POTC Trial Friday

Nice and quiet trial today - not many people since it was a Friday. The trial started at 10:00 and we were all done at 2:30. Pretty good, if you ask me. My first run was Exc. A STD. This was my third try to get a Q (remember in my first two tries, I wouldn't do that chute/shoot!). There were a few tricky spots in this course - the weave entry (because of that dummy jump), the table and the chute were really close together (doesn't bother me since I am definitely not a chute-sucker!), and the wrap of #16 to get back to #17. But mom watched lots of runs and felt confident we could handle it. And we did! I did not start off fast (no surprise, right?) but I did the chute (slowly) and then finished the course well! We got a Q and first place and were the only 12" Exc. A team to qualify ( out of @ 6?)! But I barely made it - the STC was 70 and my time was 72.81 but we found out you can have time faults in Exc. A! So my score was 94. Whew!

Next up was Exc. B JWW. We watched a lot of runs of this course too and mom felt pretty good about it. One thing though, the start line was right next to the ring gate and the door to leave the room to go to the other ring. We didn't like that much. This is the first course where we had to do two pinwheels and a serpentine too. Interesting. One tricky part was back in the left-hand corner with #14 (and a dummy jump straight ahead) and #15 to the tunnel. When it was our turn we started out slowish and mom front crossed after #3 and then turned her head away from me to look where she was going and she forgot about me and I skipped #4 and just followed after her. Then we skipped #5. I jumped 6 and didn't feel like doing #7 so I didn't! Mom was like in shock or something, so she didn't reconnect with me until around the weaves. Once we did connect again, things went well and we finished the difficult parts without problems. It's all there in the video - not a pretty sight!

So a good day, all in all. Mom says she learned a lot from the JWW run and she'll try not to make those mistakes again! Grandma went with us today and we had a good time visiting with her! She also did the video-ing - thanks Grandma! We go back to the same place on Sunday and we'll try again and see how it all goes!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky