If You Ain’t First, You’re Last

I’ve been on a Ricky Bobby kick lately for the last 11 years and I need to use it to express what Frankie and I are up to lately.

Let me start with some of my recent bad habits that have shown up.

Rogue left shoulder. It likes to go up. And forward. And collapse.

You’re not on fire, Shoulder

So I focused on keeping it down and back. Now it is too far down and back. It goes literally everywhere EXCEPT where it should be.

Rogue right hand. I don’t know what to do with it.

Horse handled real good

It just…creeps up. Not a ton. Just a little. Just enough.

Weak lower leg. But only at the trot. Stays in place at every other gait and is pretty secure over fences.

Let’s use this other knife to pry it out

Who knows where it goes when I’m trotting around. Certainly not where it should.

So then I’m going around all cocky about how great I am as a rider and wow what a great person I am in general as a human

And I just get this look from my trainer as she tries to figure out how I’ve actually somehow gotten so much worse, practically overnight

She’s going 26 mph

But then it’s all cool because my horse saves my ass and goes anyways

GO FAST RICKY BOBBY

I am 100% positive that my trainer has given me this speech at every show, almost verbatim:

“You need speed. You need to go out there, and you need to rev your engine. You need to fire it up. You need to grab a hold of that line between speed and chaos, and you need to wrestle it to the ground like a demon cobra! And then, when the fear rises up in your belly, you use it. And you know that fear is powerful, because it has been there for billions of years. And it is good. And you use it. And you ride it; you ride it like a skeleton horse through the gates of hell, and then you win, Ricky. You WIN!”

All that’s left for Frankie and I to do is to keep truckin’ along and

I’m not sure which one of us is which