Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Florida: Meet another half-bro for the first time

Emmet and I have been emailing one another for months now trying to set up a time and place to meet. He's been hard to pin down, though 'cause he's constantly on-the-go for work. Emmet's a horse trainer, so he has to travel quite a bit. A few months ago he was living in Kentucky and now he's in Florida and a couple of months from now he'll be in Baltimore. Up until last week, I thought he lived wayyyy out in Miami, but discovered (after playing around with Mapquest) that he's only 20 minutes from my grandmother's house. So when I decided to visit the grams I figured it would only be right to finally meet my other brother!

In 30 minutes, I was face-to-face with my half-brother, Emmet:


Oh and when I went into his place for the first time, look what greeted me at the door:


He's sticking his tongue out at me! Bastard.

Emmet and I chatted it up a bit and then he had to go over to the training facility to feed the horses. Once we got there he gave me a little tour of the place.

Here's the track:


Here's the barn where all the beautiful horses eat, sleep, and chill:


I petted all forty horses on the head. They were all so sturdy and sweet.

Here are some close ups of the beauties:




And here's a horse worth TEN MILLION DOLLARS:


Most of the horses are worth between one and two million dollars, but this one is the most valuable...'cause I guess he's the fastest.

Then I asked Emmet to take some photos of me with a horse:




That horse was tickling my neck with his huge nostrils!

Emmet is very comfortable with the horsies:


Regular (slacker) non-racing horses eat only hay, but these horses are athletes, so they need more nutrients and protein for energy and building muscle. So in addition to the hay, they also get fed a high protein concoction twice a day. This concoction is all veggie based, thank you.  I think it's interesting to note that these strong athletic animals are all vegetarian. Take THAT, Fool.

Here's Emmet and the veggie feed:




It smelled yummy, kinda like dried fruit. Emmet said I was smelling the molasses. I wanted to take a taste, but...don't worry, I didn't.

And then Emmet wheeled the stuff into the barn to divvy it out:


About 45 minutes later, we headed over to a Chinese restaurant to get some grub:


We look so serious! We were having a great time, I swear, it's just that the waiter caught us in between smiles.

Then Emmet had the nerve to order cheesecake!


I didn't have any. : (

It was soooo nice to meet Emmet. He's warm and friendly and sweet and it was just a pleasure spending time with him. We're gonna meet again in a few days and see a movie. Don't know which one yet. Emmet's gonna break his I-only-see-James-Bond-movies rule to go to a non-James Bond flick with me. Yay!

Great day. : )

2 comments:

  1. Wicked...........great to see that u guys met up, and lovely to see where the bro is working! those "guns" must spook the horse a bit bro :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha! Yeah, his "guns" are MASSIVE.

    ReplyDelete