He will be wearing Owner jacket, gloves, tan slacks, laprobe, felt hat of some sort. I get the ''stable livery" groom clothes. Maybe I could whip out the parasol after judging is done! Ha ha
We will have to dig out the leather harness and polish it up, which will have it ready for the August Metamora CDE Weekend. Luke is going for that, but maybe only the CT day, because he is not super fit and STILL carrying extra weight plus a lot of hair we don’t want to body clip off. In heat/high humidity (common) that can be a hard marathon. Weather is SO weird with heat and cold! 40f last Friday night, had to put my potted plants in the shed to prevent possible freezing!! Luke is also still learning the needed moves for dressage so his hazard driving won’t be ready yet. He is a thinker, improves with a few run thrus, but it is a lot to get understood after years of being driven on a loose rein in any body carriage. Still likes his snaffle, curb bit seems to remove his forward. We are alternating between the two, thinking more exposure will make him more comfortable with it.
A friend did the restoration work. Did wonderful work. Everything was solid, with one broke slat that he replaced. Old varnish had withdrawn to look like alligator hide. It is plenty old, we figure 1890s. Made by May and Jacobs of Guildford, England. He had to mix the stain since there were so many kinds of wood involved, needed them to all come out the same color. Wheels were repainted the original deep navy with a stripe. We thought they were black! He said no after scraping the paint a bit. Had them rerubbered after painting. It has two sets of cushions, one for showing, wool Bedford cord that almost never sees the light of day in protective covers! The daily set is brown naugahyde and ultrsuede on the driver’s wedge seat. That stands up to kid finger prints, drips with ice cream cones on them quite well. We used to hit the Dairy Queen pretty regular after a family drive when the kids were small.
We have taken wheels to Mr Martin several times, he does good work. He also did work on a carriage we sold to a COTH member years ago. The carriage got picked up there and delivered to her in GA, I believe. She had fun with it.
I will try to get some pictures, husband says he wants some. For some reason a photo seems to give you a better “look” at things than doing it in person! I thought horse and carriage looked good last night, though he was not sure he liked the shaft height. Being lighter wood, gently curved, they are a big contrast to horse color, quite different to the marathon type, short shafts he has been using on a borrowed vehicle. Now to see what a photo tells us!
Those Governess carts are SOOO cute, but like you said, riding twisted does not look fun! I found sidesaddle riding to be similar. Needing to twist from waist down for legs aside, straight forward from waist up, to be correct, was not real comfortable on long rides. And you need to do long rides to get familiar, build muscle memory, STAMINA to hold that position over time. I got fairly good at it, but no place to use this skill back then. So I sold the saddle. Horse said “finally!” Ha ha
Oh, you definitely need a parasol! 
