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Nothing to do with horses

I have been writing the past few days from Eventing Nation's mobile vacation command center in Topsail Island.  Each year, students graduating from the University of Virginia spend the week after finals and before graduation vacationing at a beach.  Surprisingly, this is known as "Beach Week."  It's a long story, but I graduated from UVa a year or so before most of my friends, but we are celebrating their Beach Week in Topsail, NC this week.

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a few of the guys playing paddle ball, perhaps the world's most pointless sport


I was feeling a little guilty today so I spent some time driving around attempting to locate a horse or anything related to horses, but this was the closest thing I could find.  
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what exactly do you do with a rented horse?  perhaps I should call the number


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It is called Topsail Island after all, so you need a bridge


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A picture as I am writing this post from the porch of our beach house.  You can see the ocean in the background.  If you look closely at the house on the right, you can see it is built on stilts to protect it from hurricane storm surges.  All of the houses on Topsail Island are elevated above sea level by about 10 feet for this reason.   

Eventing is such a tough and often heartbreaking sport that it's important to have a life away from horses.  In some sense, I owe what remains of my sanity to my many awesome non-eventing friends.  Spending time with away from the horses helps me keep life in perspective and, after a few days away from the barn, reminds me how much I love my horses.  As always, I have been doing a lot of thinking this week about how to keep growing and improving Eventing Nation.  Now more than ever, thanks to everyone, especially our writers, for being a part of this great experiment known as Eventing Nation.  Go eventing.

10 Comments

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Even on your vacation your still working on EN. Have loads of fun at Topsail and as always thanks to you and the EN crew for the latest and greatest news in Eventing.

K : )

sooo, you are basically live blogging your vacation now? go play in the water, we will be here when you get back

Pretty impressive you are alert enough to blog. I don't remember all that much about graduation week...a big rented hot tub, "Life is Highway" was new and in...then there was my younger friends' graduation week the year after with lots of mattresses in the basement for lots of us to crash on...hmm. Could use some of that balance myself right now. Have fun!!

Have fun! And how many horses do you have?

agreed about that break part! Hope you're having fun!!
Thanks again for all the awesome news!!

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I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand, not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand, life is good today, life is good today!
Enjoy the vaycay, those of us still dealing with finals are jealous :p

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My grandparents live on Topsail Island. It's beautiful! Enjoy your vacation there.

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UVA seems to tbe the spot for event riders: John, Kate Samuels, Will Coleman, Laine Ashker...

Have fun! Definitely a well-deserved break!

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JOHN PUT THE LAP TOP DOWN... The beach will heal what ails and help focus and revive. This from the west Coast Beach girl and sometime EN contibutor... Beach therapy works better when you stop working tho' so STOP WORKING AND HAVE ANOTHER BEER!

Actually - I am going to take Chelan's comment one step further...have like 13 beers, then keep writing...
Have a great time!

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