Happy to pay the pros!

While I don’t know what I might be doing with my life right now were we not running this farm, there is one thing I can say unequivocally that it would not be: hauling alpacas for a living. Much as it pains me to contemplate it, perhaps I am starting to show my age just a tad? I just got back (as in an hour ago) from picking up Precocious in Ohio after leaving yesterday morning and quite frankly I feel a bit blobby. As in gelatinous blob.

Precocious, who will be here through the end of the calendar year now, has had several girls lined up and waiting for him here (a good gig if you can get it), so though we would have gladly paid one of the many excellent people who drive alpacas around our fine country for a living, scheduling dictated otherwise. With the audio book forms of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (the books that are the basis for HBO’s wonderfully self-indulgent Game of Thrones mini series) yours truly was fairly entertained throughout in any case and the drive was uneventful apart from the one hour of bumper to bumper traffic in and around Erie, PA this morning. It is done, which is all that matters.

There was a time — and I will fully grant the stupidity of this, BTW — 8 or 9 years ago that I once made the run out to greater Cleveland and back in one shot. That was 21 hours of driving out of 24. Dumb, du-dumb, dumb…DUMB. I do remember stopping at one of the Starbucks on the NY Thruway and chugging two 20 oz. Mochas on the way home so that may have played some part in making it all possible. Not anymore though. The Ian of 2011 gave up caffeine 7 months ago (not really a New Year’s resolution, more of a threat from my GP) so chemical prop-up was really not an option this time around. Hence the post-journey thumb sucking on the driver’s part. Regardless, the Herdsire in question is overnighting in the relative peace of his own pen at the Main Barn for the night and will then run the gauntlet of the welcome-home humpfest at the Stud Barn at some point tomorrow morning. Roll out the red carpet fellas!