I'm Too Old For This (But Too Young For the Consequences!)

Aah, Games Day! The one day of camp where acting like a total idiot doesn't screw you over for the rest of the week.
Bet you can't guess who I was riding. That's right - Mia! And let me tell you, Mia was less than thrilled to be a games pony. She'd much rather be getting a poop facial or making faces at the boys or anything more productive. You know, mare things.
But alas for Mia, today she was games pony and she had to live with it.
First up was the Ice Cube and Spoon Challenge, so named because we were lacking eggs. Now I don't know if you know how long it takes to melt an ice cube in 85 degree heat (hotter if you count the sun reflecting from the arena sand!), but when that spoon has got a nice pool of water under the cube, it makes for an interesting time! I think I've mentioned before that Mia hasn't been gifted with a long, smooth stride - so I was supposed to somehow compensate for this choppy motion AND control her destination simultaneously.
The first round, we didn't do a sitting trot for ten seconds before almost everyone lost their cube (Emily lost hers at the walk!). We learned posting is much easier on the cube, and you can hold onto the cube for longer by doing so. Not only did we manage to hold onto our new cube throughout both sitting and posting trot, but we even cantered both leads before I lost my cube. It sucked, because I was stuck behind Sara on Blue (Sara also leases Blue - it's kind of hard on me this week, not using him but also having to watch someone else ride my baby) who was not going very fast. We were taking on a new challenge - jumping with the ice cube on the spoon (there were three of us left by that point) but Mia tripped and I lost my ice cube before we got to it. Dammit, but I move on.
Simon Says involved me cantering with both reins in my left hand and my right hand on my hip jumping a teensy jump without stirrups. I won this game because I was the only one stupid enough (er...I mean brave) to do it.
Musical dismounts = worst game in the history of the world. I am not very agile, so even getting on 15.2 hh Mia was difficult. I feel really old, because I could not swing my hip up to get my foot in the stirrup, and the one time I managed to do so, her saddle slipped! Which sucked, because I had run out of holes on the billets. So I was out first. It's OK, I reasoned, I hate this game anyway.
Musical buckets had the added bonus of using the bucket to mount once you pushed some other oxygen sucker off your bucket. Of course, me being too nice caused me to lose this game, too - but being on bucket removal detail was fun!
I had really hoped to swindle Blue for a little bit of barrel racing (he and I won the event handily at the last barn show) but I had to settle for pole bending with Mia. Here's where her reluctance really hurt me - actually, I'm not sure it was reluctance so much as she didn't get the concept. She did the pattern correctly, but not quickly, partially because the other school horses are very accustomed to how the games work and don't need to be told what they were doing. Lots of hugs and pats for Mia, anyways, and then she was put away and we used the ickle ponies for bareback relays.
Luckily, I got to ride the former gymkhana star turned schoolmaster, Desi, so there was pretty much no way I could fail. And we didn't. Our team won each time, and I'd like to think it was due to teamwork and my teammate's agility rather than the fact that the other team's ponies either didn't want to canter or tried to buck with their riders.
Games day is fun, but I much prefer actual, challenging work. So, $5 says I ride Mia again tomorrow, and we'll see how we do jumping again. God help me if we decide to do some of the cross-country jumps, as Mia was less than sane last time THAT happened. For that escapade, I want my Blue-Boo back. :(