But this post isn't just for complaining about the heat, I promise.
Before I moved here, I looked at all the sales dates to try and figure out which ones I could attend. While most of the sales are actually during the week (a not so fun thing for me since I work Monday thru Friday), they have viewings during the weekends. The first sale in my sights was the July Fasig-Tipton sale. I've never went to an auction there as last November, we only went to see horses at Keeneland, not over across town (to put it in perspective, Keeneland is three miles from my house, F-T is about 15-20).
It looked like the heat was again going to foil my plans for going to the "kickoff" sale of the auction season. Yesterday it was much too hot to do much of anything and that was when I planned on going and the forecast showed that it was going to stay hot for the rest of the week. But when I woke up today and my phone said it was only 89* out, I decided to take the chance of going, even when the other two weather sources said it felt more like 100*.
I'm not going to lie, my desktop background made me feel like a slacker if I didn't go (more on that later), so that had a major part in it and I'm glad I did. I got to see some awesome horse flesh and even talked with grooms, buyers, and sellers during the 2 1/2 hours I was there. I took over 1,300 pictures and spent a few hours this afternoon sorting them out and putting them on the web. I'm about half way through so tomorrow night I get to do the process again.
Now back to my desktop background.
When I went to the Kentucky Derby Museum a few weeks ago when I was up in Louisville, I took a picture of one of the many quotes on the walls. If you know me, you know I'm a HUGE Bob Baffert fan, so it's no surprise that it's his quote I took a picture of. The quote goes like this:
"If you're gonna be successful, you have to live and breathe this business."
Since my life right now pretty much revolves around horses, I feel like I fit that quote pretty good. However, when I was at breakfast with a friend a few weeks ago, one of their friends that stopped by our table gave me some advice on getting into the thoroughbred side of things (the place I ultimately want to go),
"You have to constantly be seen and let them get familiar with you."
He was referring to everyone in the business because let's face it, the racing industry is not easy to get into without help (thankfully I have a wonderful support system behind me). So when I lollygagged about trying to come up with an excuse not to go out to the auction grounds today, I just felt more and more guilty. It wouldn't just be missing a day of seeing the future stars of our sport, it would also be a missed opportunity to get myself a glimpse of the inside of the industry, even if it didn't have any real effect today.
After all, good, professional exposure can't hurt. And I had a blast at the auction so it helped even more. Every day I spend doing something on the racing side of things, the more I realize that one day, I want to end up in the industry. My next task is to figure out how I can go from the unknown person walking around with a camera at the sales to someone people recognize. I have a feeling that may be a little tougher than I would like it to be.
And for a small update on the internship front: This week was a lot of last second stuff to get done, especially since it was only three days of work. The eventing team was named early in the week so I worked on the media guide for that (I had helped with jumping last week), then I did our nominations for athletes of the month, which was kind of fun to do.
I've been trained to not put any opinion into anything, but this exercise was one where I had to make the riders sound even more awesome then they are. It was one of those creative type of tasks that let me escape my journalism ways for a bit. Then Friday was basically doing all the Young Riders stuff that needs to be done with the show only a week away. It was a pretty simple and straight forward week but it was really nice to have a steady stream of work to do, it made the days go by much quicker.
Until next time,
Mel
And for a small update on the internship front: This week was a lot of last second stuff to get done, especially since it was only three days of work. The eventing team was named early in the week so I worked on the media guide for that (I had helped with jumping last week), then I did our nominations for athletes of the month, which was kind of fun to do.
I've been trained to not put any opinion into anything, but this exercise was one where I had to make the riders sound even more awesome then they are. It was one of those creative type of tasks that let me escape my journalism ways for a bit. Then Friday was basically doing all the Young Riders stuff that needs to be done with the show only a week away. It was a pretty simple and straight forward week but it was really nice to have a steady stream of work to do, it made the days go by much quicker.
Until next time,
Mel
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