Rant on rail manners... or lack thereof!

I recently went to a NBHA sponsored open barrel race with my mares, Magic and Ruby, with my still-somewhat-novice friend riding Ruby (she only does a slow lope around the barrels, but enjoys it, and it keeps Ruby in shape and sharp). Neither of these mares have ever shown themselves to be kickers, or easily upset in groups of strange horses, or anything like that, but after only a few minutes in the warm up pen, I found myself scrambling through my things for something red to tie in their tails to mark them as kickers! Neither of them were kicking or pinning their ears, it was just that people kept galloping their horses right up under my mare's tails!
One boy -- probably about twelve -- was on this cute little pony, and he kept trotting around, and we thought it was absolutely adorable until he started putting that pony at a full tilt run in the middle of the crowded warm-up arena. At one point, he actually ran up right behind Magic and ran into her rump! She kicked out (and thankfully didn't hit him or the pony) and then his parents chastised *me* for having a wild horse, when this kid could lay back on the reins with all his might, and that pony would toss his nose up and run right through it! Several times, in fact, I watched that little pony bolt out the opened gates, and the only way it stopped was when one of the kid's parents blocked it with their own horse!
Even after I put in the red ribbons (thinking that would at least make people respect our space a bit better), people kept crawling up under our tails, and one woman actually had her horse come so close that I nearly got a leg ripped off as she passed! I later found out that her horse was a stud... and it just so happens that Magic was in heat that day. :-/ He was hollering at her the entire show, and the woman just wouldn't keep her stud away, even after I flat out asked her to.
There were two people ponying horses around the arena, too... one gave up as soon as the arena filled, and the other kept pushing on... clotheslining Ruby once, and constantly going off at a gallop only to have to stop suddenly because her ponyed horse was bucking or otherwise acting up.
Once the show started, they had everyone bunching around the gate/alleyway thing, leaving a wide channel open in the middle. Every other rider came tearing through that wide open gate after their run, and right into that channel lined with horses and pedestrians; one even nearly into the hapless trailer parked at the end of the runway!

I definitely don't think I'll be going to that show again; I'd rather stick to my local arena: you get disqualified if you go faster than a walk through the gate, and the unspoken rule in warm up pens is that slow riders stay on the rail, fast ones in the middle, and all horses get at least a horse-distance on all sides.

Ugh. That's how they all are around here, plus one woman trying to lunge her horse in the middle of the arena. Or the people that try and run imaginary barrel patterns. Don't get me started on warm-up and gate etiquette...I swear there should be a class or something.

I have a lady where I keep my horse, she can't ride her horse, he's too hot, so all she does is lunge.
No matter where I am or what I'm doing she lunges in the middle of the arena, which is about 60x40metres. If she's lunging I can't jump or canter, because it makes her horse too silly.

There needs to be tests that everyone needs to pass to ride horses with other people, haha. ;D

Man, I'm glad round here people know what show etiquette is. I would've been quite angry if I was you. At the bigger shows I've been to, I've seen some real idiots lunging when people obviously are riding and practicing for a class coming up soon. I mean the lunge-line for them wasn't until the afternoon.

That brings up mental images of people sitting on the ground around the gate, studiously filling out test booklets about the size of a small dictionary.