Math and Dressage?
60 meters by 20 meters… Sounds simple enough, right? Sooo wrong! Guess I should have paid more attention to geometry while in high school (although I never guessed that the first time I’d use it SINCE high school would be to set up a dressage arena, so, no, to all you high schoolers out there who ask “are we ever going to use this sh*t again?” That is, unless you plan on ever attempting to layout a dressage arena. For those of you who don’t know, a standard size dressage arena (there’s also a small dressage arena) is a 60 meter by 20 meter rectangle (which roughly converts to 66 ft by 197 ft, well, technically 65.6 ft by 196.8 ft, but who’s counting, right?) with at least 8 letters (6 on the sides and one on each end - A F B M C H E K - A being where you enter) around the perimeter. Each letter is supposed to be a certain distance away from the corner and the other letters, the arena needs to me square and, of course, the corners need to be honest to God 90 degree angles. Sounds easy enough until you’re out there moving letters and sides of the arena around for the billionth time. So, as dusk began to settle, I made an executive decision. Eyeball the damn thing. And you know what? I went back and measured it a few days later and it’s actually closer to being dead on correct than it was the dozen or so times I tried to figure it out mathematically. So I’m not sure whether to be proud that I obviously have a good eye or really embarrassed that my geometry and math sucks THAT much (and I used to be really really good in math, too)! All I know is, that damn arena is staying put. Mow around it, jump areound it, I don’t really care, because I sure as hell won’t be doing THAT again any time soon!