Tuesday, August 9, 2011

What's faster......flying or swimming to England? Part two.

Soooo.... We left the vetport, I made friends with the shipper bladeblah...
Richard and I go through a brief security check at fedex terminal, then sit and have some tea and coffee while we wait for our our escort down to the plane.
By this time it's about 0130.
Those of you who know me..well at least know the megkep passed age 23...I go to bed by 930 pm. So I'm dragging by this point...the edge of excitement had long worn off between all the waiting and, well ... the waiting.
Thankfully for my e excitement neurons, the best was yet to come.
We are escorted to the Tarmac where I find Tate ( oh ya, haven't seen him in a while) standing quite patiently in the lorry. The guys had put the chute up that led to the cargo compartment where Tate would be spending the majority of the evening.
Once there I saw loads of fedex employees loading large cargo palates onto the plane via a very treacherous looking lift and some rudimentary, albeit successful, roller system.
After yet another hour of waiting and a brief nap in a fedex truck, I started snapping pictures....which of course I cannot share at this time because my pos computer has crashed but I will do asap.
Pretty unbelievable stuff.
The time came to unseal taters lorry, and load him up.....insert story of the shankymajigger here.....
Thankfully I loaded Tate without problem and no one had shut down the airpot, nor sniper rifle t he French princess.
Richard and I jumped in with Tate for the ride on the lift. We cruised around to the scale then onto the lift we rolled.
Richard played it cool....Tate played it cool...I played it cool ...on the outside. Definitely on the inside I was screaming like a little girl whose barbies hair was just cut off by her g I Joe carting older brother.
( is that too personal of a reference for you to relate....???)

Long story short we made it safely in the plane. Tate was surprisingly at home munching away. Richard and I got the galley a lll to ourselves, where I promptly fell asleep for three hours. Thank god so eons hired a professional groom to look over my horse :)
The pilots were amazingly nice and I didn't even have to name drop or change into more professional attire to get my in flight fruit basket and muffins!!

Once in England, safely on the ground, we unloaded via the same method ...rollers and lifts...except everyone had accents, the sky was cloudy, and my hair instantly went flat....I was in heaven.


We navigated our way to the vet isolation building to be cleared....I sat with Richard and my shipper to my final destination who was fab...believe his name was Darren. They kept proving how gullible I was with little bits of 'information' ...in my defense I'm usually so good about picking up on those sneaky types, but I'm telling the part about riding in the back with Tate really shook me and my judgement of jocularness.

After they were all done making fun of me and warning me how dry the pubs were where I was headed to, we set on our way.

I have been to England twice. I lived here in 2007 working for Former British team member Helen Bell up in yorkshire, and then I came over for a few weeks in 2009 to visit and look at grad schools, one being hartpury where we happen to be headed in a couple of days! I really do
Love it here. The history, the smell of haylaige, the tea, the weather, the chocolate, the horses, and especially the general .." just get on with it" attitude. I am so happy to be back here, and am really looking forward to the exciting month ahead I get to spend helping out an exciting rider on an exciting horse at an exciting time.
The trip may have been long, but it went extremely well, and I am sure it was worth every hour, mile, and gruff story I heard along the way...
Next stop ..the pub, then onto hartpury for a little pre burghley pipe opener for the tater!!




And I know there are tons of editorial mistakes but I really do not know how to operate Apple products. Like I said in part one, good luck decoding!!! Xoxo

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