Carriage Trade

A Horse of My Own

Shenlei has been a good friend of mine since I was only 6 weeks old. She took me under her metaphorical wing and helped me navigate fashion, fun and friends in SL. She still spoils me outrageously, giving me wonderful gifts. Shen and I share a love of horses and things associated with horses. I love to hang out at Carriage Trade with her and the horses (and the barn cats) and the other folk. But I can’t always get over there and Shenlei gave me a way to assuage my horse-deficiency all on my own.

I am now the proud possessor of the @CT@ Riding Horse (wear me). I confess that it’s not quite as much fun as riding out with one of the CT horses, but for a quiet outing by myself, it’s lovely. I introduced my horse, who I am naming Shamrock, by the way, to the ducks. As usual, they were pleased to see me enjoying myself, but didn’t really understand the need for 4 legs. 🙂 Bamboo liked Shamrock and had a good time riding about the property with me.

Shamrock and I have headed out a few times now, to check out the neighborhood. I do see a good bit more astride Shamrock than I do in one of AnnMarie’s crazy vehicles or on my Snowmobile Reindeer. I had no idea there was an amusement park so close to home – a simple ride away. 🙂 There is more coming on THAT topic!

Riding for the Roses

I love horses. I love riding. I love water. I love roses. I love red. Mix that all together and you have another perfect evening spent in SL. Oftentimes the only thing that soothes my soul is the sound of hooves beating on the ground. Wind through my hair. Water splashing underfoot.

When Moonsorrow invited me to come for a ride I jumped into the saddle. *grin* Moon always claims that the rider needs to beware: that Moon will roll them, toss them, bounce them. It’s all a myth. Moonsorrow has an extremely smooth gait and is ALWAYS considerate of riders. Moon, Shenlei, Tyr and I went for a run through Carriage Trade. Stolas joined us for a bit as well as we toured. CT has begun a role-playing area and we took a look there. There’s been a lot of redevelopment and renovation since my last visit (which was WAY too long ago). It was fun to see the new shops, including the travel agency. *grin* Be sure to book a trip to visit CT.

I love the shadows in SL. I have a graphics card that can render them without crashing (that is, not TOO much – unless I try to take lots of pictures, in which case I do ultimately confuse the heck out of the graphics card and the screen goes black. I gather this is an SL bug.). So as we raced across hill and stream, our shadows flowed with us. Notice the shadow on the water! I was having a wonderful time trying to capture the shadows and the details, all of which add to the sense of really being there. I love how my brain can fool my body into believing we are somewhere we are not.

The cross-country course has been redesigned as well. I’d spent some time here when it first opened. Fidget was kind enough to take me through. The course is now longer and more complicated and includes ten more jumps for a total of thirty hurdles. Moon did beautifully, only nicking a few of the larger jumps. I did my best to keep a light hand on the reins and let her take the lead. I know which of us knows how to do this best. *grin* I’ve included a photo from the time Fidget and I did the course. Not really the best angle perhaps for either of us, but I wanted to show the comparison of shadows on and shadows off.

The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse’s ears. ~Arabian Proverb
There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man. ~Winston Churchill

There is something about time spent with horses that is good for the soul of Ahuva.

SL8B

It’s that time! The time when everyone on the grid becomes terribly confused and thinks the celebration is all about SL being 8 years old, hence SL8B, when they SHOULD realize that it’s really about AH3B. Ah well, sometimes it’s simply easier to go along with the crowd. So I got myself a press pass in order to get a sneak preview before the sims open to the public officially on June 23. This year’s theme is the magic of Second Life. Magic refers not just to practitioners of the craft, but also to the magic we all find in our lives in SL, whether it’s social, commercial, creating, enjoying or whatever else brings you to login. There are many free gifts for attendees and special presentations. You can take a tour of the sims. Yavanna Llanfair made the tour pods. You can hop aboard a pod near the welcome area, or anytime you see an unoccupied pod floating by.

I headed in on Saturday morning, having rezzed my press package and donned my press pass. *grin* I tp’d to the welcome area. I don’t think I went to SL6B nor SL7B, so I was not really sure what to expect. Wow. That was my first reaction – Wow. It’s huge. It’s dazzling. There are monumental builds and smaller, intricate detailed builds. I thought I’d start by looking at the formal auditoriums and stages. My press notes ask me to credit all the builders and give locations, etc. but I confess that I failed to capture most of that information on this first pass. I had gotten to the 2nd stage when I knew I was going about this all wrong.

At that point good fortune intervened. Shenlei was at her SL8B build and saw me on the radar. She and Fancy Mesmeriser offered to come and fetch me and take me on my very own tour of the sims. *grin* See – it IS all about me. Although the standard tour pods are cute and very efficient, *I* got to tour in a carriage drawn by a beautiful prancing horse.

This is where I fall down on my press obligations. I took many pictures, mostly ooo’ing and ah’ing at the builds. I’ve posted all my pics to Flickr. There are 21 sims and I believe that Fancy carried us through nearly all of them. One build that caught my attention and camera was Karesansui by Sel and Nom Creations. I made sure that I got to see Honour’s build and Shen’s build, as I had some sneak information about both of those during the building phase. Of course, their two sims were just as far apart as they could be, with Honour on Spellbound and Carriage Trade on Stunning. Brave, dear, strong Fancy!!!! /me pats Fancy’s neck and offers a sugar cube. You need to have streaming media (v2 or a tpv based on v2) running in order to appreciate all the photos at Honour’s build. And you get to live out your dreams of life in the circus at the Carriage Trade build. *grin* The circus outfits are in the apples! You, too, can dance upon a gorgeous circus horse.

I will be heading back and posting more, I am sure. I want to be certain to get to Bear Island and get my free Linden Bears. 🙂 Following is the official information, including links to blogs with information and SLURLS. Happy 8th birthday, SL!!
.

Spanning 21 sims with over 700 contributors, over 300 exhibits, over 300 live performers and speakers with special speeches from Philip and Rod Linden, SL8B is a showcase for the accomplishments and content of all SL residents, celebrating the “life” of Second Life.
.

SL8B kicks off at 10:30 a.m. SLT on Monday, June 20 and runs through Sunday, June 26 with a glittering assortment of musicians, speakers, artists, business leads, media mavens, merchants, social organizers, and other amazing Residents like you.We’ll be keeping the 20-region site open for another week, so you’re welcome to come and tour the builds at your leisure. We’ll officially close the gates on Saturday, July 2 at 11:59 p.m. SLT.

About the Theme:
This year’s theme is the magic of Second Life. No, we’re not just talking about wizards and sorceresses (though of course they’re included). The true magic of Second Life is something different for each of us. It’s all about that moment when we realized how amazing Second Life really is. It’s when we found our own personal connections to Second Life, realizing its potential in our own lives and the lives of other Residents. Whether it’s the social aspect, the content creation possibilities, or unique business and commerce opportunities, we’ve all got a tale of Second Life magic to share.

All event times and locations, slurls, links, social media, etc., can be found on the resident blog: http://sl8b.wordpress.com. We will be updating the blog every day and including the most up-to-date information.

Important Dates:
June 20—10:30 a.m. SLT: Gates open to the public for the opening ceremonies. Scripts and build disabled throughout estates for the duration of opening ceremonies to discourage instances of lag and disruption. They will be turned back on after the opening speech.
11:00 am. Kim Linden speaks, opening the celebrations.
June 23—The Birthday!
3:00 pm slt. Rodvik Linden will be attending festivities at the Main Stage
June 26—Last day of entertainment.
July 2–Gates close. Sims will be locked.

Important Links:
SL Destination Guide: http://secondlife.com/destinations/birthday
SL8B Flickr Group: http://flickr.com/groups/sl8b
SL8B Blog: http://www.sl8b.wordpress.com
SL8B Wiki (for all rules, dates, etc): http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:SL8B

Summer Sunset

Ah, it’s summertime and the living is easy. At least some of the time it’s easy. Life gets easier for me when I log in to SL and visit the horses. I planned to check out their SL8B build. On the way, I encountered Shenlei and Starbuck. They offered me a chance to live out a fantasy I’ve had since 1st grade: to be a bareback rider in the circus. In 1st grade we did a “circus” in the classroom. AW, who always beat me out for everything – this was simply the first in a long line of her theatrical triumphs – got to be the tightrope walker. Hmmph. Not to be outdone, *I* said *I* would be the bareback rider. Hey – that’s like tightrope walking AND I got to have an (imaginary) horse, too!

So we headed over to the ring and after a few practice rounds, I felt comfortable enough to put on my costume. *grin* Star has the smoothest gait imaginable – I never felt any fear of slipping or sliding. Shen watched from the wall, giving encouragement and tips. I got to flip, pirouette, pose – the whole experience! We had a great time. The Carriage Trade SL8B build is wonderful and full of magic, certainly in my opinion anyway. There is nothing like the magical experience of being with horses. I urge you all to check it out when SL8B opens.

As our circus act drew to a close, Lalo mentioned that he was going to cool down after a RL hot summer day by tubing, would I like to join him? As I, too, had a hot humid RL summer day and now was all sweaty and tired from “performing”, floating about in an inner tube sounded fantastic! I changed into my suit and Lalo sent the taxi to get me to Harbour.

We hopped into the tubes (pink for girl, of course *grin*) and began drifting about the islands. The tubes are great fun – steered and propelled by the arrow keys. At one point I was lazy enough to do nothing but take photos and let Lalo bump my tube to move me through the water. We checked out the neighbor’s waterfall. An interesting experience when it turned out all the rocks were phantom and I found myself inside the island. *grin* I closed my eyes, held my breath and paddled like crazy in one direction til I came shooting out of the rocks. 🙂

We drifted about, admiring the setting sun and relaxing. Horses and playing about in the water. These are a few of my favorite things.

Ponehs!

When I embraced a virtual life style three years ago, one of the most difficult transitions for me was the common SL practice of deliberate mis-spelled words. *shudder* My first experience with LOLcats was painful. While I am not sure that I embrace this convention whole-heartedly, it no longer makes me cringe to see it or even to follow on occasion. It seems to me that when I am posting about the ponies of Carriage Trade, the appropriate spelling IS “ponehs!”.

Shenlei gave me a “heads-up” earlier in the day that the ponehs had a special surprise later that evening. When she began shaking the feed box in group chat, and calling the ponehs in from the field, I also “pricked up my ears” and moseyed back to the barn. In the best American beer commercial tradition, the ponehs had been rewarded with their very own beer wagon. Long-time SL residents understand that while building a multi-avatar conveyance is tricky, scripting it requires even more finesse. The Carriage Trade beer wagon is scripted for 8 ponies, a driver, and 2 riders (one on top of the beer barrels).

I got to hop on top of the beer barrels (of course. *grin* I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think to rez a bottle to enjoy during the ride). Shen was driving and the ponehs were having a ton of fun, based on the local chat. We spent a bit of time racing about the sim, accompanied by riders and horses cheering us on. The ponehs handled the turns with no trouble (I learned that the technical term is “feather the curve”) and never seemed to grow fatigued, despite the barrels. Of course, the barrels WERE being emptied during the evening. I mean – the beer was THERE. Wouldn’t YOU????

There always seems to be a lot of fun going on at Carriage Trade. The stalls are full of horses and ponies. There are rides – horseback and carriage-drawn – available for non-equine avatars. I always come away from my time there with a big smile on my face.

But… there was ONE avatar who wasn’t smiling last night. No, the expression there was one of longing. Wistful longing. Dreams. What do you think – can a ZEBRA be a beer-wagon poneh????? I sense a commercial in the making. *grin* L’chaim, all! To your health!

Snippets

RL has been taking up a lot of time. And when I’m inworld, I’ve been listening to a LOT of music. I LOVE dancing to music and I’ve been indulging a lot lately.

The other evening I logged in around 3pm SLT and tp’d from one music event to another for 5 or 6 hours.

snippet 1:
I’m fairly content with who and what I am. But if I were GOING to want to be someone else, it might be Calli. *grin* She is so talented, has great taste in music (usually LOL. and she ALWAYS plays some Janis- YAY) and has THE BEST wardrobe. Here she is DJ’ing Spanish/Calypso music, and there I am, envying her wonderful Calli-ness.

snippet 2:
I STILL love the horsies, even if I’ve not been by Carriage Trade lately. I always keep an eye on the group chat, and Shenlei and the horses cracked me up completely the other night:
Shenlei Flasheart: /me rattles grain bucket…ahem…
ghostly pricks her ears up and looks
Shenlei Flasheart: I’d like to welcome a new mare, Dreamer, to the herd…she will be in the Pony Club, so please trot by and meet her and give her a big CT welcome!
Hey, it worked! rattling that grain bucket started getting lots of ears perking and tails swishing. *grin* I love it.

snippet 3:
Honour McMillan has been thinking about an extremely interesting and, I think, important project for many months now. She’s finally unveiled a glimpse of it on her blog today, An Initial Plea for Help. Honour has asked us all to think about our lives in SL: If you could take one photograph that would show people why you come inworld what would it be? Just as Gracie Kendal photographed our avatars, Honour is asking US to photograph our LIVES. I love this concept and hope Honour continues with it into the full form I know she has contemplated. (Aside to Honour: maybe now with Rodvik at the helm, it IS do-able.) Gracie captured us as we see ourselves. Honour is asking us to capture our beloved SL as we see it. All of us have SOME picture we can take that sums up, if not our ENTIRE SL life, some important part of our SecondLives. Yes, as usual for Honour, she is being annoying (*grin* couldn’t resist, Honour) by asking that we use Koinup to participate so yes, it DOES mean yet ANOTHER login for some of us. Do it. Or Honour’s friends will find you….. *grin* Oh? You mean *I* have to do it too?????? sigh…..

There you go folks. If you want to find me, I’m probably dancing. Where? Oh, TriBeCa, Prim Economy, Houses, Fogbound, JJ’s Joint. Who’s playing/DJing? Komuso Tokugawa, Callipygian Christensen, Bear Rasmuson, Ziffy Zarf,, Noma Falta , Euterpe Queller (PLEASE come back SOON, EQ), Grace McDonnough, and many many more!!

Victorian Ladies’ Night Out

I had the pleasure of being invited to join the ladies for a night out at Carriage Trade. *grin* I did have to hunt around a bit to find appropriate attire. And SL was having one of its uncooperative evenings, so it did take awhile for my clothes to rez. But it was a lovely evening. We had dinner, followed by a piano recital courtesy of the multi-talented Tiffy.

Horseshoe Hunt

I have been trying to avoid hunts in SL. From my very first days I was lackadaisical about keeping my inventory neat and orderly. I had it somewhat organized. Then I took part in a hunt one Easter and blew the whole system right out of control. I STILL have boxes from that hunt that I’ve never opened. Every now and then I start off on a hunt and then realize I don’t have the patience, time or inventory skills to follow through collecting all the wonderful prizes. But I may have to bend a bit.

Carriage Trade is running a hunt from January 29th to February 28th. That’s a short time period. Even better (from my pov), there are only 24 prizes. Hunters are seeking 24 commemorative bronze horse shoes, each containing something special for horses or humans. There are 12 horse items and 12 human items. *grin* That works for me.

I wandered over there this evening to check it out, see if I could get any “insider” information for you all. You know you can rely on me. 🙂 I learned that there is a notecard of Hidden Hints. How do YOU get the Hidden Hints? Ask the horses. Straight from the horse’s mouth, as they say. All of the CT horses (residents of CT) have the notecard. The horses are friendly, good-natured and love to help.

So head on over sometime this month, and wander about, meet the horses, and find some horseshoes for good luck and good fun and good prizes!

Riding Lessons

I have found something for the “easier in RL than in SL” list. Taking the jumps. I’m talking riding of course. I mentioned in an earlier post that the horse does all the work in SL. Not necessarily. Those clever HUD designers. EITHER the horse or rider can control the action. I was invited to take part in another Carriage Trade photo shoot to advertise the riding lessons. As always, I jumped at the chance (yes, pun intended *grin* ). I was riding Belvidere Fotherington and Georgianna Blackburn was recording the effort. There were a few other horses around as well. We started off just fine: trotting, galloping. Belvidere is an expert there. Then it came time to take the pictures of the jumps. Bel missed a jump and friends being what friends are, we all teased. Belvidere got back at me, offered ME the chance to control the action. It sounded simple enough – use the arrow keys to move, the page up key to jump. Uh huh. Let me tell you – I am NOT showing you the pictures from when *I* was in charge. We crashed through the jumps repeatedly. The few times I actually jumped, we flew, because I over-paged up. 🙂 Not to mention that I was so busy paging up that I forgot to arrow forward so we landed on the jump. *grin* Good thing Bel is very forgiving.

I spent quite a bit of time at Carriage Trade today. I was wandering around, taking pictures of the stores and the stables. I made some new friends, GORGEOUS horses, and learned how the livery rentals work. As I’m too tired tonight to write it all up, I’ll leave you with the promise of more horse pictures. *grin* I think there may be a lot of those in the future. Pictures of the barn cats, too.

In the meantime, I’m going to be there for riding and jump lessons. And I’m hoping that the HORSE will be in charge. *grin* Or that I have a very forgiving, durable, patient mount.

I have always loved horses. I took riding lessons as a young girl. I recorded the name of every horse I rode. I went to riding camp. I still have my yellow ribbon from the show from camp. It was a small camp in Massachusetts, maybe 50 girls. Many of the girls brought their own horses to camp with them. If only. We were all assigned a horse of our own for purposes of stable cleaning and stall mucking. I loved that I had the only “Jewish” horse in the camp: Shalom.

I don’t think I ever got to ride Shalom for lessons but every morning I was there, cleaning the stall, feeding him a treatsie.

When I was just a new lass to SL, I met Shenlei Flasheart of Shengri La. She had horses that I could ride about the sim. I was thrilled and many of my ealier posts to this blog cover the joy I had in riding there. Times change, Shengri La is no longer here, I hadn’t ridden in ages. Then I met B and again fell in with the horse set. Except THIS time, the horses are avatars. *huge smile* They are gorgeous. As lovely as the rezzable horses were back in Shengri La, avatar horses are stupendous, MUCH better. So when I got an invitation to participate in a machinima to advertise a horse-oriented sim, Carriage Trade, I was thrilled. I went shopping, of course, to get some much needed boots and riding gloves. My friend directed me to E. Watkins Premier Equestrian Supplies, owned by Emilie Watkins. I had a WONDERFUL time wandering about the store (all 3 floors), gazing at both equestrian and aviation apparel. Despite wanting EVERYTHING horse-related, I restrained myself. I treated myself to a pair of dressage riding boots and some gloves. Ah, I LOVED my rl tan leather riding gloves. Such soft, supple leather, with the loveliest pattern of pindot ventilation holes. I skipped both the breeches and the hunt cap although I was sorely tempted. Another time.

I dressed in my riding finery and decided that I needed to do SOMETHING with my hair. I never went riding with my hair loose. I had long hair back in the day when I rode regularly. I almost always pulled it back, out of my way. I couldn’t wear it up, because that interfered with the jump cap. I rummaged through my hair styles and found one that I thought would suffice.

I tp’d to the meeting point at Carriage Trade. I was going to be one of two mounted riders. There were also 3 carriages. The cool thing about riding in SL is that the horse does all the work. I mean ALL the work. *grin* The horse is the one who has to wear fingers to the bone running through the sim. All I had to do was get up on the horse and enjoy the ride. I had the lovely fortune to be riding Andersine. I never even heard most of the directions and instructions as they were all IM’d directly to the horses. I simply sat there and took pictures. And more pictures. And even more pictures. I took 130 pictures in the hour that we were making the machinima. 130. I couldn’t stop. I had a smile on my face and I kept clicking saving clicking saving clicking saving.

Georgianna Blackburn and Belvidere Fotherington have started a blog chronicling Carriage Trade. Carriage Trade is a mixed-use equestrian sim, with facilities for both horses and riders: residential properties, common areas, retail shops, all in Victorian style. Last week Carriage Trade threw a party to celebrate Georgianna’s rez day and the grand opening. I *only* took 78 pictures at THAT event. *grin* They plan to hold riding get-togethers every other week on Wednesdays, beginning on December 29th, at 6 pm SLT. They will offer riding lessons and jumping practice in preparation for the first Carriage Trade Fox Hunt! /me laughs and orders an larger hard drive for photos.

Making the machinima was a wonderful time, the rezday/opening celebration was a great deal of fun and I can’t wait for the riding get-togethers and hunts! Come join me there!
.

.

.