This entry was posted on 6/26/2009 7:36 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
Monday June 22 2009
Well,
I can't say I was TOO disappointed about not riding 50 miles today, as
Sue and I hunkered down in her trailer early in the morning, watching
the rain stream down the windows, and watching the horses stick their
heads down and their butts to the gusting rain. Nor was I complaining
as I poured myself a third cup of Starbucks coffee, perked in Sue's
Moka Expresso Maker on her stove in her horse trailer, as she put on
layers of clothes underneath her raincoat, preparing to go out.
I
did have a little twinge of jealousy, however, as the 16 die-hard
50-milers and the 4 25-milers headed out on the trail, shafts of sun
very briefly poking through the clouds and mist as riders whooped and
yee-hawed their way northward up the canyon, back into the mist. I went
back to the trailer and had another cup of coffee.
The lunch vet check was out of camp, at the Corrals way up Bjorkman road.
I went there with Linda Howard, who had ridden the first two days (on
her horse that almost drowned in a bog here a couple of years ago), and
who was crewing today for her nephew. She had me drive so she could
finish her breakfast, and it was all fine until we got to the corrals -
where the road turned to a sea of mud in a meadow. Oh dear! I gunned it
and whipped the steering wheel wildly back and forth (a learned
desperate habit from the sands of Dubai!) so we wouldn't get stuck, and
made it to some dry ground and parked. "YOU get to drive back!" I said
to Linda.
Although she didn't ride today, you could also call
Linda a hard core endurance rider. Last year she was in a cast from her
neck to her waist, after breaking her neck - on Mother's Day. Of course
she's back riding now. Linda has over 8600 miles, and over 21 seasons
of riding, she has only 4 pulls! And one of those was a Rider Option -
the Almost-Bog-Drowning!
Linda loves multi-day rides, her
ultimate goal being to finish with a healthy horse that's ready to go
again the next day; and with her record, you could say she excels at
them. Her main horse, AM Gypsy Realm, has over 3300 miles in 7 seasons,
and 67 starts, with only 2 pulls (one of them the Rider Option for the
Almost-Bog-Drowning!) That's my kind of endurance riding too:
multi-days, horses that go many seasons, many thousands of miles.
I
expected to see Sue arrive first at the vet check on Al, but several
others arrived before she did. Marty said he'd seen a horse's tracks
that missed the turn down off the snowfield. He'd followed them a ways,
but then lost them. When more than half a dozen people had arrived at
the vet check, I figured the lost rider must have been Sue! Sure
enough, when she finally arrived, she said yes, those were Al's tracks
- Sue hadn't seen the turn down the mountain, and she got onto another
trail where she did see some ribbons, and ended up following that all
the way down before realizing she was on the wrong trail. Then she and
Al had to climb back up onto the ridge to look for the right trail
down! So Al had some hard extra mileage today that he'd be able to tell
Khan all about this evening.
While the sun was just beginning to
come out in the meadow, Marty said that up on the ridge, it had been a
cold hurricane a'blowin', sleet pounding sideways, the wind trying to
rip off the visor from his helmet.
It was a tricky trail today:
a hard climb, sketchy footing and wicked weather - and everybody was
smiling when they came down, having a good time. Tom Noll said it was
great - the clouds would briefly part and give him a glimpse down one
of the canyons - before pounding sleet and snow on them again. Tom's
horse Frank - his 3rd day on the trail - didn't care about any ol' good
scenery, he just wanted to go fast, as usual. Tom and Frank have been
having this speed argument for 9 years and 4000 miles now. They still
haven't worked it out. Frank was loving the personalized Feed Service
at the vet check by Linda Howard, who fetched him his favorite food of
the afternoon and held it in a feed bucket right up to his nose, so he
wouldn't have to walk anywhere or bend his head down.
After
Linda's nephew headed back out on the trail, Linda turned her jeep
around without getting stuck, and we drove back to camp, where Khan was
sweating under two blankets in the sunshine. I spent the rest of the
afternoon, while waiting for Sue and Al to come in, between rain storms
that swept through camp, taking off and putting back on Khan's
blanket(s), and hanging out our blankets and Frank's blankets to dry,
then running and grabbing them and putting them back inside from the
rain.
A couple of thunderstorms skirted camp to the west - where
the riders were coming in - and I watched (cowered) from the safety of
the trailer. Drinking more Starbucks.
Sue finished somewhere
around fourth, and after she vetted in, then showed for Best Condition,
we packed up, loaded up the horses, and headed to her house outside of
Park City. A number of today's riders lingered and camped overnight at
Strawberry Fields, enjoying a potluck dinner and the cool clear starry
evening in the mountains.
In Park City, Sue and I turned Al and
Khan out with their 5 buddies. They all sniffed noses, ran around their
paddock in circles, then Al and Khan went to the bestest softest dirt,
and rolled and rolled, till they came up as black horses.
And so
it turned out that neither Sue nor I had to worry at all about the new
horse I was getting on for the first time at Strawberry Fields Forever
- I now have a new pink-nosed equine pal. It was a great weekend, for
humans and horses.
