Sunday was the final day of the championships, and featured the cones precision course. Suzy and Bouncer did great -- they had a clean run-through, and didn't knock over any balls on the cones. They did have a slight time penalty. Overall they finished ninth in the single pony division with 142.85 points. Shelley Temple, our other U.S. single pony driver, finished just behind Suzy at 10th. The single pony medals went to Peter Koux of Denmark (gold), Anne-Christine Ardvisson of Sweden (silver), and Sarah Howe of Great Britain (bronze). Randi Cadwell of the USA went on to take the overall [View Full Entry]

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Today was the driving marathon, and with an early morning rain things got off to a slippery start. Obstacle 1 was a tough and tight little course, and Team Bouncer had a tough time with it. After taking a hard turn through, the carriage slid and Suzy's navigator was knocked off the back. Unfortunately, this resulted in a 10-point penalty, but the good news is that Bouncer and Suzy were not injured. Claudia endured two cracked ribs but being the trooper that she is, continued on with the marathon, which is pretty amazing! They made several great times in most of [View Full Entry]

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Today we ventured to the town of Hillerod to visit Frederiksborg Slot (pronounced “slut”). Before anyone gets the wrong idea, you should know that “slot” is the Danish word for castle. Talk about a real life Cinderella Castle. It was built in the early 1600s by King Christian the 4th, who was, judging by several portraits of him in the castle, a big burly man with a haircut like Prince Valiant. Everything but the chapel burned down in 1859, but was rebuilt with painstaking accuracy soon afterward with financial support from the founder of Carlsberg brewery. The [View Full Entry]

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Today was the first day of actual competition. It was time for the dressage portion for the single ponies (carts with a single pony pulling it). Suzy, Bouncer, and my sister as groom went at 2:45 PM (Danish time). They had a few little problems and scored a 46. For those of you who don’t know, this is a good score. Not quite as good as they have gotten in the past, but former world champions perhaps tend to get graded harder than others. After all the ponies were through, it was announced Team Bouncer is in 4th place, and [View Full Entry]

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We got up bright and early this morning to pack up our belongings to return back to Denmark. Johan and Charlotte were so kind as to give us another delicious breakfast. Then Johan and Princess Olivia accompanied us to the train station. After waving our goodbyes, Seth and I settled into two seats next to two little boys. Their sisters were sitting across from us, and we soon realized that we were lucky to sit with the boys. Some poor fellow had to sit with the girls and endure being harassed by the little one, who yelled “Halloooo!” as she kicked [View Full Entry]

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Breakfast food: The breakfast food in Sweden is very interesting to say the least. I think the most unusual was the caviar in the tube. As disgusting as this may sound to some of you, it was very good and came in many different flavors (straight caviar, caviar and cheese, and many more). The tubes look like giant tubes of toothpaste. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at how good this was with a hard-boiled egg. It had all the wonderful saltiness of caviar without the weird texture you usually get. I think it requires refrigeration, otherwise I would bring [View Full Entry]

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Today we made one last foray into Copenhagen before we rode the train under the Oresund bridge to Malmo to meet our friends Johan and Charlotte, and their daughter Olivia. We met in the Train Station and walked over to the "Little Square" for lunch. Then we went back to their apartment and got settled in. Later that night we went out for a delicious dinner and some coffee. We walked through their local park and also walked down by the beach for a while. The sun didn’t go down until 11 PM! Tomorrow night is the soccer game, and Seth [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at the Copenhagen airport at 7:30 AM Denmark time. The Continental Airlines crew was professional and friendly, and our pilots even got us there a bit ahead of schedule. After collecting our baggage, we bought tickets for the 15 minute train ride into the central part of the city. They had a train station in the airport. What a novel idea! I hope that happens at Dulles someday….. As a side note it is interesting to observe some of the alternative travel options and services available in other countries. We ran into one of the more interesting ones I [View Full Entry]

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We departed Richmond this morning at 10:30 (props to Heather Scott for delivering us to the airport!). After arriving at Newark Airport’s International Terminal, we killed the 5.5 hours between flights by eating lunch, people watching (which included Dee Snider, lead singer of Twisted Sister, best known for their anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It”), and then spending two hours in the Miller pub competing in our own personal Travel Sequence Tournament. It was a fast-paced series of games, but Seth emerged as the victor. At 5:30 we were up in the air on our way to Copenhag [View Full Entry]

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Today was a break during the competition, so we decided to make a jaunt to Burton Overy and Carlton Curlieu, small towns in Leicestershire, which are my (Vicki's) ancestral homes on my father's side. It took a little over an hour to get there from Burton-upon-Trent. We drove through Leicester city on our way, and were greeted by Harry Potter and Dumbledore waving from the top of the Borders Bookstore as we passed through (the 6th Harry Potter book had just been released). We made our way to a quiet, pastoral area and then we saw the Burton Overy sign and [View Full Entry]

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