Day 19 – A Discipline You Would Like To Try That You’ve Never Done Before
I’m not good with really big changes in life. I’m kind of the person that once I get settled, it’s hard for me to leave even if I know something else better could get along. That being said, making the decision to move from Boston, MA to Austin, TX was a hard one. My move from NC to MA to work at SmartPak hadn’t gone nearly as well as I hoped, and I thought that another big move would be just as scary and awful. One of the big factors driving me to move (besides my supportive fiance now husband) was the lower cost of living which meant one thing to me – I could get back to riding again. And by riding, I mean reining.
This is Texas after all! I should be able to have my pick of reining or AQHA rail type barnts to choose from. I had visions of wearing an adorable cowboy hat and practicing flying changes and stops on my adorable little palomino Quarter Horse.
I was right. There are a lot of reining and QH barns in Texas – I mean the AQHA headquarters are in Amarillo and the APHA headquarters are in Fort Worth. There is a lot of reining in Texas.
In San Antonio. In Dallas. In Houston. In Fort Worth. In East Texas. In West Texas. Up by Oklahoma.
Pretty much everywhere but Austin. If you aren’t very familiar with Texas, let me give you a tip. If you are pro women’s right, supportive of alternative lifestyles and sexual orientations, enjoy having text books that aren’t edited to take sex ed and evolution out, and generally feel warm and fuzzy for the blue side of politics – you don’t want to live anywhere else in Texas except for Austin.
I won’t go so far as to make a sweeping generalization that forward thinking liberals prefer Hunter/Jumpers and Dressage… but those are the only kind of barns we have here. Hunter/Jumpers, Dressage, Trail Riding barns, and the occasional Western Speed Games or Penning/Cutting. No reining.
So here I am still embracing my inner hunter princess instead of my inner cowgirl.
4 thoughts on “Day 19 – A Discipline You Would Like To Try That You’ve Never Done Before”
I was raised a dressage princess and am now starting to embrass my inner cowgirl. Reining is on my bucket list.
By the way, I was born in Austin, grew up in Corpus Christi, I have no idea how I ended up being such a liberal.
I’d LOVE to try reining or cutting.
being from California … this cracks me up! I live in the most conservative part of the state but hail from the most liberal. I consider myself a staunch moderate. This is quarter horse country and reining, roping, etc. are quite popular. There are virtually ZERO English riders. There is one h/j barn and NO dressage barns. I feel your pain! :0)
I turned down a job offer from SmartPak when I graduated college, and something about the way you put that makes me think you ran into the same issues I thought I’d run into with that job. Still cool to tell people I got the job offer, though.