Received 09/13/2009 12:13
Sunday, Sep 13 - First Full Day
My day started off with the screech of the alarm clock. When I turned out the lights at 11:00 last night, I knew I didn't have to get up until 7:30 and so thought that 8 1/2 hours would be plenty and I'd wake up easily. Wrong! My eyes absolutely didn't want to open. I slapped the alarm off and turned over. 10 minutes later, the persisant little thing went off again and I gave up and got up. Of course, having told a friend I would meet them for breakfast at 8:00 was also an impetus to get out of bed. Plus, by staying in bed much later, it would make getting over jet lag even harder.
I met my friends and went down to breakfast. In Europe, breakfast is usually included with the cost of the hotel and here, its a very nice breakfast buffet with a really nice range of options: anything from scrambled eggs, meats, a wide range of excellent bread, fruit, cheese, cereal and juices. It was a great start to the day. Following breakfast, I joined a couple of the small dog team members for a walk along the Rhein, just getting out and stretching our legs before heading out for our first practice.
The first challenge of practice was getting there. We had printed directions from the hall we were going to,but no specific address. All the rental vans driver had our GPS units; Nancy Gyes (coach), Andy Hartman (Captain) and I were drivers and we each brought our personal units along. So we loaded in coordinates we found on the agility hall's website and were comparing these with the printed directions; they were close, but at one point, the GPS wanted to take us a totally different way. But my argument was that there was probably a reason for the directions they published, so we went that way. I ended up leading the pack, despite my past record of losing my followers. So, off we went. The first part of the trip was simple: get on the highway (we had to cross back into Switzerland) and go for 33 miles. Once we got off the highway, we were still doing good: we made the final turn onto a very narrow, 2 lane farm road. This road seemed to lead into nowhere. We were driving through cornfields, with no likely looking places for agility in site. We kept going, and going (sort of like vehicular engergizer bunnies) and going. Finally, I pulled off to the side and the other two vans pulled up beside me. We talked about it and decided to just keep going. There was an intersection coming up and, as we approached it, we saw the very small sign for the Agilityhalle to the right. Whew! We were running out of road, heading right into the Rhein! But we found the Halle and it was a very nice practice site.
The reason we were practicing at site so far out, seemingly in the middle of nowhere was because the flooring from this particular hall is the exact surface the dogs will be running on during the event. They will be taking up this carpet and moving it over to the Messestadium on Moday afternoon, immediately following our practice.
The team worked for about 3 hours, running a number of standard courses, working to get the kinks from travel out. Some of the teammembrs had just arrived this morning, so were practicing on very little rest. They all did an awesome job! The dogs took just a very little time to adust to the surface. Contacts were absolutely solid, jumping was great and all around, everyoe looked totally ready and confident. Camaderie and morale seemed high as we finished up and headed back to the hotel.
Unfortunately, my jinx took over again as I lost my followers at the very first turn. George, my GPS, showed me a different way home than the way we came. So I followed his directions, and, as we made that first fateful turn, I noticed that Nancy, who was in the van right behind us, hadn't pulled out on the road to follow me, so I (wrongly) assumed her GPS was giving her different directions or that she decided to return the same was we came. Nor did I see Andy follow either, so I also assumed he followed Nancy. It wasn't until we had returned to the motel, gone up to our rooms, changed, and were on our way out to dinner that Nancy's van showed back up to the motel. Apparently, her GPS took them some very strange way home--one that involved a lot of extra distance and many wrong turns. We can't quite figure that one out since we have the same system. All I can figure is that I purchased the 2010 European Map updates and she didn't, so maybe there was a difference there. Well, we'll get to try it again tomorrow. Maybe this time, I'll get it right.
We finished out the day going to a little Italian restaurant for dinner. Now its time to try to get to sleep cause we have an 8:15 am departure back to the practice site.
