Dressage lesson with John (first lesson in County)

Today's dressage lesson was awesome.  I had an enormous list of questions for John. He looked at my dressage test from Inavale, said "maybe" we can do the 1* at Rebecca next year, the powder on his gloves is from his baseball days, yes, Duke can stay two times in August but he doesn't know how much he can ride the week before his show, he thinks I can adjust midstream between fences (I said I couldn't, and we talked about how time is going slower and I can think more and react more and make decisions in between fences, which he says I couldn't do as much even a few months ago), for lengthening with my seat, that's fine, but I should also try to use my leg (use BOTH) because to lengthen (or shorten) before a show jumping fence, I need Duke to know the leg aid as well as the seat aid because there isn't time to sit down and then give the leg aid, for cross country at Inavale, the fences he saw were fine (and then we talked about the flow of courses and how fun it is to have just a minute of gallop with some inviting fences), how much Kaitlyn liked Ashley's lesson and why (and then we looked out the door and Kaitlyn was walking around so she had just fallen off), the next shows (Young Rider, he says is ok; Spokane three day he says no, too much to do two in a row and he is not crazy about Rebecca because he doesn't want Duke to get all strung out and crazy; and for California, maybe, we'll see), lessons next week (Brooke is there for camp end of the week), and my job. John said the difference between Duke and Charlie is that when Charlie got going, he got on the forehand, but when Duke gets going, he is more on his hindquarters, which makes it easier to push him forward to the fence - and more comfortable to push him and ride over those fences too.
THEN we rode.
We started by shortening his stride at the walk, and then trotting with just a tiny bit of outside bend.  From there, we got him bent to the inside, and then John had us do a lot of lateral work.  First we came down the centerline, changing direction each time.  John said to line up with the judge, and then use the judge to stay in the same line, so we block A and from the judge's view A is blocked the entire ride.  Then we did a quarter line to the wall, then lengthening on the long side, then we did canter lengthenings on the long side.  About mid-way through the lesson, a light bulb went off for Duke, and then he really tried to lengthen, and it was kind of amazing.  I rode around grinning, because I'd just ask him a little bit and he'd stretch out and then compress back.
We did some 15 meter circles, 10 meter circles, and turning at E then turning again at B.  Duke was sweet and compliant and tried and generous the whole lesson, and he was just an absolute delight to ride.
The takeaway, unfortunately, is that I can ride awesome when John is there, but I don't have enough of a grasp of it yet to be able to articulate everything we did.  It was a lot of feel and not as much step-by-step memorization like I've been doing.  Sweet Duke got sweaty, and afterwards, we walked down the road to cool off, and even then he still had a foamy butt.
Man, I love lesson days.