and I'll lead you out, it will only take a half hour."
So twenty vehicles with three to four in each take off across the
desert. Halfway there the groups get separated and the lead group turns
around to find the laggers, some of which are stuck in the sand. In the
mess of getting everyone turned around they get disoriented and can't
find the road. The French vets have two bottles of wine and Juan has a
flash of rum. They all settled down and waited until dawn when they
could figure out where they were. The convoy finally made it back to the
barns close to 9:00 AM and that is why they postponed the BC judging.

Actually everyone was quite glad that the officials did not miss the
experiences that the rest of us enjoyed throughout the week."  End quote

You nearly got it right, but I was there.  We were two cars behind Jim when
we realised that the one following us which contained the Ground Jury had
disappeared.  Mobile phones went into overdrive but tho' Jim could talk to
Georg Riedler, he could not get a fix on where he and the rest of the convoy
was.  An hour and a half later ...Well we dug Georg's car out of the sand
and Jim tried to put us back on the right road.  "You all stay here while I
go and check out up ahead ..."  It became a rather familiar refrain over the
next hour or two.  Since we had not left the vet check until 4 a.m. after
vetting the last horse, and had been up for 24 hours already, some of us
(female) were getting a little weary and longing for a shower and bed ...
however, boys will be boys and they just loved playing in the sand.  The got
another three 4X4s bogged down, dug and hauled them out ... Ray Randall
having a philosophical discussion about the differences between driving in
sand or driving in snow sometime before sunrise ... chief vet Hallvard
Sommerseth valiantly telling us, "you go ahead, I'll take another run at it"
then graciously giving up the wheel to Ray ... Julia Flaminio hurling her
vehicle up a brush covered sand bank and down the other side - she was the
only one who didn't get stuck I think (see, it takes a woman to do a job
well) ... and you would have loved to see so many high powered officials on
their knees letting air out of their tires.
So it was Juan who had the wine!  Well it was all gone by the time we
finished hauling Hallvard's car out of a dune, but thats life.
   Finally, when I had gone very, very quiet, the sun began to rise.  Pale,
deep colours of pink and purple, silver and sand.  You can't stay p****d off
when the sun is rising over the desert and you round a corner and see a
group of mama camels with their doe eyed babies, when birds you can't see
begin to sing, when gazelle and a silver fox dart across your path and
everywhere there are tracks and the wonder of it is, how can all that
wildlife live out here?
We finally made it back to the hotel at 8.30 a.m. and by then I was so
entranced by the desert and so wide awake again, there didn't seem any point
in going to bed any more.
What an experience.  Oh yes and Tony did bog our car down too.
Marcy Pavord

Tony Pavord MRCVS BVSc
Lower Penygraig Farm
Llanfoist
Abergavenny, Gwent, NP7 9LE
GB.
Phone 0044 (0)1873 859207
Fax 0044 (0)1873 858186
Email tpavord@dial.pipex.com