-12 and up a horse's bum

This morning the mercury dipped to -12 - burrrr - but thankfully we didn't feel it much during the morning stable work. Us busy little bees! But BOY did we feel it during our morning ride................................

Now officially the second coldest horseride I've ever been on (still can't beat that hectic snow-storm bareback expedition in Germany last year), we ended up with frozen fingers, toes and faces. And I'd forgotten my scarf. The only upside was that the sun occasionally peeked out from behind the valley and reminded us that warmth (well, the Austrian winter equivalent) was on its way.

Also, the fact that it was the first time we were riding just with the two of us, so of course I took the opportunity to career Creo into a new, random route complete with bush-bashing, gallops and unexpected twists n turns. My specialty. Not sure what poor L thought of it all, though. Was her first horseride with me at the helm.

I spotted a shivering Wolga during the stables and after putting a rug on her, G suggested that she may be sick and promptly showed me how to take a horse's temperature. "Just pop the thermometer up the ass like sooo - wait, just put a little spittle on the end to lube it up - yep, just ever so smoothly..." I stood behind her and chanced glances at L. Was I really next in line?

Yes, yes I was. After lunch (thankfully not before), I was instructed to check her temp and so I limbered up for some rectum probing and deftly managed to avoid touching the "area" during the whole exercise... until of course when G told me to wash the thermometer afterwards. Ew. BUT I suppose we shovel it up all day anyway, so what's the difference if it's in or out??

So now we are chilling out, before doing some more elastics work, and I am using the opportunity to get in the mood for South America via some samba tunes on Grooveshark. Woot! Tonight we need to schusch ourselves up for a final farewell night out on the town with the new friends we've made here. We managed to score more hosenträger (translation = braces) from the elastics factory, and we've planned to all wearing matching pairs. I have black, bright purple and lime green stripes, L fluro green, J fluro pink and D red. Dressing up time, wooooooo!!!

Dinner before being dropped at the pub should be rather grand, a final feast with G's friend E - mouth drooling at thought of what she has in store for us - trying not to eat too much in preparation. But, knowing me, I am still eating. Good god, someone put a cork in my mouth!