Working life at Spruce Meadows

The next few days passed more or less slowly, as we had to do rather boring work: this included painting, cleaning the stables, and sweeping the halls. Everything to make the riders and their horses feel comfortable at Spruce Meadows. To add a bit of variety, we also did some pull-ups in the stables to stay awake during work. On the free Sunday, I had the opportunity to Skype with Claas, Lara, and Grandma to catch up on news from home. Besides work, our minds wandered elsewhere.

Since Alke's birthday is on Thursday, May 25th, I made the effort to prepare a small gift and sent a keychain, 2 pins, and a greeting card home by mail. The surprise was successful, albeit a bit late, but Alke was delighted.

Since Father's Day also took place in Gräpel on Thursday, I was a little jealous, but I hope the people involved had a lot of fun on that day.

As the rest of the group was arriving in a few days, I cleaned up the camper a bit, as I will be living in it with 2 other people, including my friend Kevin from Vancouver, who applied for the job. The other person who initially moved into my camper was Charly, and we got along right from the start. When Kevin joined us the next day, it became clear that it could get pretty tight in the motorhome, but the three of us got along well and had good chemistry. During the first week, we completed various tasks for Spruce Meadows, basically the final preparations for the tournaments. For example, we cleaned, painted, or mowed the grass on the VIP stands in the largest ring. But since we could also have conversations with the new colleagues on the side, the work was not quite as boring. On the first weekend, most of the group went to the nearest standard bar, Hudson's, where we celebrated Canada's 150th birthday and enjoyed the cheap beer.

The following week also passed very quickly for me. After work, there were still training days to prepare everyone for the upcoming tournament days. This included the correct technique for carrying the obstacle components and also the fast and error-free construction of the obstacles. Then the tournaments slowly approached, and the first one lasted 5 days and was called National, sponsored by Rolex. I worked in a small ring, and the obstacles there were not quite as impressive as in the others. Especially in the large International Ring, which is like an arena, the courses were impressive and more challenging. The components of the obstacles were also twice as large and not suitable for just one person. The show between the courses was also enjoyable to watch, with music parades and dance performances. Once we were done with our smaller, less significant ring, we helped out in the other rings. Since Sunday was not a tournament day for my team, we went to the international ring to make the course change as fast and smooth as possible. Since there were also TV crews there, I was probably seen on TV at some point.

Especially on tournament days, the days were long, and especially in bad weather, we were glad to finally be back at the motorhomes and have a beer with our colleagues. On the last evening of the tournament days, we went to Time Fault together and were happy that the days were over. We went to the pub at Spruce Meadows Time Fault with the course designers and other riders, where we reminisced about the past few days over beer from large pitchers. The next day, we had a day off, and I video called Alke, Grandma, and Lara again. In the afternoon, we went with a few people to Elbow Falls, which are small waterfalls. The weather and the view were perfect, and we could relax with the rushing water. In the evening, on our way back, we drove to a small vacation area and camping site and went to a saloon there to end the evening.

But the next tournament was only a few days away, so we had to mentally prepare for it again.