florida police & fire games

it's that time of year again. time for the annual police & fire olympics. this year they were in the fort pierce area on the other coast. i had gone up to orlando the night before to have dinner with mom & dad for fathers day. i ended up staying the night there and left in the morning to meet chris and everyone else there monday. all the mounted events were at the fair grounds. i do believe that monday was the hottest day i can remember...ever. the temperature thingy on my truck said 113 degrees! can you say HOT!

after chris and his unit fixed a flat on one of the trailers, they arrived at the fairgrounds. we all unloaded the horses and the rest of their gear. i think we ate dinner around 11:30 that night.

the next morning started with horse/rider inspection but due to the extreme rain during the night, it blew all the power. so they only did rider inspection. chris's unit did awesome! this is the first year that other deputies from mounted went to the olympics. after rider inspection, the sso held the first 5 places, with chris being first. i did not expect anything less. i was on irish pennant and lint duty. as you can tell from the picture, everyone looked very sharp!

the mounted events include: inspection, dressage, equitation, day/night obstacles, gymkhana, team ride, jumping and barrels. the sso did extremely well. they took a combined 5 gold medals, 6 silver and 1 bronze. chris took first in dressage, equitation, high point and jumping. the unit took second in team ride. chris was very proud! i did not get to see very much. mounted events were tuesday, wednesday & thursday.

leann & david drove their boat down. david plays on my triples and team volleyball. triples was wednesday, team was thursday and beach was friday. our 6 man team is made up of myself, tiki, greg, bryant (all officers) & then david & mike (both firefighters). we break up into 2 teams for triples. my triples team was with david & mike. our team name was... GUNS & HOSES!!! tiki & i played beach in the blistering sun after we had already played about 15 hours of volleyball. so needless to say, our legs were spent. the sand was so hot that i had chris bring some ice over so that we could stand in it in between plays! VERY HOT!!! we all did great. my triples team took bronze. tiki, bryant & greg took silver. we took silver in team. tiki & i took silver in beach.

needless to say, it was a very long week. i think chris and i slept for the next 2 days! everyone did very well!