It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Hooves, smarts, cabinets

2012-01-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

Front left:

Front right:

They could do with a little more trimming, but not bad. Her frogs are all tattered because they shed off a layer when the snow came. I've been smearing goo up in the sulcus every other day for about a week, and they're opening up very nicely. Heels are still a bit high, but I'm just taking them down as the dead stuff scrapes out.

Side shot, fronts:

Left rear, juuuust starting to lift off (she was in NO MOOD to stand still for pictures):

Fronts from the front:

Compared with a week and a half ago, we're making great progress.

Now, GLOVES! You want Original Mud Gloves. The latex dip stuff COVERS YOUR KNUCKLES. I dunno about you, but I'm constantly rasping holes in my normal gardening glove knuckles, or just rasping holes in my actual knuckles. If you can't find them locally, I got mine from these resellers on Amazon. Yes, they're fifteen freakin' dollars with shipping, but they're totally worth it if you're a knuckle-rasper.

I usually wear M gloves, and that's what I ordered this time. I think these gloves run a tiny bit bigger than normal mesh-dipped gardening gloves, and the next pair I get will be S.

I also saw a moment of unusual Dixie intelligence, I think.

Dixie doesn't like to be groomed. I've tried everything from the softest of brushes to the stiffest of currycombs, from gentle short strokes to really firm long strokes, and she just doesn't like it. She's got a couple of itchy spots she wants me to scratch, but she really doesn't like to have her entire coat brushed out, and she's a terrible wiggleworm when I do brush her.

When I clipped her neck Friday, I gave her a couple treats for being brave about the scary clippers, and she eventually relaxed and started chowing down on her haybag and I just clipped as best I could while her neck moved. That's as good as it gets with Dixie - she's eating and standing still and letting me do whatever to her.

Today I got the clippers back out and she had another snorting wild-eyed "oh god scary monster" moment, but when she got over that she stood absolutely rock-still while I worked on her neck a little more and clipped the front half of her belly. I spent probably 15 minutes clipping, flipping her mane, clipping the other side, flipping her mane back, clipping between her front legs, clipping her belly, looking at what I'd done, and touching up extra-scraggly bits. She did not move a muscle - she didn't drop her head and eat, she didn't fidget, NOTHING. There's only two possible explanations I can think of: either the warm vibrating clippers just feel nice, or she realized that I clipped off some hair which kept her cooler and she likes to be cool. I really think it was the latter.

My poor horse:

Yes, I'm storing the clippers in a Crown Royal bag.

Inside news: I got the last set of cabinets scrubbed, sanded, and caulked today - tomorrow I can paint them. And I peeled off the last bit of ugly wallpaper border and almost half the dark green checkered wallpaper on the long wall! Woohoo! The end is in sight.

Seven weeks til the season starts!

2012-01-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

I decided, when I ordered the clippers, that I had to shake off the January doldrums and seriously make and stick to a conditioning schedule. Dixie's about ready for a slow 30, but I'm shooting to get her fit for a 50 - either RoM or the Derby or High Desert, if they are putting it on this year. I busted out my awesome new horse calendar I got from a friend for Christmas and marked it up.

I'll do hills on Wednesdays - hopefully we'll progress to charging all the way over into the next valley and then turning around and climbing it again to head home. I've got two NEDA rides before ROM (February 12 and March 10) so those will be my long rides for those weekends. I've written down some other conditioning distances/days, but I'm somewhat flexible in the hopes of riding with some of my friends on the weekends. It's looking like 25-35 miles a week right now, in 3-4 days of riding.

Endurance buddies!

My everyday hill is 3 miles to the top and 800' of climb. That's a lot or not much at all, depending on your terrain - what's your go-to conditioning hill look like?

And while I'm asking questions: What's your first ride going to be? Do you have a conditioning schedule you're trying to stick to, and do you think mine's too ambitious or not nearly enough for a second-year horse? We endurance bloggers seem to range from "oh I ride whenever my friends ride" to "I have a spreadsheet and we ride the schedule unless there's more than 1" of ice on the roads."

I went ahead and filled out the rest of the calendar too.

I wrote in all the NEDA rides, even though I don't think I'll make it back to Reno for all of them. I really want to come back in August for the Frenchmans' Lake two-day ride - that was just a ton of fun last year. And there's a two-day NEDA in Austin, NV in October that I might make it to as well. Austin is the geographical center of Nevada, and it has the darkest skies in the nation so the stargazing is supposed to be superb. I'm not a very good stargazer (hello Orion! Dipper, where'd you go??) but I really enjoy looking at the stars, even if I don't have a clue what I'm looking at.

I also wrote in Reno area rides until July, and Bay Area rides from June to November. If I had two horses and an unlimited budget I couldn't hit ALL these rides, but I find it helps me to decide if I know what else is going on. I haven't really considered PS, and I don't have the scoop on what rides in Oregon are like totally worth the 8-10 hour drive dude! PNW friends, tell me what you love in OR (50s only this year please) and I'll add it to the Big Master List of Rides.

That's more like it!

2012-01-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

I took Dixie out for a really lovely 10 mile ride this afternoon. Here's the Strava:

It doesn't look like the Strava shows up in google reader, so if you're interested, click on over to the actual blog to look at it. I do all my reading, right up until the point where I decide I have a meaningful comment to make, in Reader, so I thought I'd warn you too :)

This is the ride I was planning on doing last Wednesday. There's a one-mile segment that Strava is automatically tracking - the mid part of the hill climb - and it took 17:30 to slog up that damn hill Wednesday, and she flew up it in 11:30 today. That's an astronomical improvement. Still, she was dripping wet by the time we made it to the top - I think I will sponge her chest and belly tomorrow and do a bit more clipping. I'm leaving it quite long - it looks like a 3-month-old clip job - so I think she won't freeze.

At about 4 miles we'd worked our way along the top of the hill and there was a very steep long downhill stretch, so I got off and jogged down. My poor Big Leftie complained about it - I don't think I blogged it but I hit it so hard I thought I broke it earlier this month, and it's still bruised - but it felt nice to "trot" downhill on foot. And my faith was rewarded - I found a perfect tree stump (very rare!) at the bottom of the hill.

I worked mostly on keeping Dixie at a consistent speed, and I also didn't check my speed on the GPS once. My watch band is broken so it lives clipped to my saddle - it's not as easy as lifting my wrist up. I am amazed that we were rolling along at 10 mph - it felt like 7-8. She did a lot of gaiting :)

All the erratic stops were from gawking - it was a lovely weekend day and there were a ton of dirt bikes, off-road trucks, and people out target shooting. We often had to slam on the brakes and stare in utter amazement, exactly like she'd never seen a dirt bike/truck/person before.

Dixie was what my riding buddy back in Memphis would've called "spicy." Totally on, sproingy flashy gaits, gawking at everything, just a blast to ride.

You can see she was still PLENTY sweaty. Sorry for the crappy cam-phone pics; they really don't do well at high altitude.

I trimmed her feet after the ride - they look excellent if I do say so myself. I think I've got most of the false sole out and the bars look good and I've been treating her frog cracks with goo and they're opening up pretty well. And I got new gloves! Highly recommended cheap gloves! But I'll take hoof pics and do a post about them tomorrow. I might even take the REAL CAMERA so you can see her feet in the correct colors. ;)

"...everything looks like a nail."

2012-01-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

You know that saying: "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? Well, I am a woman with clippers, and everything looks very hairy. I am exercising great restraint though. The dog doesn't even have racing stripes yet.

Let me back up some.

So I guess two weekends ago, I rode with C and S out at Fort Churchill. It was a really nice ride, but Dixie sweated a LOT and I didn't electrolyte her enough. (How do I know? She was too tired to eat when we got back to the trailer. I gave her another couple ounces of applesauce elytes, and 10 minutes later she perked up and started noshing on her hay.) Then we had the windstorms (and the fire down south), then icy rain and a bit of much-needed snow.

I painted like a fiend in the kitchen and waited it out, because inspiration is really hard to come by in January. Then the high pressure moved back in and I took Dixie out for a spin on Wednesday.

My plan was to take her up over the hill, then come back south along the east side of the ridge - nothing very hard at all. She could barely trot up the easy part of the hill and she just bonked out on the steeper bit toward the top. Her breathing and HR never slowed down, no matter how much water I dumped on her. I kinda thought she was sick, probably dying, until I realized I'd taken off my hoodie and was perfectly comfortable in a tank top - it was near 60 and very humid from all the snow melting. DUH, she was hot.

I've been really patient, working around her coat. I don't really mind planning my rides so that she has time to cool off before the sun sets, but at this point she can't even perform in all her hair. And it won't fall out for months yet - there's no way I'll have her legged up for rides in March and April, much less be able to complete them. Time for clippers.

Amazon to the rescue! I paid for overnight shipping and had a stack of boxes waiting for me on Friday.

There's not much I love more than a shiny new power tool. Yeehah! I clipped her neck with the grain, with the 7F, and sort of feathered it out so it doesn't look so "hey I just clipped my horse in January." I got one horrendous clipper line down the left side, but the right side looks pretty good and I can live with the whole thing.

Then - because everything looked like a nail - I clipped her jawline. I think fuzzy ears are cute, and I'm perfectly willing to leave whiskers alone, but I really hate goaty looking heads.

I went at her bridle path next and got the off side neatened up, but the clippers up by her left ear sent poor Dixie into a panic. I think some asshole ear-twitched her when she was young, because she's always been jumpy about having the left side of her poll/ear messed with. I had a pocket full of cookies and I "spent" them all working on touching her left ear area, with my hand and with the back of the clippers, without her freaking out. We'll get there one day. For now, well, she doesn't look worse than she did with the scissors bridle path.

I'll ride today and see how she does. If I need to, I can (gleefully!) go take more off, but I know there's a sweet spot where she's not so overheated but she doesn't need blanketing. And when we move to CA, I'm just going to keep her neck/chest/belly clipped all summer, I think.

When I came in the house, I discovered one of the cats had puked on the electric lap blanket on the couch. The puker is, 99% of the time, The Fluffy One, cause he gets enormous fluffy-hairballs that upset his delicate tummy. If I'd sprung for the cordless clippers, I'd have chased him down and shaved his belly and back legs. So far he's escaped that fate by not hanging out in the bathroom near an outlet.

And I got one part of the kitchen done well enough to share. Back in December, I unclogged the clogged up right side of the kitchen sink, and while I was messing around under there I replaced the cabinet floor. It was pressboard, and it had gotten wet (from drain water from the clogged up drain, sometime before we bought it) and it was pretty warped and curled. I ripped it out and laid in two pieces of thin plywood chipboard I had on hand.

I didn't nail them down or anything - the next poor soul who has to work under there will thank me for that. When I painted under there this week, I primed the chipboard, then put some (surprisingly pretty!) contac paper on top. I think it looks completely respectable now.

(Bonus head of The Fluffy Puker investigating)

I wonder if the dog is hot? I could give her a really sharp trace clip...

Good post at Buckskin and Bay

2012-01-24T09:16:00.000-08:00

I hardly ever link to other posts, because I figure most of us already read most of the same blogs, but if you don't read Jill's blog, this is a great post.

Buckskin and Bay

Misfit

2012-01-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

I just spent an hour and a half looking at boarding barns on Bay Equest and freaking out. There are so many choices, and they're all so nice, and none of them look like the place for a big hairy galumph of a TWH who does (very slow) endurance. Where are my people? Who are my people?

It's really easy for me to forget that Dixie's in the minority when I'm actually out riding with a bunch of Arabs. They're just horses then - more naturally gifted athletes, sure, but they're short and chunky or big and leggy and many of them are exceptionally hairy. But somehow looking at the beautiful pics on the barn websites just terrifies me. Nobody in the whole Bay Area could possibly want to ride with me! A barn that proudly boasts of seven miles of trails is right out. H/J barns are right out.

I've boarded at barns where my discipline didn't mesh at all with the rest of the boarders, and it was very lonely. If I have to, I'll do it again - lonely is ok if my horse is getting the best care - but I'd like to find a place where I'm not That One Crazy Endurance Rider.

Gotta get off this computer and quit feeling sorry for myself. I have plenty of time to look through every barn in the East Bay if I need to.

Book reviews: Girl of Fire and Thorns

2012-01-20T09:57:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about doing book reviews. But the thing is, I don't yearn to read book reviews, so I'm kind of hesitant to foist them on the world.

My dad is a fanatic library patron. He goes by there at least twice a week, for as long as I can remember. He visits with the librarians, drops off his plastic bags for recycling, and walks along the "new books" shelves picking up anything that looks interesting. Sometimes the librarians point out something he or my mom might like, but I think he picks most of the books based on the cover and a quick glance at the flap.

I used to be one of those kids who carefully investigated at the cover, read the flap/back, read the first chapter, and THEN decided if I wanted to read it, but as I've gotten older, I've gotten more like him. I just pick up stuff that catches my eye. If I read a review (or part of a review; I hate spoilers) I'll add it to the e-reserve list, and by the time it comes in I've probably forgotten why I wanted to read it. Sometimes I slog through bad books, sometimes I read part of them then toss them back in the pile, and sometimes I really like what I've read!

So I think I'll try to document the crap I read. I'll give you a genre, a vague summary, who might like the book, and if I remember the source, a link to a real review.

Last night I finished Girl of Fire and Thorns. It's a first novel, YA, with a fat princess and real magic/God. Lots of main character growth. It's book 1 in a series but it wraps up nicely. A very fast read. I didn't adore it as much as this review, but I did finish it without regrets.

Another one

2012-01-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

This will probably hit the national news, so I wanted to let yall know Dixie and I are just fine.

There's another enormous fire raging south of Reno. I know several people who live there - a ton of horse people live in Pleasant Valley. I hope the livestock evac crews got all the horses to safety.

We live about 25 miles north of there, clear on the other side of Reno, so we're in no danger from it at all. Keep the other folks in your thoughts/prayers.

Hoof update: too much of a good thing...

2012-01-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

We've had exactly an inch of snow (not even rain! snow!) since early November. It's dry. It's tragically dry. I've been riding a lot and sort of picking a hoof up, looking at it, and calling it good. I mean, they look like this (sorry about the dirty; couldn't find my pick):

Walls are freshly trimmed BELOW sole level! I sharpened my knife* til it cuts wood like butter and it just skipped off of the sole.

Now here's the side view, same hoof:

Definitely long. At least a quarter inch long. Hard to tell with all her glorious feathers, but I think the quarters are pushed up a bit, too.

Heel view. Pretty balanced, at least.

Here's the front view. You can see how sharply I rolled the toes back. My only plan of attack is a) hope it really does rain and snow starting tomorrow and b) keep the walls shorter than the "sole" and ride on the pavement at a walk/running walk.

The back right is the only hoof that's even thinking about shedding that horrible crap.

I just can't get any purchase with any kind of tool to pry it out though.

The whole set is here if you're interested in looking at all the views I got.

Don't even think about telling me to stand her in a bucket. She lets me trim her hooves quite patiently these days, but she is in no way going to stand in a bucket. One person (hi S!) suggested any kind of grease might help, so I think I will slather her feet in lard tomorrow. And I've really got my fingers crossed for a good soaking rain to soften her hooves and let the sand do its work. If not... I guess I'll have to get the hose out and water her hooves on a warm day.

*I read Christoph's post right before one of my daily trips to Home Depot, so I actually remembered to buy a chainsaw sharpening file. Mine is 7/32" / 5.5 mm, and I'd recommend the next size down from that. It gets in the tip of the knife, but juuust barely. I whizzed it along the beveled side of the blade several times, til I stopped feeling rough burrs and nicks. Then I deburred the flat (convex curve) side of the blade on my ceramic knife sharpening stone. If you don't have one of those, use the little unglazed ring on the bottom of a coffee mug, or a thick flat piece of leather (like a strop). Whatever you use to deburr the outside of the knife, hold the knife almost parallel to the surface and give it a swipe or two, it doesn't take much.

I have a ton of other stuff to blog - I had a great ride with C at Fort Churchill, except Dixie stumbled pretty hard on the way back to the trailer (and that's what made me LOOK at her feet). I've painted cabinets all the way down one of the long sides of the kitchen, and my color choices are working great, and I haven't broken down in tears about the wrecked state of my kitchen yet. I painted the heinous built-in fluorescent light in the kitchen and you know what? It looks WAY BETTER for $8.

Just a reminder, if you're on Facebook you can follow the thrilling hourly "kitchen looks amazing!" / "oh god i hate painting why did i do this shoot me now" updates if you friend me. Just, like, have a horse in your profile or message me and tell me who you are cause I don't actually accept totally random requests.

Dear god, not again

2012-01-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

That's what I thought when the water trickled to a halt as I tried to take a shower. Of course I immediately assumed the well had gone dry and/or the well pump had died, and tried to figure out if we could get a second mortgage before the horse ran out of water, and if not how long it would take to walk back and forth from the neighbors' every day with 5-gallon buckets.

I went and flipped the well pump breaker, just because that's the first thing you always try in troubleshooting. I left it alone and sulked for 10 minutes, then went and looked at the pressure gauge to discover it had shot up to 90 psi. So I thought about it for a bit, then turned on all the taps and drained the pressure down to 35, then cut the taps off and watched the pressure gauge. It refused to budge. I powercycled the pump again and it kicked back on and went up to 75 psi (still too high, but less likely to make me think it was going to explode). That amount of testing convinced me that the problem was with the pressure sensor, the little switch dealie that tells the pump when to pump more water into the pressure tank.

Fortunately those are cheap ($30) and standardized. I went and bought a new one, watched some youtubes, sulked for a while about the unfairness of it all, then got to work. I turned off the power to the pump (and to the water heater for good measure), drained the tank, took the cover off the switch and triple-checked it wasn't still electrified, and took the switch off.

The little T-pipe leading up to the switch and the switch itself were completely clogged with iron and gross black stuff. I dug around in my new white junk drawer and found a pointy stiff piece of wire and chiseled out all the iron deposits from everything I could reach. Then I rinsed everything off, teflon taped the seams, and screwed it back together. It actually worked. I'm gonna wait a couple days and make sure it doesn't break again and then I can return the unused new switch.

Every day, I appreciate the miracle of showers more and more.

What to do!

2012-01-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

I'm sure this won't be the last time I ask yall for help.

Today I got a load of trash off of the wellhead. When I fenced the pasture, it was really hot and I just wanted to get the horse home already and I ended up tossing all the trash over on the fenced-off strip of land where the wellhead is. It's conveniently out of sight so I've been blissfully ignoring it for a year and a half, but I guess it's gotta go.

Those are 7' solid 4x12's on top. Why would you spend at least a hundred bucks on that kind of lumber and leave it to dry-rot in your back yard?! People never cease to amaze me.

Anyway, after I got that disposed of, I tackled the run-in. It's three 8x12 stalls. One of them was a pigeon coop or something, and I tried putting the chickens in there but that was a huge pain in the ass so I moved them to the chicken shack, and it's just been unused since then. I ripped off the chicken wire front, tossed all the lumber into a burn pile and a dump pile, cleaned out all the odds and ends, and now I'm stuck.

You can see I've got the goat igloo in one part, and there's a cast-iron tub I cannot move in the middle part, and now the pigeon part is open too. I could rip out the interior walls - they're just 1/2" plywood nailed on some 2x4 strips - but maybe I should leave them? If you were buying a moderately priced small horse acreage, would you rather have three stall-lets to feed the horses - it'd be easy to gate them off - or have one big open 24x12 run-in?

People cram a hell of a lot of horses in these little half-acre and acre paddocks, but they pipe them off into individual horse areas. I'd be comfortable having two to three horses in my half acre undivided paddock.

Also there's the little decorative fence thing out front. It was blue but all the paint's peeled off. Should I paint it a) white b) green c) dark green or d) rip it out?

I am also creeping along painting the kitchen. It's much easier doing one cabinet at a time - not so overwhelming. Got two coats on the inside of the big cabinet. Tomorrow I can sand the fronts of the doors again and get them painted, then move on to the little cabinets above the fridge.

2012 goals

2012-01-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

Well, here we go. Better late than never, right?

1) At least one injury-free 50.

I'd prefer to do lots of 50s, but I won't feel really confident til we manage to pull off the first one, so that's what I'm planning on. Right now it looks like the LD 30 at Rides of March, so I can ride with Mel, then a 50 at the Derby at the end of March.

Nothing else looks exciting til May. Whiskeytown is a long way away and American River sounds hellish. I guess I'll do Washoe in May, but I'm obviously not too excited about it yet. I've never done it before - it's the ride I was on the way to in 2009 when Dixie freaked out and flipped in the old trailer. Last year it was only two weeks after High Desert so we skipped it. High Desert isn't calendared - I guess the RM's not doing it, which is a total shame.

2) Sell the house and move to California.

We've decided to go with the "sell the house" side of the Great Plan. A year ago when we started this crazy G-moves-to-CA thing, we worked out three plans: sell the house, rent the house, or G comes back here and works from home. It's better all around if he stays in person in SF, and I don't really want to rent the house. We can't rent it for enough profit to cover very many disasters, and it's hard enough being a local landlord. I love this house and I've had a lot of fun fixing it up, but oh well - we'll buy another one someday.

This is my goal, at least the selling part, because I have to do all the hard work. And by "hard work" I mean "keeping it all picked up and really clean." Ugh. That is so not my strong point, yall.

I'm painting the kitchen now. OMG it looks SO much better - I went with light tan for the walls and the same color family off-white for the cabinets. In February or March we'll think about replacing the crappy carpet in the kitchen/den, and in March I'll move all the random crap to the barn, clean real good, and list the house. Average days on market for the area last year was right around 5 months, so we'll see how it goes!

And that's really all I've got. It's all a big question mark after midsummer. I don't think "keep eating right" or "continue exercising" are very New Years Resolution-worthy. I'm thinking about doing mini book reviews of (some/most/all of) the books I read this year - I haven't decided to commit to that yet though.

Trailer mods 101

2012-01-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

Caitlin asked about tools. Jonni's touched on it, but I thought I'd post pics of my MVTs.

Here's my drill. It's just a Hitachi 12v. I wouldn't recommend cheaping out with a 9.4v, but you honestly don't need an 18v either. Have two batteries, and swap as soon as you think you're losing power.

The secret weapon: a drill and tap kit.

When you think you want to hang something, go look in the nails/screws/fasteners section of the hardware store and pick out your hardware. Eyebolts, carriage bolts, and screws all come in wood (pointy tip) or metal (flat tip) versions. Get the flat tip metal kind. Then go over to the drill bit aisle and look for the right size drill and tap kit. They're on little cards, just like the drill bits. You can get fine thread or coarse thread; get what matches your fastener.

The drill bit is just a good quality metal bit. It's a tiny bit smaller than the tap bit, which is where the magic happens.

My thumb is covering up the end that goes in the drill. The business end is slightly tapered, and it reams the metal into threads so you can just screw the fastener in. It's a little tricky to get it going - it usually takes me a couple tries - but when you've done it right, it spins a bit then screws itself into the hole. Unscrew it, then screw in your fastener.

You can see that I label bits with blue painter's tape. Yeah, a roll of it is expensive, but it unsticks cleanly - I've reused that piece of tape on those bits several times.

I like to use a dab of Loctite too.

There's a couple different kinds. This stuff will unlock with hand tools and force - they also make a kind that won't unlock without heat, but that's way overkill for our purpose. This just keeps vibration over time from unscrewing your hard work. (Is your wheelbarrow wobbly? USE LOCTITE.)

Hope that helps! Still thinking about all the good ideas and considerations for my bucket holders. I'll post when I decide something!

Trailer advice please!

2012-01-03T18:41:00.000-08:00

I got some bucket clips that I'm going to bolt onto my trailer, but I'm not quite sure where to put them.

Here's the off side of the trailer.

A haybag (haynet, now that I finally got a small-mesh one!) hangs from a carabiner hooked onto the U bracket. Dixie is tied by her lead to the vertical bar above the U bracket. I'm thinking about putting the bucket holder right where that bucket is now - it could sit on the fender, out of (normal) foot-reach. I like to use those 8-quart flat-back buckets, since I don't feed much concentrate - the larger 20 qt ones irritate Dixie because she can't see while she's slurping up the last grains.

I usually put her water in a 5 gallon bucket or a big muck bucket (depending on the length of our stay) at the back of the fender. She's only knocked it over a few times there, and I check on her often enough that if the silly cow does knock it over, she can just go thirsty for a couple hours. ;)

Is that a good place to bolt a bucket clip? Any better suggestions? I think when I get a hi-tie, hopefully this summer, it'll still be a convenient place to feed. I've got short bolts and cap nuts to attach it, and the capped bolts should be out of her way when she's riding normally in the trailer.

I did a few more improvements too.

I don't want to fill up the water tank, go on a day trip, come home, and drain it before it freezes. I thought about getting those 5-7 gallon camping cubes, but then I decided 5 gallon buckets with snap-fit lids would work almost as well. I tapped holes for eyebolts in the "studs" of the trailer wall and there's a bungee keeping them in place. They're pretty stable, and the lids are tight - I filled them up and rolled them around some and they didn't come loose. Plus, it's a bit more weight up front to help balance the horse in the back. In the summer when I've got the big tank full, I can put hay pellets or grain in the buckets.

Hung a paper towel holder off the doorframe. I dunno about you but I always need paper towels.

Got AERC to send me a BIG sticker with my membership renewal.

The trailer is my woman-cave, and any person-cave needs a sexy calendar. Behold my Swedish Horsemen 2012 calendar! G just rolled his eyes when that package showed up for Christmas. The silver thing is a magnet keeping it in place.

Velcro'd up a little notebook to keep track of trailer mileage / maintenance / repairs.

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne! Just cause.

NEDA New Years Ride, with yard art!

2012-01-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

All I want to do is go play Skyrim but I know you, my loyal masses, are just dying to know how today's ride went, so I am making the sacrifice of my valuable time to write this.

So we went and rocked another NEDA ride. The hill work is definitely paying off.

Here's last month's ride - exact same course, except that this time we did the first loop backwards. 3:20 moving time, about 8.5 mph for the trot intervals, and she got quite tired at the end and we walked the last two miles or so. The weather was about 5 degrees warmer, and I didn't carry water for her on the trail.

Here's today's ride. 2:30 moving time (a freakin' hour faster!), her trot/gait was more like 9-9.5 mph, and she got very strong in the last mile and I had to keep fighting her to not canter in. I brought one of those little blue bags of water and squirted the crest of her neck every time we walked. I don't know if the cold water cooled her off and perked her up, or if she was just pissed I kept getting her wet, but she did recover faster.

We absolutely roared through the first loop. We fell in with Beth K (I think, you know I'm awful at ID'ing people and she was always 10' ahead) and her friend and just cleaned it up. Dixie was hot and tired at the pulse-and-go, so I said bye to them and stayed in camp for 20 minutes. I gave her more diluted elytes and tried to get her to eat, but she was more interested in watching horses come in and leave. I hand-fed her some grain and she ate a bit of alfalfa, and she didn't seem too tired so we headed back out.

I really thought I'd overdone it on the first loop and we'd do the second one at like 5 mph, but she picked her head up, perked up her ears, and power trotted on out of camp. There was a horse about a half mile ahead of us, traveling just a skosh slower than we were, and we gradually caught up to her over several miles.

About 12 miles in, Dixie interfered and clipped her RF heel bulb. She sort of stumbled and took one lame step, and I had just enough time to think "oh dear god no" before she was back trotting perfectly sound. She didn't take another goofy step, but I found the tiny wound (and tiny blood drops all over her back legs) after the ride, so I think that's when it happened.

We caught up to the lady on the grey at about 14 miles and walked for a half mile talking to her. She had one of those hysterically bad-tempered mares - the mare was very curious about us coming up behind her, and really wanted us to catch up, but as soon as Dixie got abreast of her it was all snarky bitey face and mad ears. (Dixie didn't make faces. She just never makes faces at other horses anymore. <3 her!)We were power trotting but I managed to get a picture of the yard-art boat for yall.

Here's a yard art wagon:

One for my dad, who makes birdhouses (go buy one if you're in Memphis!)

Somebody else - a guy I should know, but don't - caught up and passed us so we all started trotting again. Dixie and I hit one more mentally bad patch at about 17.5 miles - there's a quarter mile of rough gravel road and it seems like forever to camp. I just made her walk (while her buddies ran away, oh no!) and by the time we got to the end of the gravel she was recovered and ready to rock again. She sprang back into the power trot and we caught them at the hill, then they cantered the last flat mile into camp and I insisted we trot. I have a (totally justifiable!) fear of letting her canter when she's tired now.

She was soaked when we got in, so I blanketed her and feasted on deep-fried turkey. Yes, again! The ride had a crazy big turnout - 49 starters, 31 of them doing the 20 mile distance. Yay! Still, the only people I saw were the ones I mentioned. It felt very solitary out there.

She was still wet and getting cold when I was ready to leave, so I threw the waterproof on top of the cooler and got her home. I left the cooler on for an hour after we got here, but it was cold and wet, so I decided it was doing more harm than good. I'd like to have a second blanket! Gotta check sstack.com and see if anything's on sale. When I went out and pulled the cooler, she was in very good spirits. I'm very happy - we are tangibly improving!

Physically, it was a really awful ride for me. I was cold the whole time, my knees and pelvis hurt, and it was one of those rides where it felt like Dixie was going to trot my uterus loose. My knees hurt because I ate quesadillas every day for a week over Christmas, and grain/wheat really does make my joints inflamed and sore. I was cold because I dressed optimistically - the November ride was just a bit warmer, but the sun was hotter and I ended up taking off my windbreaker and riding in a tank top in November. That was so much fun that I wore the same clothes this time, but I sweated and my windbreaker got clammy and then I froze. Ahh well - next time I'll wear more wool and less synthetics, and get my eating right again. It was a beautiful day to be out, and Dixie's performance was a huge boost for me.

Because she's not an Arab, I always wonder if we can do this, if we'll ever get faster than a 10 hour 50, if I'm training her right, yadda yadda. (Not to mention the tendon thing too, but I'll drive myself insane if I worry about that so I try hard not to think about it.) That's why I'm so obsessive about the GPS stats - I really can't tell if we're getting better til I go back and look over my data. Today was a big success!

I know this is the world's longest post already but I wanted to add a shot of her LF after the ride. Should I smear some thrush goo in her frog or does it look ok?

Decade Team

2011-12-31T17:38:00.000-08:00

Tonight is my ten year anniversary of running off with G. It's the best relationship I could even dream of, and I love him more every day. You're the bomb, babe.

He's been home for two weeks. I've been reading and commenting sporadically - I will get caught up with you soon.

He's headed back to SF tonight (stupid airline timing) and I'm going back to Skyrim. Tomorrow is the NEDA New Years ride, so I'll have a trip report from that, plus some new trailer improvement pics and a couple more Christmas break ride stories. Regular posting will resume soon.

Watch out for drunk drivers tonight, yall. Stay safe!

Air Race Buffer

2011-12-30T14:40:00.000-08:00

On Christmas I went for a ride in the air race buffer. The hills are usually overrun with dirt bikes, so I don't get to that area very often, but I thought it'd be quiet on Christmas. It was! There was a family target shooting in the hills near the houses, and I saw one truck loaded with bikes headed out toward Red Rocks, but other than that I had it all to myself.

I'm trying out Strava, and so far I love it. Ride stats

I passed up a chance to get through this fence and instead I followed the outside of it for miles.

We'd had a temperature inversion trapping smoggy air in the valleys for two weeks, so the air quality was just awful.

Here's one of the pylons that the planes race around.

When we headed for home, we went over the hills instead of back down around them. I saw The Weird Lonely House and had to go ride over to it.

Near the house, I found this map. How freakin' cool is this??

That's a scale map of the bike trails in the hills. Oddly, it reminds me of the Mud Island Riverwalk. Dixie didn't really want to stand still long enough for me to decipher it, sadly. She'd been up there once before, and she knew which way home was.

It was a fun little Christmas ride. I'll eventually get caught up here!

Happy Solstice night! (All cat pics all the time)

2011-12-21T23:31:00.000-08:00

I hope everybody (in the Northern Hemisphere) enjoyed their shortest day of the year. Tomorrow, in Reno, will be one second longer, and you know I'm gonna make the most of it!

G is home for Christmas. He upgraded my middle-aged laptop by putting in a new SSD hard drive and a ton more RAM, and it's like having a brand-new computer. I am just delighted with it.

My sainted MIL sent our usual Christmas box of BBQ. I ate a rack of ribs today, as soon as I ripped open the box, and I'm saving the other rack for Christmas. They were sublime - last year's were pretty good, but this year's are just outstanding.

I realize this is a low-content post, even by my undemanding standards, so I shall close with a ton of pics of the crazy boxcat.

Whenever I go to Costco, I always get my stuff loaded in a box. When I get home and empty it out, I dump the box on the kitchen floor and put some catnip in. Usually the cats wander by and perch in the box for a couple minutes when it's new and exciting, then have lost interest entirely by the time the new box shows up. Last week, Bambers found the Odwalla box:

Yesterday, long after he'd normally have lost interest, he still loved the box.

He's so photogenic.

I promise, better content next time!

How'd I do?

2011-12-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

HT to ~C, who just updated her 2011 goals.

Here's what I posted almost a year ago. Get ripped, cook new food, complete a 50, make my house look cool, start a DIY blog, and stay happy.

Well, I didn't get ripped, but I didn't get fat again either. I am still eating mostly-primal. I still stubbornly cling to my love of dairy (any and all cheese, and heavy cream in my coffee), but I almost always avoid the grains. I don't have a clue now what I meant to cook new in January, so I don't know if I did it or not, but I probably did.

And there's always the future for getting ripped! I built the home weight set and had almost gotten in the habit of working out again when my knee got wonky. Like I'd be walking around the house and it'd sort of pop like it sort of wanted to quit working right? I laid off the squats and deadlifts, then I got a cold. Now that I've recovered from the cold and the knee mystery, I'm trying to get back into the groove.

We did complete a 50! I'm still so proud of Dixie, and of myself. We rule. Even though I broke my horse on our very next attempt. She's recovered really well - no lameness at all after the first two weeks. I periodically made poor decisions and asked her to do things you shouldn't ask a rehab to do, and she's been fine through all of it. We just hit the six-month mark so I'm starting to leg her back up, in a halfass manner because it's December and it's only light for like four hours a day.

I think I did make my house look cool, and I did start a blog about it. I put hardwood in the hall and redid all the hall trim, then painted/retrimmed the front room. The master bathroom got a new coat of paint, the cats' room got ceiling and trim paint, and the Dr. Seuss Room became the Beige Room. I fixed various electrical and plumbing calamities - swamp cooler, frost-free hydrant, power to the fence/deicer, water heater. This week I've been fixing the janky idiotic trim around the kitchen pass-through window (post coming soon!).

I will say this hasn't been one of the happiest years of my life. I've had worse - oh trust me, I've had far worse - but I won't be sorry to see the last of 2011. Maybe next year will be better than the last.

I suppose I'll do more New Years Resolutions in a couple weeks. Stay tuned :)

Undereducated

2011-12-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend my water heater broke. I had to shore up my tentative knowledge of how water heaters work, and how electricity works in general, and fix it. I've been thinking about a couple of things since then: Why did I have to look up so many basic principles? And why couldn't I just call somebody to "save me" and fix it?

So here's my first rant: I went to public grade school, private undergrad college, public undergrad, and public grad school. Why am I entirely self-taught about electrical work? Why did I have to learn all my plumbing knowledge (what little there is) from a friend in my 20s? Why did I have to take Social Studies every year in grade school, but didn't learn a single thing useful to maintaining a dwelling? Don't get me wrong - I know I'm really handy - but why was all that knowledge acquired outside of school?

Is it because I only had a year of high school? (I left after my freshman year and went to college early.) Did you, dear reader, learn anything useful to maintaining a house in high school? In college? Or did you pick it all up from older men in your life?

Nothing I've tackled yet is all that hard or complicated. It's hard to figure out what I need to know, but it's not hard to grasp the concepts or fix the problem. Everybody would be better served if we quit teaching our kids the exports of Costa Rica and started teaching them how the basic functions of a house work. (Economics is important too, but I did a lot of rote memorization and very little theory - Social Studies was just killing time, basically.)

My second point is that I still wouldn't know how to fix a water heater (and it's SO easy and cheap) if I hadn't left Memphis. My dad taught me everything he knows, but that's strictly limited to carpentry. I picked up a basic understanding of plumbing, electrical work, and auto repair from working with my friend S, in my 20s. My dad's solution to any of those problems is to call a friend. He's known most of these people his whole life, and he'll go running when someone's roof is leaking, so they'll come running when a pipe bursts.

Now that I've moved cross country, that doesn't do me any good. I have a couple of people I can ask for help, but if they're busy I'm on my own. I could call a pro, and I don't begrudge spending the money, but it's uncomfortable letting a total stranger in your house when you're the only one living there. If you've been divorced, you know exactly what I mean. (And I did call a plumber, on Sunday morning. He finally called back at 6:30 on Monday night. I was so pissed I didn't even pick up the phone.)

So my other question is what did your parents teach you? Did they teach you even more stuff than my dad taught me? Or to cultivate relationships with people who know stuff you don't? Just go finance a new whatever when the old one breaks? Hit the Yellow Pages?

Saturday hill work

2011-12-11T17:31:00.001-08:00

I'd planned on doing a long ride Saturday, but Cersei really needed to get out for a run too so I made it a short hill day. We went up the hill behind the house and back - 5.25 miles in 58 minutes. Not bad at all for Dixie.

She was particularly squirrely at the start. Lately she's been thinking about spooking and bucking at imaginary boogies when we first start our rides, and I'd really prefer it if she doesn't properly develop her bucking instincts and muscles, so we just walked for the first half mile. By then we were on a wide hard sand road that slants uphill, so I kicked her up to a trot and pretty much kept her there most of the way up the mountain. When we got near the top she was breathing really hard, so we stopped til her HR dropped.

I passed up the chance, yet again, to get a HRM for Christmas. G offered, but... they don't work unless the girth is tight. My girth is rarely properly tight. My Garmin is too old to work with one, so I'd either need a standalone (kinda dumb) or a new Garmin to go with it, and my old Garmin works perfectly well for what I need, and I've floundered along without a HRM for two years so obviously I don't need one. It seems like a nice option, not a necessity.

So here's my ghetto HRM: If the horse is panting hard, I ask her to stop in the shade. Then I lean over and slap my hand on her left flank just ahead of the girth. If her heartbeat is really fast I let her stand. (I usually take this opportunity to tighten up the dangling girth.) When I slap my hand down there again a minute later, if it feels near 60 we go on. (I use the one-Mississippi method of checking heart rate - if it's equal to or less than once per second, she's down.)

We stopped for a bit near the summit, then headed further up. I saw a fork I'd never noticed before and we climbed one more tiny steep hill, but the trail ran over the BLM fence - literally. Various recreational users had knocked down the posts and kinda-trampled the barbed wire into the ground, and I didn't see any reason to walk my horse over that loose wire. We were at 2.86 miles: good enough.

We turned for home and I let her fly. I only asked that she stay in a nice gait - she mostly step-paced, but she racked a bit too. We took a different shorter road home, because it's way more fun to gait down. :)

After we got home I locked Cersei in the yard until she cooled down. No more puke in my house, missy!

On Thursday or Friday I had to go to Office Depot for some blank CDs. The bargain bins on the way to the checkout caught my eye, and I bought two of these for $1 each.

They're flat plastic drinking bags with pop-tops and mini carabiners. They're made in China, so I'm sure they're full of cancer and heavy metals - but I'm going to hang them on my saddlebags to squirt on my mare's neck. (No offense, Dixie, but I'm not all that worried about you getting cancer from plastic contact!) Ahhh, how I long for the days when it's hot and I need to cool her off...

tink-tink-tink

2011-12-06T19:32:00.001-08:00

My mom bought Dixie some rhythm beads from Zephyr Equine. They showed up last week, on a brutally cold day, so I hadn't even tried them out til today.

I did put them on the day after they arrived. I went out to feed wearing them and Dixie gave me this "oh god what now" look when I came out of the house a-ringing, but she didn't even bat an eye when I tied them on and led her around. I dunno what she's staring at, but she always gets very bug-eyed whenever we walked down the driveway. Maybe I shouldn't say that - she gets very regal and poses gracefully.

They're really quite nice! Sturdy string, lovely milky purple glass beads and lots of bells. I sort of worried the bells would be annoying, but they're very quiet and unobtrusive. Instead of jingling all the way, we kinda tink-tink-tink'd all the way.

I took Cersei, so we didn't go very far. 6.13 miles in 1:02, just over the gentle hills toward the valley and back in a lollipop loop. She stretched out into an 11 mph rack at one point :) We walked for several miles home, to let her dry off a bit. She was just a fun ride!

Dixie was so mad about getting all sweaty that she refused to pose for pictures. As soon as I took out the camera, she buried her nose in her bucket, got a big mouthful of grain, then snatched it out and hid it on the other side of the bucket. I finally pulled her around by the lead and got a great Pissy Mare pic.

Here's some quick hoof pics:
Front left

Front right

I need to whack her toes back a bit. She paddles, I guess, and wears the toes unevenly.

When we got back, Cersei hit the goat's water bucket and tanked up. We put the horse and tack up and went in the house, where she settled down in the den and got comfortable before puking up all that water - and the horse poop she'd eaten before the ride. I love my dog. I love my dog. It is my mantra. I love my dog.

Home sick on HORSE SLAUGHTER DAY!

2011-11-30T13:51:00.001-08:00

Finally, a topical hot-button post.

First, cause I know yall care deeply about my wellbeing, it's just a cold and hopefully I'll sleep it off tonight.

I've been watching my horse related social media all day, and here's what I think (cause I know yall care deeply about my not very humble opinions):

Horse slaughter and consumption of horse meat are two separate issues that get conflated in almost everything I've read.

I am deeply opposed to inhumane horse slaughter, just like I'm deeply opposed to the inhumane death of any other living thing. I am also opposed to eating horsemeat - that shit ain't safe, yall. But I wouldn't mind a well-designed and run horse slaughter plant. (I think we should ship the humanely-slaughtered, bute and dewormer laden horse meat to China.)

If those rednecks in Wyoming or wherever actually build and run a truly humane slaughterhouse for horses, fine. If they don't, I'll rail against the deplorable conditions there, just like I rail against the deplorable conditions in Mexico, where all the unwanted horses get shipped today. (I am not sure if the conditions in Canadian slaughterhouses are deplorable, but I think the double-decker rides to get there are probably pretty hellish, so I don't like our northern friends' plants either.)

I still think you're an asshole if you take a horse to auction, especially if it's older, unsound, or not dead broke. I know that shit happens and sometimes you can't keep your animals, but if you can't find your horse a decent home, euthanize it. That's what credit cards are for: vet bills.

Retrospective numbers

2011-11-28T18:38:00.001-08:00

This is something I always wished I could've seen when I started endurance training. How do you actually develop a consistent trot, starting from a horse that isn't fit and can't mentally handle trotting down a trail? Well, I still can't explain it, but I can show you my results.

Here's our first 20 mile NEDA ride in February of '10. All the stuff I mentioned in the comments of my last post were very scary indeed - attack mini horses, scary yard art, dangerous people lurking in their yards. I think that ride even went past the ultimate nightmare of any horse: the alpaca.

The points just below the 5 mph marker were her walk speed - under 4 mph, about 3.8. The pointy bits were her surging into a trot or a rack (I really can't remember if she gaited or not) at 7.5 or so.

Here's our first AERC LD, at Rides of March '10.

She was very excited for the first 10 miles, staying mostly in a 10 mph rack. At about 11 miles I finally got her to slow the hell down and we headed into the check (just about the middle of the graph). She came out of the hold really strong, but tired - you can see the peaks get further and further apart as she walks more and racks less. At 21 miles, about 2/3 of the way along, she got really tired and the whole thing became a slog for us. I didn't want to spend three more hours out there so I started literally kicking her into a trot for a minute, then walking for a minute. Her "oh god I'm soooo tired" trot was between 5-8 mph, depending on the incline and whether or not she could see another horse in the distance.

Here's Nevada Moonshine '10.

The vet check was at 20 miles, about 2/3 of the way along the graph. I was really pretty happy with her performance. It was DARK up in the hills, and the full moon didn't help as much as you'd think - it was behind the hills for an hour, then it was so low that it made crazy shadows and didn't help much. She still wasn't very consistent - she'd leap into a trot then slow on down til she needed to walk again.

After Moonshine, we bought the house. I don't think I managed another distance ride, either NEDA or AERC, til ROM '11.

It was a debacle. I let Dixie try to keep up with a horse that was going just a bit faster than she could manage. ("Ride your own ride" is so hard!) The weather was atrocious, blowing snow for the first part of the morning then warming up quite a bit. She wouldn't drink (I didn't electrolyte) and she was very hairy indeed. She got really tired about 10 miles in and we walked into the first check at the halfway point. The second loop was even worse - she didn't recover at the hold because she wasn't drinking, so she kept trying to lunge into a trot, but she was too tired to keep it going and fell back to a walk. Bad management on my part, but this is how you learn how to manage. We got pulled at the second check - not that I would've asked her to continue in her state.

At the beginning of April we did the Derby.

This was a good ride. I electrolyted Dixie before, during, and after the ride. She still did not drink til the vet check at 20 miles, but by god once she started drinking she tanked up. It was a much easier flatter ride, and you can see that we were finally pacing well. The jagged bits at the 1/3 mark were when we climbed the Big Hill she evened back out. Her TCB trot/gait was about 8 mph, and her recovery walk was 4.5-5 mph. The check was at 20 miles, so about 3/4 of the way along the graph.

The ride after that was our first 50, at High Desert. I'm not going to post the graph because it's too compressed - it's 50 miles squeezed into the same horizontal space as these 20-30 mile rides, so it's much more jagged. It was hilly and hard, and Dave Rabe babysat us through it and he is a saint of a human.

Here's another NEDA ride in May. Silver Springs again - look at how much she's improved over (basically) the same course in 15 months!

9 mph trot, 4-4.5 walk. Much more trotting than walking. The right amount of electrolytes, and a weather-appropriate coat. ;)

In June I went out and broke my horse at NASTR, which pretty much torpedoed the rest of the year. Here's the last chart, for yesterday's ride:

Scroll up and compare it to the very first graph. She's become really consistent - she's way stronger, she's learned that she has to keep moving steadily forward past the abandoned couches and evil minis, and I'm way better at holding her to a certain sustainable speed. She gets tired and starts "surging" around 15 miles - but damn, we've done no real training for about three months!

I don't know if further (flat) rides of less than 15 miles will do her much good. I think climbing hills on short rides will still help, but I suspect a flat 15 mile ride won't really do much to condition her. It's pretty damn boring to ride north to Palomino Valley and back down to the house, but that's what I'm going to have to do. Maybe one long ride every two weeks, weather permitting, and I'll reevaluate in February. And I'll try to get out and climb the hill behind our house once a week.

What a wonderful day: NEDA Turkey Trot

2011-11-27T19:08:00.001-08:00

G was home for a whole week, which was thoroughly awesome. I took him to the airport on Saturday, and I knew today would be quiet and sucky if I didn't do something - so I went to Silver Springs for a 20 mile NEDA ride. It was the perfect antidote to a very quiet house.

Today was one of those days that makes you really love Nevada - it's the end of November, sunny, light breezes, and almost 60. I started out with three layers on, but I finished the ride in a tank top. A tank top. In November. It's really hard to beat that. It's the kind of day that really cements my belief that distance riding is the best sport ever invented.

Miss Thing hauled like a pro and ate like a pig and even let me prettify her mane.

We started a couple minutes behind the frontrunners, and I held her to a running walk for a half mile or so before I let her move out a bit. We fell in with Dyke, who I've ridden with before, and actually stuck with him for most of the ride. He was riding a very hairy 4000+ mile horse - usually Dixie cannot hang with the high-mileage horses, but he was in no hurry and we paced well together.

Jackie caught up to us near the end of the first loop. She was riding a 19 year old energizer bunny of an Arab - at 19, with god knows how many miles, he was still spooking at random stuff and bucking when he got mad. Super cute. We all rolled into the check together. Dixie pulsed in immediately, despite being dripping wet, so I gave her some more electrolytes and headed back out.

She was tired but still quite ready to go. I was just delighted with her attitude - I've had to kick her out of camp a couple times, and it always makes me feel like I'm Making A Terrible Mistake with this sport. But she'd just ripped through 9 miles and was quite happy to head back out, yay!

At 18 miles Dixie ran out of steam. It was the end of the long boring second loop, down yet another interminable gravel road, and she was clearly lost. Fortunately Meredith caught up and happily walked on in with us. The weather had gotten so warm that I took off my jacket and finished the ride in just a tank top. (A tank top! In November!)

I love that horse, even when she's covered in mudsweat.

This is the best horse sport. If you're a little intimidated by the thought of riding for a whole day, you should think about doing an LD. Dixie and I did 20.25 miles in just under 3:30 - an AERC 25 mile LD could easily take less than 5 hours in the saddle going much slower than we did. Also I got a coffee cup, a big one, with horses on it! And deep fried turkey. Life is good.

AR horse update

2011-11-25T19:00:00.001-08:00

Just saw this on Facebook - very sad.

Remains of stolen horse found in Oklahoma

It is time for eggnog

2011-11-22T21:25:00.001-08:00

As an overly cautious law school grad, I cannot possibly tell yall to risk life and limb by eating raw eggs. I'm just gonna tell you what I do this time every year!

In the Funder Haus, I make eggnog around Thanksgiving. I mean real eggnog - the kind with raw eggs, sugar, cream, and liquor. I use this recipe. Perhaps you are not as brave/adventurous/foolish as me, and you have questions!

Seriously? Yep, I let it age at least three weeks. I've heard of people drinking it after a year in the fridge, but I never have any left after New Years.

Taste? It doesn't taste like raw eggs. It tastes indescribably rich, alcoholic, and yummy. It's something to sip and savor.

No, G did not approve of this idea three years ago. He was sure I was going to die when I drank three-week-old egg drink. I wouldn't shut up about how amazingly good it was and as soon as he got brave and tried it he became a convert too.

Ingredients? Mid range stuff: Makers' Mark, Bacardi, and some XO Cognac. My eggs, because I have chickens, dammit.

Technique? Yes, you need a funnel. No, I don't have a gallon sized mixing bowl - I whip the egg yolks and sugar, whip in the cream and milk, then funnel that mix into an empty gallon jug. Add the liquor into the jug and gently shake to mix everything. Stick it in the fridge til Christmas.

Finishing? I actually don't care for egg whites in the finished drink. I whip a little more cream and blob that on top with some nutmeg. It's stupendous served straight up, too.

No matter what kind of diet you are on, this will be cheating. It's worth it. I'll spend all month passing up cookies and bread in order to sip eggnog.

Oh, Reno.

2011-11-19T08:16:00.001-08:00

So the west side of Reno burned yesterday. Our local paper has extensive coverage of the fire. It got uncomfortably close to a friend's house, and my heart goes out to all the people who lost their homes or had to evacuate, but thankfully I'm totally fine. It was 20 miles south of me, on the other side of Peavine. It's been a really hard year for the region - the worst unemployment in the nation, horrible housing market, crazy IHOP shooter, air race crash, and now a huge fire in one of the nicer parts of town.

But up here in my scrubby little neighborhood, all was well. I did not even know there was a fire til I saw it on Facebook - no smoke was visible up here. We just had to deal with the insane wind. Winds of 30-40 mph from the south, with gusts up to 60-70. (The fire was so bad because they couldn't get any aircraft up to help fight it.)

You know those shrink-wrap window film insulation things? I put those on all the windows a couple weeks ago and they worked great. The whole house was much easier to keep warm. Yesterday they blew in :( Tons of dirt came in too. I packing taped the window film back down because I am one classy broad.

Tiny little retrospective for a tiny little dog

2011-11-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

I think I got Cersei four years ago. I know it was mid-November, but it was before I started blogging so the exact date is lost in the mists of time. Today is as good a day as any for a Tiny Puppy Photo Show!

I was living in a house in the hood with no heat. Long story, lying landlord, etc - but the point is it was very cold and unusual alliances were made in the name of staying warm. Tiny fluffy kitten Bambers (then called Curtis - he evolves into a new name at least once a year) would sleep ON tiny puppy Cersei.

Tiny puppy Cers appreciated blankets and hoodies.

She even curled up with my other dog, the phenomenally dumb Jaime.

This is possibly the one and only time Bambers ever curled up on a human in his life. He's just weird.

Anyway! Back to Cers, who is much more adorable. She was so small that I got her a belled cat collar so I could keep track of her. She'd get tired halfway through doing chores for my four horses and sit down in the barn aisle and cry. We'd go in the little house at the barn and she'd sleep on my lap while I hung out with people.

She had blue eyes!

When she outgrew the cat collar, I got her the first of her tough hunting dog safety orange collars. Cause, you know, she's a rough and tough duck dog.

Eventually she got too big to ride in my lap in the truck and was banished to the passenger seat. Life is hard!

Her first snow was fantastically exciting!

Summer of '08 I moved the horses to Como. There was a big cow pond in their 40 acre pasture and Cersei didn't even need me to throw things - she'd just swim around in happy circles in it.

This was my desktop picture for years. I think she was chasing butterflies or crickets.

G insists that she is not, in fact, a tiny little dog. He points to pictures like this, where the curled-up Cersei occupies exactly half of a loveseat, as proof. I refuse to be reasonable. She is still a tiny little dog to me.

She's such a good buddy. She's always been game to do whatever, and now that she's mature she's also game to just sleep on her couch all day. Labs are the best if you can just survive the first three years.

Carpe-ing the diem

2011-11-16T19:16:00.001-08:00

I got enough stuff done around the house so I felt ok about going for a quick ride. Dixie was extremely skeptical of this plan.

I took Cersei and we went ripping around the flat part of the valley between the two subdivisions - maybe a 3-4 mile ride. Dixie spooked hard and even tossed in a buck (!!) at a flattened snow pole in a ditch, of all things, but after that she was a fine steed. I kept her in her nice slow gaits for most of the way, probably 7-9 mph - a good speed, but not as fast as a flying pace or a speed rack. When we got back near the house I had her walk home down a different road and she was nicely calm yet forward.

The death tinsel is getting closer and closer to her.

Remember how I said I was going to tinsel her up for Halloween, but she utterly freaked out about it? I tied the scary death tinsel to the fence where she eats dinner. The first day it was tied to the top rail starting a good 4' away from her bucket and it caused her great consternation. She snorted and stood at the end of her lead and glared at it for a good five minutes (while I calmly did other chores) before she decided it was ok to stick her nose in her bucket and eat. I left it there for a week and now I've been gradually moving it closer and tying it looser. It was flapping in the wind when we got back and I looped it over the post to give her a little break. :)

I don't know if you can tell, but from her stance, she's ready to leap backwards if it makes a move on her.

She needs a trim again but I'm pretty happy with her feet, especially her central sulcus.

Trimming is on the agenda for tomorrow and I'll get more pics.

Poor mistreated animal. I made her sweat, then I tied her up by mortal danger and didn't even let her roll for minutes and minutes.

Wham.

Straight over.

Itchy face.

So itchy it needed to be ground into the dirt.

She always sits up like a dog then stands up. Weirdo.

Coffee snobbery

2011-11-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

It's official. I am undeniably a coffee connoisseur.

Since I went French press, I've started really paying attention to coffee. My morning cup of joe is hedonistically good. The first time I went to SF, last year, I realized that I had perhaps visited coffee nirvana - I still have not had a bad coffee drink there. But this trip really pushed it over the edge.

I went up to the Ferry Building for a Christmas present and stopped at the Blue Bottle kiosk for a macchiato. It was amazing. I'm not a very good connoisseur, because I don't have the right words to describe how amazing it was - it was bitter and rich and full-bodied and almost chocolatey, just the way I like my coffee. I could've licked the cup if I wasn't trying really hard to be cool about it.

The next day, we went to the Mission to Four Barrel. Yes, it's just as astonishingly hipster as you'd think from the website. :)

They played records. Remember those? Big black things, go round and round on a turntable?

I got a stunningly beautiful breve latte, which is my usual go-to drink. I immediately noticed it tasted different - almost thin, kind of acidic. I wasn't sure if it was the cream-to-espresso ratio or the actual espresso, so I watched the guy roasting coffee for an hour.

Then I went back for a macchiato. It, too, was too bright and acidic. G loved it - he got a macchiato too on the second go-round and he thought it was excellent. We went to late lunch with some friends, and they were also split on the Four Barrels espresso - she prefers it, he likes Blue Bottle.

I think it was just too light for me. I don't like dark roasts, in general, because it's too easy to hide bad beans by just burning the hell out of them (Starbucks, I am looking directly at you), but I'm definitely coming around to a proper espresso roast.

I can't decide if this is a terrible new development or not. I have certainly cut down my Starbucks spending because the coffee I make at home is so much better. I live like 20 miles from any independent coffeeshops that might have great macchiatos, and I live 220 miles from known amazing coffeeshops. I can't macchiato us into the poorhouse, and I get a great deal of pleasure every single day from the coffee I make at home.

Still. I'm one of those people now. An annoying coffee snob.

I'm pointing a finger at my own face

2011-11-14T18:01:00.001-08:00

I'm back! I went to SF last week for my belated (and BEST EVER!) birthday present - They Might Be Giants at the Fillmore. I know I've got a couple of TMBG friends so the rest of yall can just skip this one. Unless you wish to improve your ears and minds and even lives by joining us. It was just a really excellent concert. I've seen them four times now and this was a great performance.

I am no longer young and hip so I'd never heard of the opening dude, Jonathan Coulton, but he put on a good act. Cute nerdy rock; I'll probably get some of his stuff.

TMBG opened with Can't Keep Johnny Down, which is definitely one of my favorite songs already.
Some dude hitting golf balls on the moon / bathroom in his pants / and he thinks he's better than me!

They've got a full band for this tour. John F is a fine guitarist, but the new guitarist dude - omg, he did a badass instrumental Spanish acoustic guitar version of Istanbul then the whole band rocked it out again.

Two sock puppets made an appearance on the screen behind the stage and performed Spoiler Alert. They also complained about living in a suitcase, poor sock puppets :(

After the sock puppets were cruelly stuffed away again, the band did Fingertips live - that's the My Little Pony video I posted last week. (I remember my first CD copy of Apollo 18 had each snippet of Fingertips as a separate track, which made the whole thing just awesome to listen to on that high-tech new shuffle feature.)

They did about half of the new album and about half of my favorite old songs. Of course they played Birdhouse! I think I killed my first set of car speakers blasting Birdhouse as loud as possible. It's a wonder I never set off the airbag pounding on the steering wheel.

And the very last song - third encore - was Dead. The world needs more songs about the French Revolution.

G asked one of his friends if he was going to the show, and the friend (you know who you are) said he'd seen TMBG. Here's the thing: these guys have been singing Birdhouse in Your Soul for twenty years, and they're not sick of it and they're not just phoning it in. All the songs had the right lyrics, but they were all totally different versions. They're still playing with the songs, not just playing them. It was excellent live music and well worth the price of the trip.

They Might Be Ponies

2011-11-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

NEXT WEEKEND I am going to see They Might Be Giants, and of course last weekend I MLP'd my sweet horse, so this seems appropriate.

Looking ahead

2011-11-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

I'm almost certainly through with AERC rides for the year. Lake Sonoma is too far to drive for a 25. With any luck at all I'll get to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with my husband, instead of doing Desert Gold and Death Valley Encounter. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do both those rides, but not this year. :)

(I might still do the Turkey Trot NEDA ride - I don't think G would mind if I went off for the day and came back that night, and I'm not worried about doing LD distances on Dixie.)

But hopefully 2012 will be our triumphant and injury-free return to 50s. I really enjoyed both Rides of March and the Nevada Derby, so I'm thinking of doing the ROM 30 on March 17 and the Derby 50 on the 31st. They're both super-local: I will ride farther than I will haul. I don't think a moderately challenging (great footing, some medium-size-Nevada hills) 30 two weeks before a 50 is asking too much. I will probably do most of my winter training rides at Red Rocks or in my backyard toward Palomino Valley, so it'll all be totally familiar to Dixie. And last but not least, I want to support both of them. California friends, SASO is a nice ride, but Nevada rides go on rain or snow regardless! No last minute cancellations here.

I feel like I should quantify my goals for next year. I think if we can do a mid/back of pack 50, with a perky horse and a moderately fit to continue rider, I'll look at doing back to back 50s for the ride after that. But it's hard in the West - there are some rides where a 9 hour finish is shameful and some rides where it's pretty respectable. So I think I'm going to have to rely more heavily on how the horse feels at the end of the ride than on numerical criteria.

Thoughts on my plan? What are your plans for early 2012? I know, winter is coming, but spring will be here before we know it.

~ponies are magic~

2011-10-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

May I present My (not very) Little Pony?

I had tons of MLPs when I was a kid. I probably had more ponies than all my other toys put together. Now I am a grownup (and no, I haven't even watched the new cartoon yet) and I have lots of respect for all the real-life magic a real live horse possesses natively... but it's HALLOWEEN! I can let my inner 8 year old run wild.

Dixie was less thrilled about the whole event.

Livin' dangerously. You haven't seen a picture of me sans helmet in a long time.

I think the pro photographer got better pictures of us. My dress has a freakin' tutu with little fiber-optic blue twinkly lights, sadly completely invisible in the daylight. It's a Slutty Alice In Wonderland dress, so I went with playing cards on Dixie's butt.

After the pretty pics, I put my helmet on and sprinted through the 10 mile fun ride. I know I sound like a broken record, but Dixie was awesome. She stood quietly with me on her back for the ride meeting, then walked me around to talk to friends. When the trail opened her ears went up and she was all business. I doubt we trotted a mile - it was all fast flat walk and rack and pace. The photographers set back up at the lake, about 5 miles in, so I'm sure the action shots are horrible - as she sweated the makeup started running, and of course all the dirt came straight out of her coat. I didn't stay around til the pictures were printed; I'll order them later this week. I'll put up links to the photography site when I get them!

Here's another local blogger's post about Nevada Day. She lives in Carson City so she actually knows people down there. CC really reminds me of a small Southern town; super charming place. Apparently the parade went on for hours - we were entry #36 but there were over 200. S rode one of her Arabians in native dress in the 150s and she didn't even assemble til 11 and didn't start parading til after that!

Rock star parade horse

2011-10-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

I rode Dixie in the Nevada Day parade in Carson City this morning. I hitched the trailer last night so I only had to get up at 5:30. It was 22 degrees and pitch dark and I really doubted my sanity. I had to wake my horse up to load her!

She was awesome. Totally amazing. We got to the parking area at the finish at 7:30 and I mounted up at 8. At 8:30 half of my group slowly made our way to the start line then chilled out til the 10 am start. It took about an hour before she decided to stand still and doze off, and she did skitter sideways once when a float shaped like a giant cannon went by us, but in general she was pretty chilled out about all the stuff we saw and heard today. There was a mass hot air balloon race/flight/ascension thing at about 8. Then two WWII jeeps got unloaded from a trailer, and one pull-started the other in the parking lot. The cannons went off at 10, and shortly after that the fighter jets did a flyby. We had to thread our way past a couple of marching bands to get to our starting spot. The Nevada Democrats had a crazy looking animatronic / inflatable donkey on their float, and Dixie gave it a long hard look. Two small kids, momentarily unattended, ran directly behind her throwing rocks at each other and she just swiveled an ear back to track them. Vendors pulling handcarts full of toys, spraying bubbles from bubble machines, were working their way against the direction of the parade, and she didn't even blink. One of the other horses in our group was having a Very Bad Day and kept backing into other horses, spinning and crashing into other horses, and generally being on the brink of a meltdown. Dixie just moved out of his way when I asked and didn't pick up any of his nervousness. I even let kids come pet her at the trailer after the ride. She was so calm about the whole adventure that she never even broke a sweat!

At first I didn't want to take pictures because I wanted both hands in case I needed to control her. Then when the parade started I was too busy waving at kids to bother with pics. I know, in internet terms that means today did not happen, but I was entirely too busy having fun!

I have no idea why Nevada makes such a big deal about the day they entered the US, when none of the other states I've lived in have even noted it. But I think it's incredibly endearing :) Everybody loves a parade and a day off work.

Defeating winter gloom, Phase 2

2011-10-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

I got some Vitamin D, so Phase 1 is underway.

I decided Phase 2 is to exercise. So today built a homemade barbell which should allow me to do the two most important lifts - deadlifts and squats. If I build a bench, I can bench press with it too. The basic concept will work for auxiliary lifts too, if I decide to do any. I got my inspiration from browsing some forums yesterday, and PM'd the guy for details. Today I dropped $50 on supplies and assembled my ghetto weights.

Equipment:
Blue buckets, for experiments in concrete. Orange buckets, for sand. Two pieces of 2' chain (definitely overkill). Four 250 lb snap links. Two eyebolts and a new drill bit. Not shown: a 6' piece of 1" inside diameter steel pipe.

I clamped the pipe in my vise. (side note: the vise is the most awesome tool I never would've thought to buy. Everybody needs one!) The two yogurt containers held water to lubricate the bit. My poor little homeowner-grade cordless drill was, amazingly, up to the task of drilling 1/4" holes in that steel pipe. Once I got the first hole started, I really leaned on the drill and poured water from one container, over the pipe, into the second container. It took many many containers of water to drill each hole, and I swapped/recharged the battery after every hole.

After four holes, the water was pretty grody!

The holes were the only hard part. I bolted the eyebolts onto each end of the pipe, with some Loctite for good measure. A snap link connected each eyebolt to a piece of chain. Another snaplink hooked the chain onto the bucket handle. The buckets will hold close to 80 lbs of sand each, and the bar weighs 10 lbs.

Here's the clever part: the chains are adjustable. They're set so that when I'm squatted down completely, the buckets are resting on the ground. This means that if I try to lift something too heavy and fail, I won't be crushed by the weight. That's what the safety rails in a power cage are for.

I dragged the bathroom scale out and marked the buckets - about a quarter full of sand is 20 lbs.

But that's pretty clunky, really. You need a way to add weight incrementally - 50 lbs is a good warmup for squats but it's probably the most I can bench press. Shoveling sand in to add weight and dumping it back out to switch exercises is a no-go really. So I futzed around and made two concrete weights.

Remember those blue buckets? I lined them with some black plastic and mixed up some concrete. I added knotted rope loops in the concrete for handholds.

When they cure, I'll weigh them. Hopefully the plastic liner means they'll pop right out of the buckets, but if not, the buckets were pretty cheap. If I can get the concrete out, I'll make several more sets of concrete weights. They should stack inside the orange buckets.

The whole thing is far from perfect, but I'm not a competitive weightlifter so it's plenty good for me. The buckets wobble a lot on their chains, but I think that makes it better for my purposes - it'll really work my core stabilizers to pick up a wobbly load. If I really want to add more weight I can drill more holes in the pipe and hang another set of buckets (or find bigger buckets!)

Right now I'm using yard sand, but I'm thinking about setting up the Former Dr. Seuss Room as my weight room, and I will probably buy nice clean playground sand if I do that. What if there are bugs in my yard sand? Shudder.

If I buy a 2x12 and some bolts, I can whack together a bench pretty easily. I'll need to whack together a small platform to deadlift with this setup, but I have enough scraps in the barn to do that tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about this!

Boca, again

2011-10-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

tl;dr: I went back today and explored the other branch of the road. It's just as rocky, with very few sections I'm comfortable trotting, so I probably won't regularly return.

I took some beauty shots of my girl. A head only a gaited fan could love:

This is better!

Got a picture of the sign I mentioned last post. Muscle cars not recommended!

Can't you just imagine a family in matching outfits pulled up at that sign, scratching their heads and checking the family atlas to find a new spot to drive to?

Here's the perfect example of why I get nervous riding toward unknown forest target shooters. The white/black thing is a target blowing in the wind; there were boxes of Blazer ammo all over the place. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it, yall. (To be clear: this is not the gun club area I was riding toward on Friday; this was a lone gunman on a different trail.)

About 500' up, looking down at Boca Reservoir and a prescribed burn.

Nice climbs, bad footing. This is why I won't regularly ride Boca - there's almost no trail that I feel comfortable asking my horse to trot regularly.

Hard work for a fat hairy mare :)

She looks so noble when she stares into the distance at imaginary predators.

It really is beautiful up there.

I'm glad I went. Dixie is such a pleasant creature now - easy (for me) to handle, loads good, hauls good, cooperative to ride. And I got a little sun - it was about 65 up there, but a cold wind came up in the last mile and I was glad of my new windbreaker.

I'm going to try supplementing Vitamin D and see if that helps keep my mood up this winter. It helps some people and others don't notice a difference. I'll let yall know in a couple of months.

A soap opera of murder

2011-10-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

I've been sort of vaguely following this crazy Hells Angels thing for a month now and I thought I'd share it with yall. I don't think it's really hit the national news, so if you don't read West-coast newspapers you may not be aware of it.

Way back in September, we had the annual Street Vibrations motorcycle convention. I am sympathetic to motorcycles and I try to always give them a lot of room and watch out for them on the roads, but I don't really like SV - they act like assholes on the road when they all get together. Kind of like how individual endurance riders out training are always careful to be polite to other trail users, but there are always complaints following a ride about groups of e-riders running trail riders off the trail. It's just kind of human nature. So there's too many bikes on the road (and too many bad California riders - Nevada isn't a lanesplitting state and it freaks us out when they do it!)

This year Street Vibrations went terribly wrong when a fight turned into a shooting at the Nugget. The president of the Hells Angels was killed by some dude from the Vagos, who was promptly arrested. Tragic but not really blogworthy.

The RGJ moved on to other Reno news, and the story picked up in San Francisco. A bunch of Vagos members were arrested with rocket launchers and hundreds of pounds of cocaine and stuff. Still not weird enough for me to blog.

Then the Hells Angels had the funeral for their slain president, and another member was killed. By another Hells Angel! Intra-gang violence at a funeral, woah. The shooter immediately disappeared, and the cops dug up the president's grave looking for the shooter's body. But a week later, they decided he was still alive and at large.

Today brought the weirdest twist so far. A guy driving a paratransit van deliberately ran over a Hells Angel dude on the 580. What the hell is going on with the biker gangs?

I also think it's interesting that this is being reported with the gang names. I don't read the LA papers, so I don't know if they name the gangs down there, but the SFGate rarely names gangs. There's probably a murder a week in SF/Oakland that's termed "gang related" but they never say "X was believed to be a member of the Bloods" or whatever. Just "rival gang member." I can't decide if this is discrimination against bikers or privilege because the Hells Angels are white.

Better Boca pix

2011-10-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

These pictures turned out great! Which really annoys me! It's a huge PITA to carry the big camera all by itself in a pommel bag, pull the lens cap, take pics, put it back in the bag, etc. Then I have to get the pictures off the camera and onto the computer. That was just an everyday occurrence with either the big camera or the iPhone - until the new iPhone OS update last week. Now my iPhone sends its pictures to my computer automatically and wirelessly. But it takes average photos at 5000' and utterly horrible ones at any higher elevation, so it's a real tradeoff between my laziness and my desire to show yall what it really looks like in the Sierras. Sigh.

Enjoy!

One of the worst stretches of trail, at the high meadow where we heard the target shooters. No, Dixie was not staring toward the shooters; she's not remotely gun-shy.

Steep and rocky...

With a nice view of Boca Hill to the SW.

The big meadow where the reservoir is located.

The reservoir.

A nice view from as high as we climbed. See why I call it a "road"?

I'm seriously thinking about going back on Monday - the weather is turning off colder on Tuesday. Not cold by any stretch of the imagination, but cold enough to make me not yearn to ride in the high country.

Clarke's Corollary

2011-10-22T18:36:00.000-07:00

I don't think Clarke had any horses, but if he did he would surely have said:

Any sufficient quantity of dishwashing soap is indistinguishable from magic.

Today it got up around 75 and I scrubbed Dixie's mane and tail. FOUR full scrubbings with a vast amount of Dawn got all the brown gunk out of her mane. Two scrubbings got her tail cleaner, but I need to scrub it again. I'm not as concerned about her tail - I don't feel too guilty washing tails in cold weather.

Dixie's mane was as clean as it'll ever be, but it was still yellowy, so I blue'd it. I put a couple drops of bluing in a gallon of water and dumped it slowly up her neck. That helped, but not quite enough, so I added a good squirt to another gallon and did it again. That got me something like a slightly greenish wet mane, but it dried to a lovely white!

Before (testing spray-on hair color):

After:

I also used up the last of her Suave deep conditioner. Only the best household products for my girl. Gotta remember to pick up another bottle.

No full body shots because the rest of her is still utterly filthy - I'm not willing to drench her in cold water this late in the year. Can I actually brush all the dirt out of a thick winter coat, or should I take my life into my hands and try to vacuum her?

Also, yesterday I trained some of the longer bits of my rose bush into the fence. I had these fantasies of covering my chain link fence with a living wall of red roses. Today Dixie shattered those dreams by eating all the rose bits that were poking through the fence. Le sigh.

Rode that horse: Boca Reservoir

2011-10-21T22:24:00.000-07:00

First, thank you to everybody who commented. It really did make me feel a lot better to know that I'm not the only one who gets besieged by the bad thoughts. Thank you. :)

I hauled Dixie up to Boca Reservoir today. I even took lots of pics! With the good camera! But I left it in the truck so you'll have to suffer with text because I'm too lazy to walk all the way to the garage. ;)

Boca is a good riding spot for me, I think. It's surprisingly unpopular - there were four camping rigs in the day area, and a couple more day-trippers on dirt bikes. It's west of the California ag inspection station - not that they have ever inspected me for anything, but I live in mild dread of the day they ask me for a health cert. Probably 30 miles from my house, so much closer than the actual Tahoe trails.

There are several campgrounds (some horse-friendly) at Boca and at the northern Stampede reservoir, but they close on Oct 1. The day use areas are fine: vault toilets, on the lake for horse water, decent gravel, no fees, and easy to pull thru if you don't like to back your rig. The lake is incredibly clear and even bluer than the picture on Wikipedia. Dixie thinks the dirt is tasty. She has a thing about eating small quantities of dirt from alpine lakes. It's some kind of trace mineral thing I guess.

View Larger Map

We parked at the day use lot at the northern end of the lake and took the gravel road east then south on "E Boca Springs Rd." Like all little grey roads on google maps of the Sierras, it's really an unnamed fire/logging "road" rather than something you'd drive a vehicle you cared about over. There's even a sign warning you not to take a car on it. I absolutely adore Forest Service signs, because they printed and stuck up one hundred years' worth of signs in the 1970s and they're not going to update them until we all have jetpacks or something. The warning sign for Boca Springs Road is Forest Service brown, with an outline drawing of a 70s station wagon and the "no" circle-slash through it. Directly behind the sign there's a creek washout that might high-point my four-wheel-drive truck, just in case you didn't believe the sign.

If you look at the google map, I could've taken Forest Road 72 north all the way up to Verdi Peak, or E Boca Springs south a couple of miles. I decided to take the shorter route today - I was not training or conditioning, just out having fun primarily. We made it about 2.5 miles up this gloriously beautiful trail. A nice 5 mile round trip.

Dixie was sure there were bears in the woods. Or perhaps wolves, she's not too clear about what the mortal danger is. There was a lot of stopping and staring on her part, and I just enjoyed the vistas. Didn't see anything bigger than a hawk. The "road" got narrower and narrower, and many stretches were nothing but fist-sized rock. I was worried about her front right boot but all four stayed on and kept her comfortable.

We climbed a lot through forest, then wound through a meadow, then went through another patch of forest and heard gunshots. I listened for a while and we walked into the next meadow, but I couldn't see the shooters and I just wasn't sure what direction they were firing. Most people who actually go target shooting in the wilderness are careful and responsible people who pick their backdrops wisely, and I was wearing my bright red B:tVS shirt, but I decided to turn around anyway. (Stuff like that is exactly why I don't like to train in brand new areas - since I'd told myself it was a pleasure ride, I wasn't upset that it was "too short" or anything.)

When we zipped back to the start, I noticed two guys pulling in to ride dirt bikes. I asked Dixie to keep trotting, but she wanted to veer over and investigate them, so I let her. The one guy was already suited up on his bike, and he killed the engine to talk to me and wait for his buddy to unload his bike from his truck. Dixie carefully inspected his bike and let him scratch her head! (Who is this horse? Where did she come from? Is she really mine?) They said there's actually an (unofficial?) gun club range back there and that's the shooting I heard, but agreed that riding in the mountains toward unknown gunfire is possibly not the safest of ideas. They confirmed that the other leg of the road, 72, is much longer, but I didn't even ask them about footing - our definitions of "good footing" are too different. The buddy got the bike unloaded so I bid them farewell.

We crossed the main road and headed back into the day use area and I saw a new RV. It was parked at the other end of the (very large) lot I'd parked in. A yellow lab in paroxysms of excitement came leaping toward us barking its head off. The human was right behind it, trying to get "Rose" to chillax a bit. She was having none of it. I rode my very calm horse very slowly toward them, talking to Rose and her owner, then hopped off and walked in when the human got a hand on Rose's collar. Rose had never seen a horse before and was clearly having the best day of her entire life. She wasn't aggressive, just unbelievably excited about the huge! white! monster! in her world. She was so cute, and I think both Dixie and I were good horse ambassadors. I know Dixie was - she was totally unfazed by Rose and just wanted to eat some weird scrubby plant growing in the parking lot.

After the humans had chatted for a while and Rose was dragged away, I rode Dixie down to the lake. She got all four feet wet, thought about drinking, and ate some half-dead aquatic plants. I thought about insisting that she wade further into the lake, but why? I'm sure I could've insisted and have her do it, but there was no real need.

We spent about 15 minutes hanging out at the trailer, but Dixie wasn't interested in eating any more mush so after I finished my snack we rolled out. Laura's last post on EI was about barefoot vs. shod, and I commented that I hardly talk about my boots because they are hardly blogworthy, but here goes: I put them on in about 1.5 minutes and they stayed on the whole ride. The "road" I took was NOT barefoot friendly. Boots or shoes+pads only. We walked/gaited/trotted only. I was worried about the right front, but even though it didn't fit right it didn't budge.

Dixie had lovely picture-perfect feet going into NASTR, but the idleness of late summer (and my own amateur trim jobs) let a lot of REALLY HARD false sole build up. I've been working diligently on them for a month now and last week the false sole finally started to shed on its own. A sharp hoof knife didn't budge it. New nippers didn't budge it. A sharp rasp glanced right off the stuff. A little rain finally broke it up / triggered Dixie's body to shed it - 1/8 to 1/4" chunks of sole have been coming out for a couple of weeks now. Three of her frogs shed off completely, and three feet flaked out all the dead sole and got trimmed. Not the RF! When we got back from the ride/lake, I pulled off most of the frog and flaked out a bit at the toe but there's still this huge wedge, especially in the medial heel. I think tomorrow I will aggressively mustang roll the medial wall so that the false sole is all that's weightbearing - I don't know what else to do. It's like iron.

I'm gonna have to turtle* this NEDA ride next weekend - Dixie is at about 75% yak status and she's not in tip-top shape. I'm thinking about going back to Boca on Monday and doing 10-15 miles on FS 72, just to get Dixie's cardio back in shape for next weekend, but that's all the prep I care to do. The NEDA ride is 20 flat sandy miles, and if it takes 5 hours, who cares? I could clip her neck, but I'm not planning much for the winter so I think I'll skip it.

*probably tie for turtle, if Susan M rides. She is firmly in the "getting one's money's worth per hour" camp and she always turtles rides she attends!

Next post: more pictures, fewer words.

October: when all the little demons come out to play

2011-10-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

October is the horriblest month of the year for me. It always has been. It just sucks being in my head in October.

It's not some irrational dark sea of depression. It's not the Big Demons, the ones who ask what you've accomplished with your life and why are you such a lazy/evil/incompetent person. It's the Little Demons, the ones you can usually ignore - but they are relentless. It's like playing a nightmarish game of Whack-a-Mole with a neverending stream of minor-league bad thoughts.

Since the end of September, I've wanted to go ride in the Sierras. I have not yet. There was the Toe Thing, and G was home for a week (YAY!), and I twisted my ankle, but what about all the OTHER days? I'll think "tomorrow I will go ride!" then here's my thought process:

Where should I go?
I pick some place from the Tahoe Rim site.
Let's go to Spooner!
What if there are mountain bikers and we plunge off the side of a mountain to escape them?
Shut up. Don't borrow trouble. There are no-bike trails and the horse is 1000x better than she was three years ago, the last time you saw a bicycle.
What if the trailer leaps off the ball, breaks its chains, and plunges off the road?
Shut up. It's a brand new trailer.
Why do you want to go to Spooner, anyway? It's halfway down Tahoe. It's 60 freakin miles one way. You're gonna spend three times as long trailering as you will riding.
... Cause it's... pretty?
A lot of frantic searching reveals that everything else is either further away or kind of vague on directions.
What kind of idiot hauls alone, into the mountains, in October, to someplace she's never been? You're going to have a Donner Party.
Well... there's no snow now, that's why I want to go...
You are SO spoiled. There are starving children in Africa and starving protesters in New York and it's probably peak oil and you just want to zoom off and terrify your horse with bikes and probably re-pull her tendon and permanently lame her? What is WRONG with you?

At that point I give up and vacuum (futile: it just gets tracked in again, and the fruit of laziness: why didn't I do that yesterday) and sulk. At night, the little voice pops back up to say:
Why don't you ever ride your horse? Poor thing. Pining away. Deserves better than to stand in a sand lot for the rest of her life.

Repeat every other day for two weeks.

Similar internal dialogues follow for just about everything. Doing stuff with friends. Declining the chance to do stuff with friends. Agreeing to do stuff, then canceling. Emailing friends. Failing to reply to emails from friends. Having nothing to do on a particular day. Having too much to do.

But it's almost over! It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point, but I know things will be better in November. I actually have a kickass Halloween costume picked out for the NEDA ride next Saturday. Sneak preview:

This too shall pass. It'll all be ok again soon. :)

Top 100 SF books: addendum

2011-10-05T21:25:00.000-07:00

In case the random mini-reviews in the comments did not help you decide which Top 100 SF book to tackle next, how about the world's biggest flowchart?

Click to embiggen.

Only extreme nerds need bother with this one

2011-10-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

I beat Nethack, for the 5th time or so in something like seven years. I am just putting this up for posterity's sake.

http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/r/rednuf/dumplog/1316451429.nh343.txt

rednuf, chaotic female human Rogue

5 5 5
---------
|.......|
5|...@...| 4 -----
|...@a%.| |...
|.a.....| ---- --..---------
| |.D.*...| | -- --...|.......|
|.4----`---- .| % ---....|.......|
|......@%.....| `$` `*/`.`*-`.._...|
---....V....--- ` ---....|.......|
-----`----- - )`` -- --...|.......|
---|---- --..---------
54 -------_ | |...
| %` | -----
$ %$ --` %-------
`%%% --$ |
---+---- ---
` |
------------

Rednuf the Burglar St:25 Dx:18 Co:18 In:15 Wi:16 Ch:10 Chaotic S:1297530
Astral Plane $:0 HP:158(158) Pw:105(105) AC:-24 Xp:19/2621418 T:45124

Your inventory
Amulets
c - an uncursed amulet of ESP
Weapons
e - the blessed rustproof +3 Magicbane (alternate weapon; not wielded)
p - a blessed +4 silver saber
F - 14 blessed +4 daggers named +4 (in quiver)
Armor
A - an uncursed greased burnt +5 cloak of magic resistance (being worn)
D - a blessed fireproof +3 T-shirt (being worn)
L - an uncursed +0 pair of levitation boots (being worn)
P - a blessed rusty +5 pair of gauntlets of power (being worn)
R - an uncursed thoroughly burnt +0 pair of speed boots
U - a blessed greased +3 helmet (being worn)
W - a blessed +4 silver dragon scale mail (being worn)
Comestibles
v - an uncursed cockatrice corpse named SuckIt (weapon in hand)
Potions
E - a blessed potion of booze
Rings
H - an uncursed ring of regeneration
M - an uncursed ring of conflict (on left hand)
N - an uncursed ring of free action (on right hand)
Wands
d - a wand of digging (0:0)
l - a wand of teleportation (0:8)
x - a wand of death (0:2)
y - a wand of fire (0:0)
I - a wand of wishing (1:0)
V - a wand of cancellation (0:3)
Y - a wand of striking (0:1)
Z - a wand of teleportation (0:6)
Tools
a - a blessed +0 unicorn horn
b - a blessed greased bag of holding
g - a magic marker (1:19)
j - an uncursed sack named WANDS
k - the blessed Master Key of Thievery
n - the Bell of Opening (0:0)
s - an uncursed stethoscope
t - an uncursed towel
u - a magic marker (0:21)
w - an uncursed magic whistle
K - the uncursed Candelabrum of Invocation (7 candles attached)
O - an uncursed magic lamp (lit)
T - a blessed can of grease (0:19)
Gems
o - an uncursed luckstone named The Heart ofqAhriman

Contents of the bag of holding:
an uncursed -2 pair of water walking boots
an uncursed -1 helm of opposite alignment
an uncursed cockatrice egg named grenade
16 uncursed K-rations
6 uncursed lumps of royal jelly
2 uncursed lizard corpses
an uncursed scroll of create monster
an uncursed scroll of blank paper
a blessed scroll of magic mapping
an uncursed scroll of enchant weapon
a cursed scroll of blank paper
an uncursed scroll of identify
2 uncursed scrolls of fire
a blessed scroll of remove curse
4 uncursed scrolls of remove curse
8 potions of holy water
an uncursed potion of extra healing
an uncursed potion of polymorph
2 blessed potions of gain level
a cursed potion of full healing
an uncursed potion of healing
an uncursed potion of acid
8 uncursed diluted potions of full healing
a blessed potion of gain energy
2 blessed potions of extra healing
a wand of digging (0:5)
a cursed wand of digging (0:3)
a cursed wand of teleportation (0:4)
a wand of wishing (1:3)
a wand of digging (0:1)
a wand of digging (0:5)
a wand of digging (0:7)
a magic marker named 1 (1:14)
a +0 unicorn horn

Contents of the sack named WANDS:
2 potions of holy water
a wand of cancellation (0:6)
a wand of death (0:4)
a wand of lightning (0:3)
a wand of teleportation (0:5)
a wand of digging (0:3)
a wand of lightning (0:6)

Final attributes
You were piously aligned
Your alignment was 235
You were fire resistant
You were cold resistant
You were sleep resistant
You were shock resistant
You were poison resistant
You were magic-protected
You were telepathic
You were warned
You had automatic searching
You were stealthy
You caused conflict
You could teleport
You had teleport control
You were levitating
You were protected
You were fast
You had reflection
You had free action
You were extremely lucky (11)
You had extra luck
Bad luck did not time out for you
Good luck did not time out for you
You survived after being killed 4 times

Spells known in the end
Name Level Category Fail
a - knock 1* matter 100%
b - cure blindness 2* healing 100%
c - protection 1* clerical 100%
d - slow monster 2* enchantment 100%
e - detect unseen 3* divination 100%
f - light 1* divination 100%
g - create monster 2* clerical 100%
h - force bolt 1* attack 100%
i - charm monster 3* enchantment 100%

Vanquished creatures
Orcus
Juiblex
The Wizard of Yendor (thrice)
Death (twice)
Pestilence
4 arch-liches
a high priest
3 mastodons
Medusa
16 krakens
2 iron golems
6 master liches
a ki-rin
a storm giant
a balrog
4 purple worms
a gray dragon
2 silver dragons
3 white dragons
3 orange dragons
a black dragon
3 blue dragons
2 green dragons
2 yellow dragons
8 minotaurs
2 jabberwocks
The Master Assassin
6 baluchitheria
12 Angels
2 demiliches
Vlad the Impaler
3 stone golems
5 master mind flayers
6 Olog-hai
a Nazgul
4 pit fiends
a sandestin
5 hell hounds
3 titanotheres
4 trappers
29 guardian nagas
3 disenchanters
32 vampire lords
5 skeletons
4 shopkeepers
18 aligned priests
10 captains
6 shades
11 liches
a clay golem
3 nurses
9 ice devils
6 nalfeshnees
3 lurkers above
an Aleax
a frost giant
an ettin
3 black puddings
25 vampires
9 lieutenants
a watch captain
31 ghosts
a caveman
a healer
2 queen bees
2 winged gargoyles
a mind flayer
13 giant mimics
8 zruties
5 fire giants
2 ogre kings
an ice troll
3 rock trolls
8 umber hulks
3 flesh golems
5 Elvenkings
6 doppelgangers
6 bone devils
6 large mimics
3 wumpuses
2 fire vortices
5 long worms
a couatl
11 stalkers
11 air elementals
5 fire elementals
4 earth elementals
8 water elementals
5 hill giants
2 giant mummies
5 black nagas
8 xorns
14 giant zombies
5 elf-lords
22 sergeants
6 barbed devils
3 vrocks
2 salamanders
13 wargs
4 winter wolves
5 hell hound pups
19 small mimics
a glass piercer
2 warhorses
6 steam vortices
7 xans
an ettin mummy
7 quantum mechanics
6 trolls
a sasquatch
3 wood golems
3 erinyes
3 mariliths
2 djinn
7 sharks
8 electric eels
5 gelatinous cubes
4 pyrolisks
5 large dogs
2 flaming spheres
8 shocking spheres
3 large cats
8 tigers
3 gargoyles
a dwarf king
5 tengu
7 ochre jellies
8 leocrottas
12 energy vortices
2 mountain centaurs
3 stone giants
2 elf mummies
6 human mummies
7 red nagas
2 green slimes
10 pit vipers
4 pythons
3 cobras
50 wraiths
4 carnivorous apes
17 ettin zombies
4 leather golems
8 Grey-elves
113 soldiers
4 watchmen
5 horned devils
4 succubi
4 incubi
20 chameleons
a crocodile
19 giant beetles
4 quivering blobs
13 cockatrices
9 wolves
a lynx
5 panthers
2 gremlins
84 leprechauns
4 orc-captains
3 iron piercers
4 mumakil
9 giant spiders
2 scorpions
3 horses
an ice vortex
9 black lights
10 vampire bats
2 forest centaurs
6 gnome kings
an orc mummy
3 dwarf mummies
4 ogres
a brown pudding
3 rust monsters
8 owlbears
2 yetis
5 gold golems
2 werewolves
2 Green-elves
6 piranhas
18 giant eels
10 lizards
4 chickatrices
2 dogs
3 housecats
3 jaguars
5 dwarf lords
2 blue jellies
2 white unicorns
2 gray unicorns
8 dust vortices
5 ravens
3 plains centaurs
2 gnome mummies
4 snakes
3 water moccasins
2 apes
17 human zombies
3 rope golems
3 Woodland-elves
25 soldier ants
4 fire ants
28 bugbears
an imp
4 lemures
7 wood nymphs
17 water nymphs
5 mountain nymphs
24 Mordor orcs
20 Uruk-hai
6 orc shamans
4 rock piercers
5 rock moles
a pony
5 fog clouds
6 yellow lights
3 shriekers
7 violet fungi
23 gnome lords
7 gnomish wizards
6 kobold mummies
a red naga hatchling
a golden naga hatchling
2 gray oozes
7 barrow wights
14 elf zombies
13 ghouls
2 straw golems
3 paper golems
6 jellyfish
2 baby crocodiles
26 giant ants
4 little dogs
11 floating eyes
2 kittens
28 dwarves
3 homunculi
2 kobold lords
a kobold shaman
13 hill orcs
12 rothes
4 rabid rats
a centipede
6 giant bats
3 monkeys
14 orc zombies
13 dwarf zombies
a wererat
a werejackal
11 iguanas
36 killer bees
2 acid blobs
6 coyotes
4 gas spores
8 hobbits
3 large kobolds
24 hobgoblins
10 giant rats
3 cave spiders
a brown mold
a yellow mold
a green mold
a red mold
58 gnomes
11 garter snakes
18 gnome zombies
8 geckos
5 jackals
a fox
a kobold
9 goblins
5 sewer rats
11 grid bugs
7 lichens
12 kobold zombies
7 newts
1974 creatures vanquished.

Voluntary challenges
You genocided 6 types of monsters
You polymorphed 1 item
You never changed form
You used 9 wishes

Your skills at the end
Fighting Skills
two weapon combat [Expert]
Weapon Skills
dagger [Expert]
short sword [Basic]
saber [Skilled]
Spellcasting Skills
(none)

Latest messages
There is an altar to Kos (chaotic) here.
What do you want to zap? [dlxyIVYZ or ?*]
You may wish for an object.
For what do you wish?
E - a potion called c.invis/booze/fj.
You hear some noises in the distance.
The soldier ant misses the orange dragon.
The soldier ant misses the orange dragon.
The soldier ant turns to flee!
The orange dragon turns to flee!
The fire ant turns to flee!
The soldier ant misses the high priestess of Kos.
The soldier ant misses the high priestess of Kos.
#
What do you want to sacrifice? [vz or ?*]
You offer the Amulet of Yendor to Kos...
An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance...
The voice of Kos thunders: "Congratulations, mortal!"
"In return for thy service, I grant thee the gift of Immortality!"
You ascend to the status of Demigoddess...

Goodbye rednuf the Demigoddess...
You went to your reward with 2637710 points,
Magicbane (worth 3500 zorkmids and 8750 points)
The Master Key of Thievery (worth 3500 zorkmids and 8750 points)
The Bell of Opening (worth 5000 zorkmids and 12500 points)
The Candelabrum of Invocation (worth 5000 zorkmids and 12500 points)
1 amulet of ESP (worth 150 zorkmids),
and 0 pieces of gold, after 45124 moves.
Killer: ascended
You were level 19 with a maximum of 158 hit points when you ascended.

No Points Name Hp [max]
1 2147483647 ctaboir-Wiz-Gno-Fem-Neu ascended to demigoddess-hood.
2 2147483647 Zadir-Pri-Hum-Fem-Neu died on the Astral Plane.
Killed by overexertion. 4140 [4140]
3 2147483647 Adeon-Wiz-Gno-Mal-Neu ascended to demigod-hood. 12320 [464076]

2000 4982259 OrangeXP-Val-Hum-Fem-Neu ascended to
demigoddess-hood. 538 [594]
2637710 rednuf-Rog-Hum-Fem-Cha ascended to demigoddess-hood. 158 [158]

RIP big left toenail

2011-10-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Family and co-toes mourn the loss of Big Left Toenail, known to friends as "Big Lefty Piggles." Piggles passed away on Friday, September 30, 2011, after a short period of hospice care following a tragic accident. He was surrounded by co-toes at the end.

On the morning of September 27, an out-of-control office chair slammed into the left foot. Piggles placed himself in the line of fire, leaping to the defense of his cousin the First Phalangeal Bone. The impact threw Piggles into the air, loosening his grip on his toe. Piggles was rushed to Concentra Urgent Care on California Street, San Francisco, California, USA. Doctors were guarded but hopeful, and he was reattached to his toe.

(GRUESOME TOE PICTURES! You have been warned. http://imgur.com/zdfXT.jpg http://imgur.com/WJLGN.jpg)

Piggles fought a short but valiant fight to live. His conditioned worsened, and he was pronounced dead at Renown Urgent Care North Hills in Reno Nevada the following Friday. His remains will be interred in a compost pile at a private residence in Reno. A wake is scheduled to be held at 7 pm on October 1, 2011.

http://imgur.com/hSpP5.jpg

A detailed accident investigation found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in the chair operator's system, and the collision was ruled an accident. No charges are expected to be filed.

I blame Cersei.

2011-09-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

If you're not a resident of the central/western US, you may not know about goatheads.

They are evil caltrops. They're the seed of an evil plant and they cause evil wounds to people feet, dog feet, and bicycle tires. Not that I have a bicycle, but they're THAT sturdy. If I had a laminitic horse, I would seriously worry about goathead caltrops in its soles! Happily, a quick Google tells me that goathead plants are the only native thing left living in my yard - I erroneously assumed that That One Vine wasn't a devil plant. Since I removed all the other native spiny weedy plants - and by removed I mean I've filled up to six trash bags per week for three months - it'll be easy enough for me to kill off the goatheads.

Anyway.

Two days ago I found one on a sock while I was slipping on my cheap imitation Crocs. Yesterday I found another one. Today I found a third and decided to Take Action - I turned on all the lights and crawled around the den carpet feeling for goatheads.

I hope I found them all.

edited to add: after I took this picture I found one more (and two Cersei-nail-clippings.)

I would really like to blame Cersei for this. Not that I would yell at her or anything - she is but an innocent dog - but, you know, cleaning up after the dog is easier than cleaning up after yourself. Sadly, ALL the goatheads were within a couple of feet of where I sit on my couch. (As opposed to Cersei's couch - don't all good dogs have their own slipcovered couches? Trust me, it keeps the People Couch much cleaner if you just give in and let the dog have her own.)

I'd really like to pin this one on the dog, but circumstantial evidence suggests it's I who is tracking them in. :(

Virginia City 100

2011-09-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

For some strange reason I volunteered for the early morning shift of the VC 100 last weekend. I got up way too early and drove down to south Reno. It was cold!

I got to vet scribe. Yay, that's my favorite! The ride was quite small with only 25 entries. It's been a tough year for most rides, plus VC is usually spaced out far enough from Tevis that people can do both - but this year Tevis will be just three weeks later than VC, so I'm sure they lost a few riders there. The first check is down on the edge of south Reno, just a couple of miles from The Fancy Mall. Nothing there looked interesting enough to take pictures of (plus I hadn't had enough coffee to care). After the last riders came through, I went over to the fancy mall, bought some fruit at the farmers' market, and hit Starbucks. Then up the ~~bus plunge~~ scenic mountainside road to Virginia City.

Basecamp is about a mile outside of VC, in the tiny (1000 people?) community of Gold Hill. There is a big foofaraw about a new open pit gold mine right down the road - most of the houses in Gold Hill had "stop the mine!" signs. I know that mining is pretty much the only thing keeping Nevada solvent right now, but I'd be pretty pissed if they were open pit mining a mile from MY cute historic house and MY well.

I think this is the mine in question.

Here's Six Mile Canyon ~~Bus Plunge~~ Road, which leads down to some little community between Dayton and Stagecoach. The pale stuff that looks like a sand dune is historic mine tailings (good for tourism), as opposed to current mine tailings (bad for tourism).

Virginia City.

Ancient Jeeps from Storey County fire/rescue.

Inside the Ice House, which used to be a real ice house. (Where did the ice come from? Little lakes in the Sierras?)

Pretty cool.

At one point there was a small brush fire down toward Carson City, but the crews got it contained fast and it fortunately wasn't on the trail. (I think that's the most hardcore Surface Factors pull possible - trail was on fire so we pulled everybody.)

People had come roaring in to the first vet check right on time with the historical averages, but they were very slow getting to the lunch check. I actually really enjoyed sitting around talking to the vets and volunteers. I've been forcing myself to volunteer at rides and be social and chitchat, and I'm finally at the point where I recognize enough people (and enough people recognize me) that I can just talk and listen without feeling agonizingly out of place. The vets actually spent a lot of time talking Theory of Vetting, which was fascinating to listen to - what they think the trail will sort out versus when they want to pull the horse to keep it from being hurt. Of course most of the talk was about the crash at the air race. So sad!

I eventually went home about 4, to a Very Angry Horse and a dog who didn't really notice I left. She is the queen of snoozing on her back on my bed. :)

Blog bankruptcy declared

2011-09-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

I'm too far behind to comment. Sorry, yall. I did read everybody's blogs, but I hereby admit that I just can't comment on them all. Too overwhelming. I have been all blah'd out and generally feeling emotionally sucky - I have nothing to say about my life and nothing helpful to say to other people, whine whine. I took that big spotted horse out yesterday and got back on track, I think.

(Email bankruptcy is when you admit that your email is insurmountable and you're just not going to try to respond to any existing messages. I think blog bankruptcy should work the same way - I will go back to my usual commenting frequency starting from today.)

I'm putting up pictures from Virginia City and last week's ride behind Peavine and I'll get them written up and scheduled. Yesterday I didn't take any pictures - it was just another summer ride at Red Rocks - but I did convince Dixie to ~~gallop fearlessly~~ canter hesitantly toward some cows. They were hovering around the trailer, eating stray bits of hay. (I didn't hassle them - they moo'd and gallumped about 20 feet away and stopped to glare balefully at us.) I think she's finally getting the idea that she's higher up the food chain than a cow.

I have no idea if High Desert is still on for October, but if it is, I'm planning on the 25 LD on Saturday. I have convinced myself that anything longer will cripple my horse, and I just don't want to ride Sundays. Everybody else wants me to ride Sundays, but that's the day that G and I sack out and watch football and IM each other about it. It's the only day of the week where it almost feels like he's here and I don't want to miss it. None of my riding buddies understand this in the least, but there it is.

Disaster

2011-09-16T18:23:00.000-07:00

(Not to me or mine - don't freak out, Mom!)

I never blog about the news - that's what the media is for - but this one is literally so close to home. We live about five miles from Reno-Stead airport, and every year they have air races. I kinda worry about a plane crashing on my house, but it's far back in the ranks of worries, like a big earthquake or a wildfire. Well, tonight a P-51 crashed into the stands on the last race of the night. Apparently it's pretty bad. My heart goes out to the victims.

Volunteering at the

Nerd alert: Top 100 SF books

2011-09-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

One for the nerds! Saw this on a totally unrelated blog, thought it looked fun. Feel free to play along, or just castigate my terrible taste in the comments. :)

NPR's Top 100 SF/F booklist

I will bold the ones I've read (at least partially) and snark about the suck.

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert (well, I read Dune at any rate. It didn't catch my interest enough to read the rest.)

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin (I think everyone knows about my love/hate relationship with GRRM.)

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov (Started it long ago, but it was just too old to keep my interest. Old SF can be good, but I usually fail to suspend my disbelief when they start talking about how the super advanced computing machines can store *thousands of books* on one tape drive!)

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman (Listened to this on our cross-country move. Highly recommended, but especially good if you're driving across a lot of America.)

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (It's good, but do you know what's even better in the 80s book to movie world? The Neverending Story! Way darker than the movie.)

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan (Well, kind of. I quit about 5 books in, after an endless slog through the Aes Sedai bathing and plotting and only two chapters about the theoretical hero. If I am ever bedridden I might go back to them.)

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell (First read as a kid. Didn't really get it. Title very misleading.)

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson (Our kids will never understand about sky "the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." They'll think it means bright blue.)

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein (Good stuff if you're a teenager. Probably doesn't age well.)

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss (These are surprisingly good! Remarkably good!)

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick (I just don't like PKD. I've tried several of his books but they're like bad acid trips. I don't need any reminders of that, tyvm.)

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

25. The Stand, by Stephen King (It was just ok.)

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (One of my personal top 10.)

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman (I've always meant to get around to it, but... they're comic books. I like real books!)

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein (Space marines and weird right-wing SF propaganda! Very entertaining, at least. And the protagonist is nonwhite, which is rare for older SF.)

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein (This one did age well with me.)

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller (Read half of it last week. Got bored. May go back to it, but life is short and I no longer feel guilty about abandoning books.)

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings (How the hell did this end up at 41? It's awful! It's really amazingly trite. I loved it when I was 14 though!)

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson (Read the first one. Although now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I even finished it. It was meh?)

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin (Fascinating look at gender.)

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Again, perhaps if I'm bedridden for months.)

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (Very good! I read Un Lun Dun shortly after I read Neverwhere - that's fun.)

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons (They're good, they really are! Sadly Dan Simmons appears to have gone totally insane. But these four are still worth a read.)

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman (Good, but how did this get more votes than Coraline?)

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson (Another personal top-ten. I annoy my husband to no end by constantly quoting bits of Crypto at him. Am very tempted to name my firstborn Bobby Shaftoe.)

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett (I've tried a few Discworld and I just can't get into them.)

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson (Started it as a kid/teenager. Too dark. Never went back.)

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist (More teenager stuff.)

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks (Seriously, how did this get on here? If you're 12, and you just read LOTR, and you want something exactly like it, read this!)

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore (I was a kid!)

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson (I'm such a Stephenson fangirl.)

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey (I read one. Weird mix of politics and kinky sex.)

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson (Started it this summer. Didn't finish the first book. Meh.)

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks (Oh man, these are awesome. Just discovered them this year and ripped through the whole series in like a month. Yes, I do read ridiculously fast.)

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson (His weakest book, IMO. Too much philosophical yammering, too little action.)

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher (Why is the crappy Codex Alera on here and Dresden isn't? I read the first one.)

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe (I have a love/hate thing with Wolfe and I haven't gotten around to these yet.)

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn (I never liked Star Wars enough to read the ~~fanfic~~ extended universe works.)

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan (Well, I read two or three when I was a teenager. I hear the last one gets seriously weird.)

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock (Read part as a kid. Not to my taste then.)

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley (Sunshine is *excellent!* Everything McKinley wrote is wonderful, actually. Aerin from The Hero and The Crown was probably the first awesome female hero I ever read.)

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge (Quite good, along with the loose sequel, A Deepness in the Sky. I haven't liked his other stuff.)

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis (I love her time travelers!)

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville (Ehhh. I really liked Un Lun Dun but haven't enjoyed - or even finished - anything else by Mieville.)

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony (I was 10, ok? Why is this on here?)

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Milton never went to California

2011-09-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

Paradise isn't lost, it's hiding in the Sierras.

Doesn't look like much from the topo map, does it?

At last week's NEDA ride, R invited me to come ride the high country with her. Monday I went to Paradise Lake with her and two other high country trail riders. Words fail me - I can't describe how beautiful it is up there. I took a lot of (bad) pictures so they'll have to suffice.

I got to the parking area at Boreal a little early - I wasn't sure how long it would take to get up Donner Pass with the trailer. I wasn't quite motivated enough to braid Dixie, but I did play Pretty Pony with her.

Dixie was remarkably solid the whole time. She didn't spazz about the mountain bikers, but she did worry a lot about backpackers. She tripped once, just like each of the other horses. I can't tell you what a relief it was to be on a surefooted trustworthy horse! She stepped over some very large logs, followed me up a 2' ledge onto a bridge and back down the ledge on the other side, followed me down a very tricky rockfall section of trail, and stood patiently whenever we stopped. Such a good horse.

This is near the trailhead.

I think this is looking from the ridge along Andecite Peak toward Castle Peak.

The biggest meadow we crossed.

My poor iPhone just can't handle pics at high altitude. I've noticed that the higher I go, the worse the overexposure is.

The altitude didn't bother me - I actually hiked quite a bit of trail - but you could tell you were very high up. The sun was brutally intense - and, of course, there were snowpacks and wildflowers everywhere. This little meadow was waist-high in yellow, white, and purple flowers.

R has a picture of Dixie and I standing on a big snowpack - when she sends it to me I'll add it here. :)

Dixie approved of Paradise Lake.

More lake shots.

I firmly maintain that I have a horse because I'm too lazy to walk places, but I am seriously tempted to buy a tent, hike nine miles out to that lake, and sleep on that rock ledge.

I continue to be impressed by my Renegades. I bought some new toe straps last week - the rear straps were pretty grotty and one of the fronts was failing. I couldn't remember which front strap was bad, and they looked about the same, so I just shrugged and left the fronts alone. Turns out it was the right - that damn strap kept coming undone. I hopped off and re-velcro'd it several times on the trip out, and on the trip back when it came undone again I just left it loose for a mile or so. The boot never budged, over rocks and logs and through bogs. When we stopped to give the youngest horse a rest, I pulled the rear boots, put a good toe strap on the front right, and we motored on home. Straps are cheap - don't buy three just because you know one of them is good. Just buy four straps, Funder.

Dixie didn't drink as well as I'd like, but she's gotten really good at grabbing grass on the move, and she didn't sweat a lot. It was a hard ride, but very slow and pleasant, and she never huffed and puffed. Of course she didn't want mash at the trailer. R suggested I try wetting her hay at home, to get her used to eating gross soggy food, and I'm going to try that tonight.

My rig towed amazingly well over Donner Pass. I had plenty of truck to get up the pass, and it held its speed on the long downgrade coming home.

I got some great feedback on my trim post, and I haven't forgotten about it! Smazourek, thanks especially for the comments on Flickr!

Hooves, August 2011

2011-09-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of people have talked about hooves / trimming on their blogs, so I thought I'd get some pics of Dixie's feet for comparison. I have been trimming them myself this summer - not sure why, and I should get my awesome trimmer out to take a look. I feel like I've been so busy though!

She has desert hooves. If you live anywhere that isn't bone dry, your horses' feet won't look like this!

Front right, heel view. They're too long (I was going to trim the day I fell off) and you can see how they're flaring on the outside. That tight crack in her frog probably means there's thrush in there.

Sole view. The funny looking stuff on the sole is just really dried out dead sole. In wetter climates that's the white crumbly stuff you can dig out with a hoof pick. You can see the bar on the left side is high and starting to fold forward, and that whole heel quarter is flared. Her walls are very thick and rock-hard, from the climate, and her white lines are more stretched than I like to see.

I scraped at her sole with my hoof knife. I know she has thick live sole and I just poked around a bit to see if any of the dead stuff was ready to pop off. I dug the dead stuff out around the bars, to make sure they weren't folded up under there. Then I rasped the walls for a while from the bottom, then rolled them from the top. She has a lot of concavity and a lot of dead sole in there, so I just leveled the walls with the dead sole - they are still above live sole level, and hopefully she'll walk out some of that flaky stuff now. The heel on the left was starting to crack so I rolled that a little higher up, to take the pressure off of the cracks. They should grow out fine.

Rear right, heel view. Her rears are flatter, spade-shaped, and tend to flare on the outside wall. The flaring is because of her conformation or way of going, one of the two. I try to touch up the roll on the outside rear walls more often to keep the flaring from getting worse. The walls on the rears aren't nearly as long.

Sole view. See how the bar on the left side is sort of collapsed forward and smushed down? I pried and whacked at it with the hoof knife but didn't do a very good job trimming it.

I didn't take a very good after picture of the rear, because there wasn't much to do. I rolled the walls from the top, especially the outside quarter and heel. You can see some bruising on the outside heel, where the walls got too long and started to pull away from the hoof. If I remain injury-free and diligent about rolling that area, the heel will grow in nice and tight.

She is sound over any surface. I don't do long distances over rocks without boots, but she's perfectly happy to trot over rocks. If she showed any kind of soreness or hesitancy, I'd be more worried about the bruises and treating for thrush. But now that I've seen her get hurt, I know that she's not some stoic hiding her pain, so I'm not too worried about it.

Here's some side shots on concrete.

Front right (from the inside). I think her front heels could come down a little more?

Rears

The wonky curve I'm always battling

The full set has a few more shots. Trimmer friends - what do you see?

Hummingbird pics

2011-08-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

This is the best my poor little consumer camera can do. She likes to perch on the feeder opposite the patio, but sometimes she'll light on one of the side feeders. She's definitely a she; all the males that come through Nevada have more color on their necks.

Greenish body? Tan head? White on the neck? I looked at bird guides for a while but I just don't know. Back home in Mississippi we only really saw Ruby-Throated but there are a bunch of different species that migrate through Reno.

Anyway, she comes frequently every morning and evening, but I don't often see her in the middle of the day.

Frenchman Creek 3 - Sunday on the Arab

2011-08-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

There was no cell reception anywhere near the lake, so I had no idea if my friend A was going to show up Sunday, or even what horse she'd bring for me. Ahhh well, I am an international woman of mystery and I lead an exciting life.

I had a rough night Saturday night. I did put the rain fly up (and it did drizzle again) but it was slightly colder and I about froze. I've camped comfortably in colder weather, but I've done it on my eggcrate mattress. For this ride I used my Coleman air mattress, in deference to my bruised up back. I was a little worried about it on Friday night, because I know how cold an air mattress can be, but that night was fine, even in the rain. Saturday night was just a few degrees colder (low of 42) and it made a huge difference. I slept pretty poorly and laid in bed shivering til the sun came up at 5:30. Then I pried myself out of bed, dragged the sleeping bag into the truck, turned on the truck, and shivered til blessed hot air started pouring out of the vents. I didn't get out of the truck til 6:30. I kept telling myself that it was hot yesterday and it'd be hot again today and I should appreciate the coolness, but mind did not conquer matter.

I got Dixie fed and got dressed to ride, then wandered over and ate breakfast with my new riding buddy R and her friend. She has a cabover camper with proper cookware and served up a real breakfast of champions, scrambled eggs with applewood ham and yogurt with berries. Right as we finished, A appeared and I headed off to do it all over again.

A had brought the grey mare for me to ride. I really want to like the grey mare. She's smart, she's actually well trained, she's got tons of heart, she never quits, and she's got phenomenal recoveries. But she trips. I started riding her because A thought maybe it was just her riding that was unbalancing the mare and making her trip, but she trips for me too. If she's just been shod, she trips less, but if she's two weeks into a trim cycle she trips a lot. Like multiple times per mile. Flat ground, rocky ground, it doesn't matter, she just trips.

I told A and Other A about the trail and difficulty while we saddled up. A was on her lazy but capable bay mare, and Other A was on her hyper bay gelding. I emphasized that they'd definitely get their money's worth if we only did 20 miles! We picked up our ride cards and headed out.

Grey Mare tripped enormously before we even got to the photographer, a mile down the trail. I wasn't clinging to the reins for dear life and she fell on her knees and face. I lost a stirrup and ended up on her neck, but by-god I did not come off. Thank you western saddle with your lovely huge pommel. After that I got the reins properly bridged and gripped and we had no more almost falling down episodes.

Still, she tripped a lot. And she had a cough that we spent the whole ride wondering about. She's one of those horses that needs to be bubble wrapped, and she'd gotten kicked in the neck earlier that week. Was she coughing because her trachea was irritated from the kick? Or maybe she had a bit of hay or beet pulp stuck in her throat and she was mildly choking - but she hadn't coughed the night before. So maybe it was the dust on the trail - but she coughed sometimes when there was no dust, and didn't cough at all in the dust sometimes. It was a mystery, and a terrifying one at that. When she coughed she needed to stretch her neck out, and I had to let the reins out to let her cough, but if the reins were that far out there was no way I could catch her if she tripped.

I am not a big believer in "catching the horse when she trips" with the reins. It runs contrary to most of my beliefs. But this horse has tripped and fallen on her face at least twice with A and twice with me, and it really does seem to help if I can hold her head up when she trips.

I was sore from all those hills on Saturday, plus my back still hurt from the fall last week. My Dad asked why hills are so hard - you use different muscles to stay balanced in the saddle. Miles of conditioning at the trot / gait / canter builds up certain muscles in your core - I could ride 50 miles on the flat and only be moderately sore the next day. But trotting (or walking, or cantering) uphill uses different muscles. Going downhill uses another set. I was worn out from all those hills on Saturday, and every time the grey mare tripped (multiple times per mile) it was a yank of agony to keep her from falling down.

There's a reason they call it endurance, and I endured. We went slower on the downhills, because I felt really unsure about my continued good health if she coughed and tripped while we were trotting downhill! We got to the turnaround at the river and chilled out for a few minutes. The grey mare hates walking in water, so I offered her a bucket and sponged her instead of trying to force her into the river. She didn't drink, which isn't unusual.

About halfway back, I decided the mare and I were going to pull. I was absolutely in agony and the grey mare was uncharacteristically tired. She kept petering out on the hills while the two bays just charged up them like energizer bunnies. Of course the A's waited for us to slog on up and recover, but I kinda think the grey mare was just NQR. I gave the A's a good description of the 10 mile second loop, but they also thought that the 20 mile loop was a hell of a good workout and they pulled at camp too. Our ride time for the 20 miles was 3:36, almost exactly what I did with my fat Walker. (I'm so proud of her!)

I stopped at my trailer and pulled my saddle, and the grey was down when we moseyed on over to the pulsetakers / water stop. I don't quite know her well enough to know if her pulse was a little high... but I couldn't do another 10 miles of coughing tripping hanging on. Honestly, I felt like I'd wussed out, right until I got home and downloaded the GPS info and saw exactly how many hills we'd done. It was an amazingly good training ride!

I've got info on both loops, because of how I rode the two days. The whole 30 miles was 8200' of climb (and another 8200 feet of descent). The first 20 miles was only 4000' of climb. That second 10 mile loop, with the horrible hill of rock that I walked up and down, added another 4200' of climb!

I never know whether to completely trust my GPS. If I look at the track in the Garmin program, I get one number for elevation. If I load the track into a different program, I get another number. A third program gives me another number. They're always within 15% of each other, but they do vary. I can't swear in court that we climbed 8000' on Saturday, but I can swear that we climbed more on Saturday than we did at NASTR in June.

I was pretty sore on Sunday, especially in my quads. I crashed hard that night and felt quite a bit better Monday. My knees feel ok, my muscles aren't too sore, and even my bruised rib isn't bothering me anymore. I'm not in tiptop shape, but I'm not as bad off as I feared. :)

It was an outstandingly good ride. I hope it's scheduled a couple weeks earlier next year, so I can use it as a warmup for the Tahoe Rim ride. If you ever get the chance to ride at Frenchman Lake, do it!

NEDA vs. AERC

2011-08-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

NEDA stands for National Endurance Driving Association. Sadly, it's much more of a regional thing right now. Hopefully one day someone will expand it, but for now you have to come to Nevada or California to see a NEDA ride. They offer a 10 mile fun ride or a 20-30 mile endurance ride.

Yes, it's endurance driving. It's set up for carts - a few people bring Clydes or Percherons and big chuckwagons, but a lot of the drivers have little homemade... well... chariots. Little stand-up chariots, made out of metal, pulled by one light horse. It looks utterly terrifying and like a ton of fun. They go barreling across the desert like some modern-day Ben Hur reenactment.

The carts alone make it a fabulous training experience for green horses. Yes, horses generally come completely unglued the first time they see a cart, but, you know, once you work through that you've got a way better mount.

NEDA rides have no time limits and no vet checks - just a pulse and go between the two loops. You can pulse in and turn right around for the next loop, or take a lunch break, whatever suits your style that day. I usually sponge my horse, make sure she's drinking and gets a bite to eat, grab some human food, and go back out. A lot of local AERC riders use NEDA rides as training, and that's basically what I do too.

AERC is the (multi)national endurance riding association. Some areas also have regional endurance associations - the Southeast's SERA is particularly active. Most of the time if there is a 50 mile or longer ride being held in the US or Canada, it's sanctioned by AERC (and, optionally, FEI or a regional group). AERC rides offer: sometimes a 10-15 mile fun ride, a 25-35 mile limited distance, a 50-65 mile endurance ride, and sometimes a 75 or 100 mile ride.

AERC rides cost a lot more than NEDA rides - I did two days at Frenchman, plus the corral rental, for less than a one day AERC ride. In large part that's because AERC rides have vet checks, plus higher overhead for an active national organization. At an AERC ride, your horse has to get a passing grade from a vet before the ride, several times during the ride, and shortly after you finish the ride.

I'm fully in favor of all the AERC vet checks - but I also don't worry too much about not having a staff vet at a NEDA ride. There's a lot of evidence showing that horses face serious metabolic stress after about 40-45 miles of riding, but a 20 or 30 mile ride just isn't inherently dangerous. I wouldn't want to do a 50 mile ride without a vet check, but a 30 mile ride isn't that hard on a horse. You're still assuming some risk when you ride 30 miles - but you're assuming risk any time you un bubble wrap your horse. :)

NEDA rides are fun. There's a pretty laid back attitude, even among the racers. And yes, there are racers - NEDA has quite good year-end points awards. I'd love to get a blanket one year!

The AERC fun rides are a good way to check out the crazy endurance thing in your area. Here's the AERC ride calendar. They don't list fun rides in the regional listings, but if you click on the ride flyer it'll say if there's a fun ride. They're inexpensive, about $25-35 in the West. (I am too lazy to look at other regions.) AERC does stagger start times, so if you go to a fun ride you will not have to start with the serious racers. You will see them on the trail, but you don't have to deal with the starting line stampede! They're designed specifically for people curious about our sport, so feel free to wear your cowboy boots or ride in your Passier. The riders are usually stressed out, but I've never met a rude volunteer (at least in the West!)

ETA the NEDA website. Thanks, C!

Frenchman 2.5 - gear review

2011-08-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

I love reading other peoples' gear reviews, so I like to mention mine whenever I test it.

Horse gear

Pro choice saddle pad: Passed with flying colors. It did not shift, even after all those hills. Dixie had minimal hair movement under it and very nice sweat patterns. It's quite a bit heavier than the Woolback, but we're talking maybe two extra pounds. It's not dirty enough for me to clean yet, so I can't tell you how easy or hard that is.

Renegade hoof boots: Still awesome. If they fit right, they stay put, even when you're due for a trim. Some of the shod horse riders were bitching about how they'd have shod with pads or booted over the shoes if they'd known how rocky it would be, but I was not at all worried about stone bruises. And she gaited very nicely in them - finally! The ride pics show her beautiful stepping pace. As soon as I dig them out of the trailer I'll post one for you.

I still love my Griffin's pommel bags. I had to use some string to get them situated exactly where I want on my saddle, but the zippers are amazing and each bag will hold a liter of water. There's a little pouch in the middle where you can stash your map or ride card, and side velcro pockets for your hoof pick, multitool, etc. They are a million times better than the comparable Stowaway product. Also he has a very nice shade of purple.

Camping gear

Cheap black-bag solar shower: Absolutely marvelous. Mel mentioned hers a while back and it sounded lovely, so I got one too. I set out the shower in the morning, then after the ride I hang it in the horse trailer. I stand in a muck bucket and scrub down with a rag and some of that biodegradable soap, and it is the best. Like clean socks at lunch, it's one of those things that feels utterly amazing and totally changes your attitude about everything. A 2.5 gallon solar shower has more than enough hot water.

Truck tent: The mesh roof gives great views of the stars, but leaks like a sieve, can you believe it? The rain fly is a little hard to get on, but it effectively keeps the rain out. Do not trust the National Weather Service.

35 degree Sierra Trading Post sleeping bag plus Coleman air mattress: Keeps you toasty to 50 degrees, even in the drizzle. Miserably cold at 45. The air mattress is much nicer than just the eggcrate, but next ride I will try air mattress, eggcrate, busted zipper sleeping bag, and 35 degree bag. Thank god I don't try to pack out; I'd need a string of mules to haul all my crap.

Camelbak with Vitalyte electrolytes: I attribute all my success to this. Yes, it makes my back sweaty, but everything else gets sweaty anyway. Yes, it changes your balance a little, but once you get used to it you won't notice. And just think, if you fall on your back it's like a back airbag! Two liters of fluids is barely enough for a 20 mile loop, but it definitely saved me from heatstroking out.

Square blocks of ice last way longer than the same weight in bagged ice. This is common sense physics, but it actually holds true in the real world too.

Frenchman Creek part 2

2011-08-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

The Frenchman Lake area is stunningly beautiful. Well, honestly, I haven't seen a lake in the Sierras that isn't breathtaking, but this one is breathtaking and relatively deserted. Ridecamp was on private property just a couple miles from the lake, at a former eventing center. There was horse water pumped out of the creek and a surprisingly nice little outhouse, with potluck BBQ's both nights. Surprisingly good turnout, considering it's not a cart-friendly ride.

I camped beside the creek, looking out over the cross country field into the mountains.

I got Dixie set up in a pretty good sized corral, maybe 15x15, for $10 a night. Well worth it! She traveled well and set in to eating as soon as I turned her out. Smart girl. I got my camp set up, then saddled her up and took Cers on a short ride to see how rocky the trail was.

I'd washed her right before I loaded her, so she was very white and shiny. Rocking the viking war braids, of course.

We meandered about a mile up the trail, just far enough for me to decide that I'd definitely boot the next day. The ride flyer said the trails were good with "some rocks", but that was wishful thinking. The trails were that fine Sierra dust with many fist sized and larger rocks, and many stretches were all rock.

I felt pretty shy the first night, so I sat by my rig and read a book (Glen Cook's Garrett PI series) til dinner time, then crashed out shortly after that. I did stay up long enough to catch a gorgeous sunset!

About 11 I had a vivid dream where suddenly it started to rain. Some higher level of my brain began sounding alarm bells and I went from dead asleep to wide awake in about two seconds flat. Yep. Raining. Raining right through my tent. I decided that since it wasn't supposed to rain, it couldn't possibly keep raining, so I shoved my cell phone and kindle deep inside my duffel bag and went back to sleep. Getting the rain fly on the tent seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

I woke up to more rain twice more. I did get to hear coyotes yipping every time I woke up, at least.

About 6 I decided it was really about light and I might as well get up and make coffee. I ate a Clif Bar for breakfast. It is not the breakfast of champions, just the breakfast of lazy Funders who are sick of burned scrambled eggs on a camp stove. It sufficed.

NEDA rides start at 9, so eventually I got Cersei set up for a day at the truck and saddled Dixie. Her hooves were a bit long and I was worried that the boots wouldn't fit quite right, but they seemed to go on well. The ride meeting had super nice color laser topographical maps, which were really handy. The trail was two loops with a lot of lollipops, but they promised it was well marked.

I was planning on riding with John and we hung out at the start. But a couple headed out just before us over the start line and HOLY SHIT A HORSE EATING CART WAS HIDING BEHIND A BUSH! The guy's mare went sideways and over and he came off. No harm done to anyone, but I saw an opening to get around the mess and took off just ahead of John, just to get clear of the wreck.

We gaited along briskly and passed a couple of obvious pleasure riders. Hmm, lemme explain that.

NEDA rides, like most AERC rides, have a short distance fun ride too. AERC staggers start times so all the 50s start together, all the LDs start together, etc. NEDA just has one start time, so the NEDA racers and laid back pleasure types all head out together. Usually people in jeans are just doing the 10 mile ride, and usually people in gaudy endurance gear are doing the longer distance.

So I passed an older gentleman in jeans and a cowboy hat, then caught up to a guy in tights and a helmet. We zipped past, got past the photographer (who got one of the best pictures I've ever seen of me and Dixie). I told him that Dixie is not a good fearless lead horse and he should feel free to pass me, and he did pretty soon. We slogged on a bit further and caught up with two more riders, and I stayed with them for most of the rest of the loop. They were all very friendly and I've seen them before. Another woman on a big racing Arab hung with us for a while. That horse had a bigger butt than Dixie and top 10s 50s regularly.

It was exactly the kind of ride I like. Outstanding scenery, very technical trails. The trail had a lot of potential to be very confusing but it was extremely well marked.

The first 10 miles went by VERY fast, probably 6 mph. Dixie felt strong and I thought it was the kind of trail where you should go as fast as you can when you can, and I was right. We went up over a mountain - you could see the whole Chilcoot/Vinton/Loyalton valley from the top.

Then down a huge switchback to a river, then back along the river for a couple miles to a spot where we could ride the horses in. They'd warned us about it - there was a 6-8" dropoff, but the footing once you got down into the water was very firm. Dixie scrambled right in after one of her new buddies and ate some grass, but didn't drink. Sigh. I patiently explained that there was no more water on the way back, but she didn't listen.

We headed back up the hill, over common trail part of the way and new trail part of the way. It was rugged and beautiful and HARD on my fat Walker. She hung in there with the Arabs for about 18 miles, but when she started to get tired I let them motor off ahead of us.

Close to camp we hooked back up with the woman on the racing Arab. Her BF was the guy who got dumped at the start, and he was doing the 10 mile ride. She waited for him at the common trail for both loops, and the three of us ended up riding in together. We agreed to ride the second loop together. (She was, obviously, not racing this ride.)

When we got back to the creek crossing right outside of camp, Dixie drank really deeply and I used up the rest of my horse water on her neck. I've started carrying about 1.5 liters of water in my bags, just to squirt on her neck, and it definitely helps her. I stopped at the trailer and sponged her pretty heavily, then took her over to the pulse check and she was down to 60. She ate some oats and carrots and quite a bit of hay while I loved on Cersei and scarfed down some leftover steak. Cold steak is the lunch of champions, let me tell you. I'd drank all my water so I mixed up two more liters of electrolytes and refilled my camelbak, then we were ready to go.

We did the first 20 miles in about 3:30.

R and I headed out on the second loop. Her horse was 100% go, of course, and Dixie felt pretty good to me. We climbed a big ass hill, scrambled down the other side, and passed two ladies on beautiful palomino mustangs. We started along some rather nice road curving along a hillside when R's horse stepped on a rock funny and started gimping. She double checked with me, and I saw a bit of head bob too, so she immediately turned around. We were at 23.4 miles. If I'd headed back, we'd have done about 28 miles, but I thought Dixie could keep going alone, so I pressed on.

Dixie was, of course, not very happy about being all alone. Then a pair of deer sized us up for dinner - we came around a curve and there they were. Two little this-year's mule deer, about 15' up the slope. They bounded another 10' away and watched us. Tiny things, couldn't have weighed more than 150 lbs, and super curious. No fear at all. I talked to Dixie while she quivered and stared and they just stood there, staring back at us. Eventually I had to gently urge Dixie to just get past them (i.e. kick in the ribs and cuss) and they still didn't run!

The trail wound around to a cattle guard with a wire gate, then kept going on the other side. I missed the turn for the water stop/turnaround, but only went about a half a mile before I decided there just weren't enough hoofprints for me to be going the right way. There was a lovely cattle tank when I doubled back. I dumped the rest of my horse water on Dixie and filled her bottles back up while she tanked up.

On the way back we saw a dead redtailed hawk in the road. I don't know how I missed it the first time! When we got back to the wire gate I noticed that one of Dixie's boots was un-velcroed at the toe. Completely. Nothing at all was holding it on. Renegades are great boots if they fit your horse's hooves, yall - that boot could've been undone for a mile and it never budged. I got it back on and rode up the hill away from the gate, and then Dixie was done.

She just gave up. Gonna die, out in the woods, all alone. I knew we weren't the last people on the trail, because my vet was out there riding turtle, but I figured we were next to last. We were past 25 miles so there was no point in turning around. I parked Dixie in the shade, watered her neck, and let her cool down. Then I got off and started dragging her up this monster hill, up this thing that even a mountain biker might not consider to be a trail. It was slippery shale with a tiny bit of mountain dust on top, and the area had burned a couple years back so there was no shade, and I got hot. It was at least 90 with a disgusting amount of humidity - remember, I've been living in the desert for two years now. I cussed that horse and dragged her up the hill, then I cussed that horse and dragged her down the backside of that hill. The backside had a bit more shade, but in one place the trail was just a 45 degree waterfall of small boulders.

Eventually we made it back on the normally rocky jeep road and I got back on. Dixie perked up a bit when we hit the common trail and managed a nice slow trot across the XC field to get back to camp. I was feeling slightly more charitable by the time we got back to camp, but I was absolutely shocked when the in timer said we'd finished 6th. My GPS said 31.9 miles in 7:15 - subtract out about 15 minutes at lunch and you're still looking at three and a half hours for the 10 (11 with a detour) mile loop. I was still trying to process that 10 minutes later, when John came in. Behind me. I'd started just ahead of him, but I was sure I'd just missed him at lunch or when I took my little detour at the end of the second loop. Honestly, we were both shocked that I finished ahead of him.

Again, Dixie had a big drink at the creek, some oats and carrots, and started chowing down on the hay. Her legs looked and felt identical, and she was totally sound. She was tired - but that's what I wanted. I wanted to push her on the 30, to see if she'd hold up to a challenge. She definitely did!

A lot of people quit after the first loop. The guy in the cart quit - I don't know if there's any way he could've done the 10 mile loop. Those of us who finished got a super nice crew bag at dinner. I watched another beautiful sunset, hung out with R and her friend, talked to a lot more people, and put the rain fly up before I crashed about 10. After all, I had a different horse to ride on Sunday - I needed to rest!

We rocked a hard ride: Frenchman Creek, part 1

2011-08-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

Bringing Dixie back to endurance has been so scary that I hardly ever think about it all at once. She had a legitimate (thankfully minor) tendon injury in June, and those things can be career or life ending so easily. Instead of constantly worrying about her, I've only really thought about our next move a couple times so far. The last time I really thought about it was August 1, when I got an email notice of a new NEDA ride. That was two months after Dixie's injury, and everything had gone textbook-perfect so far. I decided that if we had a couple of good rides in August, we'd go do the 30 mile NEDA ride on the 27th. And after that, I didn't deeply consider the matter again - I sent in my entry, told my friend I'd ride one of hers on the second day of the ride, and didn't worry about it again.

We had one good ride in August. Well, good until we crashed, and no serious harm done to either of us post-crash. Dixie carrot-stretches as eagerly as ever, and she prances around the pasture and rolls energetically. I think I bruised a rib, but motrin and rest is fixing that. I kind of wanted to scratch because I didn't feel 100%, but I felt good enough to ride competently and the timing of the Frenchman ride sure works well, so I packed my crap and loaded my horse.

NEDA rides are usually cart-friendly, so they're flat and fast and short - 20 or 25 miles, usually. This one was listed as 30 miles and not recommended for carts. I decided if Dixie could do a 30 mile hard ride, she'd be good to do a 50 in October or November. If not, we'd just pick up LDs in the spring - she could probably be a competitive LD horse in regional points. Still - I was terrified to try the ride.

I'm too tired to give more than the bare stats tonight. We finished in 6th place (out of maybe 10-12 completions - no big win). 31.9 miles, after about a mile of me misinterpreting a ribbon. 7:15 ride time, which sounds pretty awful til you account for the 8200' of elevation gain - that's HUGE. The very steep NASTR 50 had 7300!

It was an extremely technical yet breathtakingly beautiful trail. We trotted or gaited everywhere we could and walked the rest. Our ride buddy turned back at 23 miles (minorly lame) and somehow we slogged through the last 8 miles (and a couple thousand feet of hills) all alone. We waded in a river, drank from a creek, and confronted two fearless young mule deer. Dixie never took a bad step. It was hot as hell for us (which is not hot at all for you, dear reader, but just remember my horse isn't used to humidity anymore) but she pulsed down as soon as we stopped moving. I am so proud of her.

Pix and stuff tomorrow, plus Sunday's ride on the stumbly grey Arab!

Please come back!

2011-08-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was drinking coffee this morning when I noticed a hummingbird checking out my rose. (The rose bush is absolutely thriving - it put out a bunch of new growth then decided to bloom again.)

I dashed off to Home Depot and bought a feeder and a post. Please come back, little guy! Tell your friends!

Trailer cabinets finished & etc.

2011-08-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

Well, probably. I reserve the right to stencil purple flames on there or something. But it's painted and has Real Art hung on it.

The horse silhouette was made by a cool metalworker friend of mine who lives in Jackson, MS. If you live in the South, you should try to check out her work - she does a lot of craft festivals.

In other news, I am vaguely toying with the idea of buying hosting and moving my blog. I was cool with having all my eggs in Google's basket til they started locking people out of Google services for obscure violations of the Google Plus TOS. I like to think that I am a zen minimalist who could live without whatever possessions I have, but it would be a major blow to get locked out of my gmail account and my blog. Does anyone have experience moving 600+ posts with approximately a gazillion pictures to Wordpress on private hosting? This might be such a nightmare that it never even happens.

I've half-written a little essay about why I love endurance. EG thinks I should send it to Endurance News, but I almost feel like it'd be preaching to the choir. (Also I feel like I have nothing of interest to say to Real Endurance Riders.) Aren't all the subscribers of EN at least seriously contemplating endurance already? Right now it's kind of written for the non endurance horse person who can't figure out why anybody would ride 50 or more miles through rain and sleet and gloom of night. Anyway, I might just throw it up here, but if anyone has an idea for alternative publication, let me know.

I've got an LD coming up soonest! Gonna get out and ride tomorrow and make sure the new pad doesn't cause major immediate problems, then we'll see how we do. Fingers crossed to avert tendons hurting / crashing / backsoreness!

Toklat Woolback final review

2011-08-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

tl;dr: Doesn't work for Dixie.

Just over a year ago, I ordered the Woolback and was initially delighted with it. I still want to love it - it's super lightweight, Dixie gets good back scores, and it's easy to clean. (Unless you get caught with it in the brand-new clothes washer. Spouses do not like that shit.) But it wads up under the saddle, and that's totally unacceptable.

I can't flat-out blame the Woolback, because it only seems to bunch up when we're going downhill. Dixie paces downhills. That side-to-side motion, plus the braced hollow/neutral back position, just works the pad forward. There's no stiffness to the Woolback to hold it in place. :(

But getting off and untacking and straightening the pad after every set of downhills is totally unacceptable. Bottom line: Don't buy a Woolback if you have a pacey horse and a western-type saddle.

I'm trying out a Reinsman next; I'll review it when I get some saddle time again. :)

Thump

2011-08-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

I've been gone forever, I know! I'm sorry yall :) I had nothing much happening, then I got horribly sick. Like so sick I actually went to the doctor because I thought I had strep. It was actually a wicked sinus infection and a z-pac fixed me right up.

Then G came home for a week of vacation! That's awesome and I'm really enjoying cohabitating but he hijacked my computer for a couple of days - he set up a new Drobo and got everything to communicate with it, then upgraded my laptop to the newest version of OSX.

Today I woke up feeling awesome for once and headed out to ride. Dixie and I climbed up the hills behind the house (reverse of a Comstock loop), then went down the back of the hills into Hungry Valley. About 3/4 of the way down to the valley, we paced around a corner and spooked a herd of antelope. So cool! That is only the second time I've ever seen antelope.

We had a long discussion about continuing on. Dixie was totally convinced that antelope are equinivorous. With the greatest of reluctance she slowly hesitantly made it around two more turns of the road, when we turned up the damn antelope again! The second time they bounded off far far away - thank god because I don't think Dixie's nerves could've taken a third encounter. If she was a human she'd have needed a stiff shot of medicinal brandy and a liedown on the couch with a cold cloth.

Eventually, I got her moving again. When we got to the valley floor we took off for home.

Dixie rolled along at a rack and canter really strongly for 3.5 miles and all of a sudden on flat ground tripped and fell down. I crashed too, of course - I got launched, hit on my left shoulder, then bounced my head off the ground. A little road rash on my arm, my hip, and my finger. I hopped up immediately and Dixie was trotting to a halt about 20' away, shaking her head. She didn't run away (my worst fear), just let me catch her and inspect her. She was skinned behind her right ear and on her nose, with a little hair missing from behind the left ear too. I'm not missing any time and the saddle has no (new) scuffs, so I don't think she flipped. I think she tripped and skidded on her nose, folding her neck under to the right. I suspect the little line of missing hair on her left ear is rein-burn.

We were, I thought, about a mile from home (turns out it was more like 1.5 miles). I started out to walk Dixie home, but after about 10 minutes of politely following me she started trying to barge ahead and I decided she was ok to ride. I put the bridle back on (oooh sorry about that ear) and hopped up. She walked and trotted soundly home and even offered to canter. Oddly, I wasn't scared to canter again, I just thought it was a bad idea, so we eased home w/t.

I hosed Dixie off and checked all over for more wounds or sore spots, but she was fine. I put some ointment on the right ear, checked her legs one more time, and turned her out to roll and eat hay. She's stiff, but perfectly sound.

I'm quite sure I'm just bruised. I have full range of motion and no "weird" pains. I already ordered a new helmet. Once we both recover, we'll head back out.

8.40 miles, 1046' elevation gain, 1:36.

Trailer tack room cabinet

2011-08-03T17:39:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about how to maximize my tack room space, and last weekend I decided I needed a cabinet on the back wall. So I made one!

The front is 1x4s dowelled together. I didn't have big enough clamps, so I wedged it in between nails while the glue dried.

I cut out for the steel studs, propped the front in place, and very laboriously put in a mini stud wall behind the front. The angles were extremely hard for me to figure out.

I will need to vent for the battery and get a new spare rack mounted. Small price to pay.

The doors were easy; they're just 1/2" plywood.

The top was amazingly hard. I ended up buying a small piece of 1/4" MDF and eyeballing the curved wall. Then I started pasting cardboard on top til I had the whole thing filled in.

Carefully transferred to the rest of the sheet of 1/2" plywood...

And it fit! Really well.

I put eyebolts into the steel studs and used a bungee to hold the bucket collection in place.

Huh, I forgot to take a picture of what's IN the cabinet. It's got shipping boots, the first aid kit, my crew bag, and the compression sack of horse blankets. I got heavy-duty magnetic latches to hold the doors closed - and if I need to, I can tie the handles together or run a barrel bolt across both doors.

While I was fussing around in there, I vacuumed the carpet. I think the whole thing looks very nice. Things I rarely use are easy enough to get to, but out of the way. There's a ton of room inside now - that's good, because I use the (not as hot) trailer to store the ice chest.

I'm quite happy.

Edited to add: Here's the horrible "before" picture.

Now this is cross-training

2011-08-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

Aarene recently posted about her dutiful efforts to cross-train Fiddle via dressage. It's an admirable pursuit, but there's just not enough cantering and too much faffing around in the arena. I think I shall take up horse boarding instead. You gotta click over and see the video at the link!

(HT to TYWKIWDBI, who always has the best random stuff.)

The Summer of the Good Horse

2011-07-31T19:36:00.000-07:00

I think I've had a hell of a good horse ever since her first 50 at High Desert. I didn't really realize it til she got hurt at NASTR. Dixie was SO good for her rehab - first horse jail, then handwalking, then (bareback!) light riding, and now trailering out to slowly ease back to real endurance conditioning.

Before High Desert, she was a jerk about trailer loading. When we got where we were going, she'd eat hay for a while, dig holes by the trailer, Stare Into The Distance, not drink, and be an ass under saddle.

Now, she loads pretty easily. She eats, and she looks around with a soft eye. She drinks when she's thirsty. She moves out willingly away from the trailer (and kinda drags headed back to it!)

I decided to take her to Patriot's Day Lake Almanor, even though I wasn't going to ride her. I'm following Aarene's lead and just exposing her to different stuff, all the time. I figured we'd get there early Friday and I could ride her around camp. Saturday she could chill out at the trailer (and optionally dig holes) and then Sunday morning I'd get up and ride her on one of the loops, then we'd head back home. My plan, as always, didn't go off flawlessly, but it worked out.

Fire's owner A got hung up at home and couldn't leave her place near Susanville til 2:30, so we didn't get to camp until late afternoon. I got Cersei and Dixie settled, then needed to vet Fire in and listen to the ride meeting. Dixie was chill on the trailer ride out and settled in to the serious business of eating once we got there.

Ridecamp wasn't really much of a place to ride around on Saturday afternoon. The meadow was logged a couple decades ago, so it was full of half-rotted tree stumps. Plus I was hot and I was more interested in drinking beer and talking to people, TBQH!

People! I met Bird the Redhead and her husband. She finished the LD on her cute gelding somewhere just ahead of me and she actually got to show for BC (probably because her gelding has ground manners, lol!) I hung out at her camp for a while, then she came back to my camp and met Dixie. She took a nap and I took a shower and I didn't see them again, but I look forward to seeing them at some other ride.

I talked to a lady with a standard poodle for a while. Cersei and the poodle got along well together, and the poodle owner had just finished the 75. And I met an anonymous reader - I think she did the 50; I hope I'm not underestimating her. ;)

So Saturday was a lot of trotting, a little beer, and one camp shower. I bought one of those black plastic bag camp showers last week, as an impulse purchase after Mel talked about them. I am all about the little luxuries: fresh socks at every hold, and now, a shower after the ride. I threw the shower bag on the hood of the truck when I left, and after I completed it was the perfect temperature.

I just couldn't get excited about booting Dixie up and doing 12.5 miles on logging roads on Sunday. I was kinda meh about it when I went to sleep, and I woke up at dawn thinking "ugh logging roads." I got up about 5:30, made some coffee, and decided to ride Plumas NF near Janesville on the way home.

Morning fog:

I'd parked in this iffy spot in the meadow near a tiny creek. (Cersei loved the creek!) When I stopped, I wasn't 100% sure I could get back out, so that was weighing on my mind all day Saturday. I tied Dixie to a tree, paced around looking at the stumps hidden in the knee-high grass, and backed out in 4-wheel drive.

I backed into a stump. D'oh. I was going like one mile an hour so I didn't even scratch the paint, at least. Dixie was Most Displeased to see me moving the rig without her and she wrapped herself completely around the tree while I was getting extricated. Eventually, I got out to the silt-and-lava-rock road and rescued my poor forgotten horse.

I'm on the other side of the "don't park here" cones, which are not to be confused with the "your friend is saving you a spot" cones. Don't make my mistake!

So away we went to Janesville. I blithely drove up to the one trailhead I know in Janesville, up a legitimate bus plunge road. I was quite calmly lugging up a sheer cliff S-turn at a reasonable 25 mph when an idiot biker with bitch on board passed me, barely missing getting splattered by a half-ton hauling a 30 foot motor home coming down. Anyway. I got up to the parking area where I catch-ride the Arabs and unloaded my four-leggers for a fun ride.

Now THIS is mountain riding!

We sort of hared off in a direction I've never been before and found a bike/dirt bike trail. I decided that I'd ride at Cersei's pace, not at The Speed Dixie And I Should Do, so we just kinda ambled along ears up with the yellow dog bouncing ahead. Lucky for us, we found a little slew just a couple miles in!

Remember how I said she's such a good horse now? Dixie just waded in, drank a bit, and started chowing down on that lovely grass. I let Cersei cool off in the water, then we plodded on.

I sort of arbitrarily decided we'd head out for 3 miles, back for 3, and do a loop around the meadow for another 2 or so. We got to 2.5 out and Cersei started a quail. And her flock of babies!

The babies had just barely fledged. One flew toward and past me in a panic and it was still fuzzy, with just enough wing feathers to get it off the ground. Dixie stopped, quite calmly, and Cersei bounced around in a Labrador frenzy of excitement.

Momma quail puffed herself out just like my momma hen does and charged at Cersei and Cersei backed off (just like she does for my momma hen!) I thought it was video worthy so here you go. If you turn up your sound all the way you can hear Momma chirping over Cersei panting.

Cersei starts a quail family from Funder on Vimeo.

I didn't think the momma quail needed to deal with us twice so we turned around there. The trail was really narrow in spots

And really steep in spots

And Dixie was a total honeybadger about it. (Oh my god surely you know that link is NOT WORK SAFE don't click it at work!) She just walked calmly through it all. I hopped off one very steep bit and led her downhill, down this short 45 degree downhill slope and over a log and under some trees. She ate a tree branch while I broke off some face-height branches. She did not get antsy or fall on me. She's a rock star.

We headed back near the trailer, then turned off for the loop around a meadow.

There's another slew, so Cersei splashed for a while and Dixie ate for a while. We trotted in a circle around the meadow

and popped back out at the trailer. Dixie's ears looked almost disappointed, and Cersei was not on the verge of heatstroke, so we turned around and did the loop backwards. Back through the woods,

back to the slew, more grazing and splashing and drinking, then back to the trailer.

We all hopped back in the rig and headed for home. Cersei, at least, was tired.

Patriot's Day Lake Almanor LD

2011-07-31T17:18:00.000-07:00

My overall impression is: And now I know!

So, my original plan was to ride my friend's grey Arab mare in the 50. I've been helping to condition her for a month and she is a nonstop trotting machine. Aaaand Friday she was a three-legged trotting machine - she got kicked in the pasture Thursday night. Sigh. So I rode a green chestnut mare on her second LD. Fire's first endurance ride was last year or early this year, and she hasn't been ridden all that much since then. I thought a 50 would be iffy on her so I pushed to ride her LD - I think her owner would've been happy either way, and I think Fire could've done the 50, but I don't want to break somebody else's horse!

I knew Lake Almanor was an FEI* ride, and I knew that FEI rides are usually very flat, very fast, and precisely the correct distance. It didn't really sound like my cup of tea, but I'm a very openminded newbie, so off I went!

I drove by Lake Almanor

... and kept right on going, a good 30 minutes away. It is a really pretty lake and I'd love to go back to see it!

Ridecamp is in a huge meadow. The tiny glints in the distance are rigs in the meadow. Most people parked back under the trees.

We set up our camps on the far edge of the meadow and took the Arabs down to vet in. Fire vetted in with all A's, and she behaved pretty well. We let the horses graze and listened to the ride meeting and looked over our packets.

I had three different sheets of paper detailing the 25. A color map showing all the loops (numbered phases), with my two loops written on the bottom - red white & blue and pink & pink checkered. A sheet showing all the out times and phases for each distance - again, rw&b and p&p. And a written description of my two loops - really handy, except it said rw&b and green & green polka dots. I did ask at the RM, but I asked at the wrong time, they said they'd address it, and I never heard them answer the question. (Neither did two other people on the LD.) I decided I'd go with my time-honored system of following everybody else, because I usually forget what loop I'm supposed to be on anyway. I figure if you're gonna get lost you might as well have company.

At the RM, they changed the start times. They were originally supposed to be staggered every 30 minutes (100s at 5:30, 75s at 6, etc) but management changed it to one hour intervals. As a lowly LD, I got to leave at the scorching hour of 8:30 am. Yippie.

The horses ate and drank well overnight, and the owner and I managed to cram four Gloves on Fire before she headed out on her 50. She warned me that at Fire's first LD, she had to get Karen Rabow, endurance mom extraordinare, to hold Fire to get mounted. I've lived through all of Dixie's meltdowns so I wasn't too worried about it.

Fire lost her mind when her buddy Spirit left without her. I didn't care, I hung out by Dixie (who was quite calm) til 8:15, then somehow got Fire bridled and walked up to the start. I walked her in circles til 8:27, then got on. Compared to tall spazzy Dixie, she was quite easy to mount! We trotted up and down the road by the start til 8:30, then we were off!

I had a friend to ride with, A on her calm Anglo-Arab. We let the racers blow by and I told A I had to let Fire move out a bit. She was cantering in place, head down, moving 4 mph, on the verge of a total freakout. A agreed and we headed off at a fast trot. Fire's 9, but she doesn't have a lot of miles, so she's still got a baby trot. I got to lead because the other mare can easily out-trot Fire and I didn't want her to canter too much.

One of the many skills that I'm trying to master is reading ride flyers. I read "If you plan on riding with speed we recommend pads or easyboots. We have avoided rocky areas as much as possible." to mean "Not many rocks; shoe/boot up if you want to ride fast." That's not actually what it means - the whole course was on quite hard quite rocky logging roads. It was comparable to a flat version of NASTR.

The first loop went by really fast. Oddly, I wasn't scared. I kept thinking I should be scared - I was sweating so hard my sunglasses kept slipping and I didn't unbridge the reins once. Every time we got passed, Fire did the "I'm about to lose my mind" head-down slow canter, but I was careful to not hold her back to the breaking point. I made sure to ride her - there were a lot of, uh, little rocky ditches? I guess where the loggers had dragged trees across the gravel roads. Anyway, we slowed down for every one then I'd let her move back out. IIRC, there was only one water stop on the first loop. Fire played and took a sip; the other mare drank very well. We zipped through the first loop at about 7 mph - and yes, the first loop was exactly 12.5 miles!

Ride pic. My shirt is a Game of Thrones tee that says Winter is Coming. It's important to remember these things in July!

The check was difficult. We'd met up with Fire's owner (and more importantly, Fire's BFF Spirit) about a mile from camp, right after the front right boot came off. I got it back on and got back up (again, I have Mad Sk1llz from dealing with my idiot horse) just as Spirit came up. We got a half mile from camp and the boot came off again. Pounding a NQR boot on with your hand while the horse dances around is harder than it looks! I left the damn thing off; it was close enough to lead the horses in.

Fire wouldn't pulse down unless she was right by Spirit. With Spirit there, she was great - 60/58 CRI** (if I remember correctly) and all A's. We went back to the trailers, banged the boot back on properly, and drank slushy-gatorade til owner-A's 30 minute hold was up. She left and a couple minutes later my ride buddy A showed up. Time to go! I thought that was a little weird but I didn't have anything else to do so off we went to the out timers.

A was cleared, I wasn't. The P&R volunteers had mistakenly given her a 30 minute hold and correctly given me a 50 minute hold. The out timer volunteers were confused and told us to take it up with the P&R people. We didn't really have anything to take up, per se - my buddy A waited an extra 20 minutes and we left again together.

We headed out at 11:10 and it was pretty hot and flat and dismal. We hared off down what we thought was the right trail, then I realized A was looking at ribbons on the left and we stopped and powwow'd about what trail we were supposed to take. I finally said that I had two pieces of paper telling me to take pink & pink checks (and only one telling me to take green & green polka dots) and I was going to stick with that come hell or high water. We went back a half mile to the crossroads, studied the ribbons and chalk, decided we were in fact on the right trail, and proceeded on.

Our second loop (phase 4 I think?) was common trail for a long way, then a big loop down the entrance road. There were two water stops and it was exactly 12.5 miles. There was almost no shade and not much scenery. We came across one volunteer out looking for a missing horse. Our horses were, thankfully, less hyper. About 8 miles into the second loop I finally unbridged my reins.

Again, I set the pace. A was getting tired and the horses were less enthusiastic. As always, I kinda wished I had a HRM. But I don't, so I just went by how Fire felt under me. When she was tired, we'd walk a little ways, then when we hit a brief patch of shade or when the trail went downhill slightly, I'd urge everyone up to a trot. I am not ashamed to say I let the FEI racers pull us along for the last few miles! We'd walk, someone would canter by on the 75 or 100, and I'd urge the horses to chase them. We'd trot for a while after they were out of sight, then walk a bit again. I kept us going about 6 mph for the second loop (because that would get me out of the sun in two hours!) I called off the miles to go and time to go as we plugged along.

We made it back to camp with two not-very-tired horses. Fire was a total ass at the vet check line. I was That Person Everybody Backs Their Horses Away from. It was totally embarrassing, and yall know I don't embarrass easily. Spirit wasn't around, and I was determined to get that horse vetted out without her friend, so we stood in line (FOR EV ER) working on manners. When she'd crash into me I'd lay into her with the end of the lead rope. When she screamed I made her move her feet - usually backwards and forwards, but I slipped in some hindquarters too. When she was quiet I encouraged her to graze.

The LD/50 vet had the patience of a saint, and I wish I remembered his name so I could thank him for being kind to us. The Red Asshole vetted out with a 58/56, IIRC, and all A's again. She crashed into me a few more times and screamed all the way back to the trailer. Spirit was just leaving on her last loop when we got there, and Fire had a total fish-on-a-line meltdown when HER ONLY FRIEND abandoned her again. Thank God for rope halters. She screamed for a while but settled down to eat hay eventually.

We'd finished 7th out of 13 or 14, in about 4:30 total time. (Rob Lydon won 1st place FEI and BC in under 4 hours on the 50. Nothing as humbling as somebody riding twice as far as you in less time!) Completion award was a ride picture.

Overall, it was fun, but I probably won't go again. I had two problems, one minor and one middlin', but it's just not my bag.

The hold time thing was a minor problem. I am always amazed at how well endurance rides go off with so many non endurance volunteers. I'm not faulting anybody for that - mistakes happen, and if somebody wins because they let a volunteer give them the wrong hold time, well, they suck and should not sleep well at night. That's a personal integrity issue!

The conflicting info about the second loop was a middlin' problem. I compare all my ride problems to Big Horn, and hell, not knowing which clearly marked loop to ride doesn't even rate on the Big Horn scale of things! The ride meeting rambled on and on about FEI 100 mile info only, and it sucked that I pretty much got blown off about which loop the lowly 25s were supposed to do, but not a big deal in the end. If you'd done the green loop instead of the pink loop - well, they're both 12.5 miles, and it's just an LD, right? :sarcasm:

The food was excellent, the camp was in a great location, and... well, the ride award was pretty lame. (Hell, I buy pix even when I don't complete!) But mainly the trail sucked by non-racer standards. I like technical trail and/or scenic trail, with some neverending flat roads to break up the stunning views every so often. This trail never saw Lake Almanor and never climbed a hill to look at other hills. I am not disappointed, because I knew that's what FEI rides are like - but now I know for sure that I don't like them.

I want to say thanks to the people who made this ride happen for me: Fire's owner A (she's awesome, but you know I don't name names on my blog), my ride buddy A, and the woman who introduced me to Fire's owner. Couldn't have done it without yall! Also a big thank you to the ride management and volunteers - there wouldn't be a ride at all if a ton of people didn't show up to sit in the heat all day and the cold all night.

Next: Dixie, Cersei, friends!

*FEI - the racing side of endurance.
** CRI, cardiac recovery index. The vet checks the horse's pulse (first number) then you trot out and back, then he checks it again (second number). If the pulse is lower the second time, you're golden. If it's higher, the horse is tired or not fit to continue, depending on the numbers.

Check your ride results!

2011-07-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

I almost didn't look - it hurt too much to remember Dixie limping - but I did, finally, look at the NASTR results in the new Endurance News. We're down as completing. I'll have to call the office. Sigh.

There's a big fire in California that's sending a wee bit of smoke into our area. I might have walked outside, taken one look around, and run back in in a panic to check the news. Thankfully it's 300 miles away.

Can you blame me?

I left the tack room open while I was carrying stuff to the trailer. Banders had to go exploring.

Weirdo.

I need some kind of Trailer Organization Reality Show to select me and give my tack room a makeover.

Blink of an eye

2011-07-28T08:02:00.000-07:00

I was making coffee this morning when I heard a tremendous crash, like a horse double-barrelling a metal gate or something. I ran out to see if it was Dixie, and she'd left her morning hay and was trotting toward the back fence very alertly. I ran far enough in the pasture to get a good view of everything and my heart about stopped. The neighbor's old skinny horse was down, awkwardly on his side, with a fucking hog panel wrapped around his legs.

I had a brief moment of panic. I couldn't remember the neighbor's names and I didn't want to take the time to get the truck, drive around the block, and bang on their door. I didn't want to leap into their pasture and spook the old fellow. After a moment, I remembered I had her cell number listed in my phone. I decided surely I'd know it when I saw it and bolted back to the house for my phone. YES! I did, in fact, remember exactly who it was when I saw it. I called and left a message and went back outside.

Armed with her name, I stood in my pasture and bellowed at the top of my lungs "D! Your horse is down in the fence!" She popped right out, half-dressed, took one look, and said "Be right there." I hustled up to my fence, turned it off, and slipped through my electric. I said reassuring nonsense to the old fellow. Thank god for old horses who know when you're trying to help. Once she came out, I stepped over her fence and met her at him.

Somehow he had slipped his rear right leg through the hog panel, up over the hock. He was laying on his left side, looking fairly panicked. D was trying to figure out how to cut the panel off, but I thought if he cooperated I could just slip it back off his leg. She stood at his head and kept him calm, and I carefully manipulated his leg and the panel and slipped it off.

I won't lie, I was terrified. If he'd freaked out and started thrashing it would've been very bad for all three of us. I don't like handling other people's horses, and I don't like trying to untrap horses, but it needed to be done. He stayed calm while I got his leg free and dragged the panel back, and he stood up promptly on all four legs.

He's limping on two legs - front left and rear right, IIRC - but he's weight bearing. I know she doesn't have the money for a vet. I gave her some Bute for him and suggested buting him for two days and if anything swells cold hosing it.

Their fencing is a disaster, and they've been really lucky so far. I have also kept horses behind disastrous fences. Never again, now that I've learned just how easy it is to pop up some hotwire. For $200 you can put up a couple rows of highly visible hottape or polywire to keep your horse off the shitty fencing you can't afford to replace. It's cheaper than a vet.

Lecture over! Look, I did brush Dixie's mane yesterday.

So much lovely fluffy hair.

I also got four tons of hay delivered.

And here is Bambers. Note how there is not a single flicker of intelligence in that eye. He is crazier than a shithouse rat, but he's my buddy anyway. :)

Action-packed day

2011-07-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, not really. I finished stacking my hardwood then I sat down with the Kindle and read. I polished off Changes, again, then absolutely wailed on Ghost Story. I thought it was awesome. I've read a little discussion about it and I think other discussors are idiots and it ruled. Yeah, you could look at it as a placeholder novel full of boring character development, but it was really important character development. Of course I had some wild hypotheses after reading Changes when it first came out, and I was actually half-right about them. I'm glad I was wrong about the ones I was wrong about! Really impressed with the long term story arc that Jim Butcher has going here.

I know that's utterly cryptic if you don't read Dresden, but it's non spoilery if you do. (Email me if you want to talk after you read it!)

Better than Dance with Dragons and I only had to wait an extra six months for it. As opposed to five damn years for GRRM's doorstopper.

ANYWAY. In between my marathon of reading I did my food shopping for Lake Almanor and (drumroll please) I washed that horse. Somebody had asked about the Flappy Lip Thing, so I took a video for yall. Yeah, Dixie's sunburned, but not too badly, and my general horse philosophy is to treat her as a free agent as much as possible. She hates the sunscreen (and I sympathize, I hate that crap too) so I don't usually smear it on her.

Flappy Lip Face from Funder on Vimeo.

Today was Day One of working on her mane. It's really more than we deserve. I think it took 12 pumps of the shampoo bottle to suds it up and scrub it, then I used a good six ounces of conditioner on it, then I let it dry for a while and sprayed Show Sheen on it. I let it get mostly dry before I turned her out again. Tomorrow I will use like half a bottle of Cowboy Magic on it and brush it out into a glistening two foot long halo of silver. Thursday she'll have scrubbed dirt and branches back into it and we'll be back where we were Monday. Futility, thy name is horse.

I measured, and it's 27" long at the longest point.

Obviously she's standing facing downhill and she's a little stretched out, but she looks good! The stall rest lardiness has melted right off of her as soon as I started riding again.

If it looks like I didn't even wash her body, well, I didn't. It's futile. See?

So much for being clean from Funder on Vimeo.

So there's a Southern tongue-in-cheek horse myth that a horse is worth an extra $500 for every time it rolls completely over. Anybody else heard that one? Dixie's only +500 here, but I've seen her get up to +1500. ;)

Littering has never seemed so tempting

2011-07-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

Since we didn't do much actual work on Sunday, I took Dixie out again on Monday. We trailered up to the Rides of March ridecamp near Red Rocks with Cersei. I was smart, though - I went early in the morning and I brought water for the pup!

Dixie stood like a rock for me to fly spray her and tack up. Just another amazing little Dixie transformation.

We meandered off pretty slowly - it wasn't hot but there wasn't a cloud in the sky and I didn't want the little yellow butterball to overheat. We climbed a new-to-us road (past a rattlesnake!) to a deadend at the top of a hill where Dixie was content to stand and look at stuff for a while. I hopped off and gave Cersei a drink from her Wal-mart knockoff camelbak liner I'd carried stuffed in the pommel bag. (She had to drink out of the bag because my makeshift travel bowl had a huge crack in it.) Then I tightened up my tack and we moved on to the next hill.

Cersei's camelbak liner has a screw top that's kind of hard to get screwed on right. I thought my leg was wet because the top wasn't screwed on good, so I briefly halted, re-screwed it on, and kept going, but my damn leg got wetter and wetter. Eventually I yanked the 2 liter bag out of the pommel bag only to realize that it was leaking from the bottom, where the drinking tube comes out - and the pommel bag was half full of water. Lovely. At least my left knee was cool, and Dixie's left side was cool. I flipped the stupid leaking bag over, so the tube attachment was on top, and we kept going to the next hill.

There, I gave Cersei the rest of the water from the bag, but she was still pretty hot. I had a broken bowl and a leaking water bag and a pommel bag half full of water, and I've never been so tempted to throw my trash off a cliff and call it good. We'd only gone a couple of miles but I knew I needed to take her back to the trailer to cool off, so we headed back. Dixie did not want to go back to the trailer but I hollered a lot and made her. We had to take care of the little dog.

Back at the trailer I fashioned a collar and lead out of a compression strap, a carabiner, and a lunge line. I know! I'm a terrible human, taking my dog out without her collar and tags. Lesson learned. Cers has spent enough time tied to the trailer (and she was hot enough!) to listen when I told her to stay there, and Dixie and I headed off without her.

I didn't want to go too far, just in case Cers got bored and slipped the "collar" and came looking for us, so we headed back toward the road and did some loops. The ride ended up being about 7 miles, which is right where I wanted to be. Dixie was still not very enthusiastic about going back to the trailer and back home, but I'd promised G I'd check in with him in two hours so we called it a day.

Cersei was much recovered when we came back. She's been one with the couch since Monday afternoon, but not in an overtired way - just a lazy dog who Did Something and is now good to sleep it off for a week. Dixie was just fine. Tight legs, even with a little bit of hills, a little bit of gaiting and cantering, and more miles than we've done post-injury. Wednesday (tomorrow) I'm going to meet an endurance friend and hopefully do 10-15 miles with her.

I am going to submit driving directions to Red Rocks on Mel's trail site. Right now it's just got Central Valley CA trails, but soon it'll have Northern Nevada trailheads too. I hope the rest of yall will consider submitting something too and maybe one day we can turn this into a really valuable resource for a lot of equestrians. I don't mean just my endurance friends, either - all of yall can take a couple mins to type up some directions to a favorite trailhead, write a short blurb about the footing and length, and send it in. Speaking as someone who knew no one IRL when I moved to Nevada, the Internet is an amazing resource with a lot of potential! I have met less than ten percent of my current Reno-area friends from "real life" networking - the other 90% are Internet contacts who turned out to be cool people IRL. Trailheads should be the same way!

Endurance ambassador

2011-07-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

I just got home from a quite pleasant ride at Washoe Lake with two adventuresome trail riders, and I cannot believe how good Dixie was. She really is the opposite of all the endurance stereotypes. (Hopefully I am too, aside from my fashion sense and tack choices!) She trailered great and I met up with T at the turnoff to Eastlake and we waited there for a couple minutes for H to show up to lead us to the park at the north end of the lake. Dixie did not kick the trailer to pieces; she just stood and waited. Then we got down to the park and I fly sprayed her.

A million years ago, when Dixie was a real Problem Child, she would try to break halters to get away from fly spray. I tried to roundpen her out of her fly spray fear and 30 minutes later, dripping wet, she'd still panic and run from the sight of the bottle. I have off and on squirted her with water from a spray bottle - and by off and on, I mean maybe 5 times in the last two years. But she's been so good about stuff, and I decided that I'd just assume she was going to be fine. I showed her the bottle, squirted it all over her neck and butt, brushed it in, squirted the brush, brushed her face with fly spray. No big deal. She didn't like it from the near side and danced away but I just told her to quit and kept spraying and she stood there like it ain't no thang. ~~So: if your horse comes totally unglued about fly spray, ride 500 miles a year and she'll improve.~~ Nah, it's not the riding.

We saddled up and rode down to the lake. Dixie hasn't seen Washoe Lake (or any lake) since the trail trials last spring, and she didn't like it one bit then. She was snorty and dance-y and sort of hypnotized/terrified by the motion of water on sand and I didn't push the issue because she was pretty worked up that day. Today we rode to the lake and the big TB waded right in. Dixie walked up to the shore and snorted a bit. I let her look and asked her to walk in. She offered to duck out, I straightened her up, and she walked in. Like it ain't no thang.

We rode a mile or so down the lake til we hit a patch of biting flies, then we veered inland and went to check out the other horse park at the south end (the one where the Washoe Ride is held). We walked over and looked at the new stuff and found a tank of water. I knew she wouldn't drink, but I asked her to go stick her nose in the tank and she did, then we hung out while the other two horses decided not to drink either. ;) We all gallivanted around the nice new arena then headed back north toward the trucks.

The road was nice hard sand, not the deep sand by the lake, so we decided to trot and canter. Dixie gave me some nice gaits, plus a lovely round canter for a bit, all on a loose rein and totally calmly. The other two horses were not so perfect - not so their owners had any trouble, just bad enough to make Dixie look like a spotted angel in comparison.

The wind had picked up so we went back to the lake. There were whitecaps and waves, and those were pretty scary, so I'd let Dixie walk on the dry sand for 100 yards, then ask her to go let the waves slap her hooves for 10 yards, then repeat. We were maybe a quarter mile from the trailer when Dixie suddenly pointed the tips of her ears straight back at me in a very quizzical manner and the woman behind me said "you lost a boot!" They both told me at the same time!

I got down, got the problem back boot off, got the other back boot off, and got back on. Just like that. Dixie didn't run in circles or scream or yank her feet away or try to walk off while I was mounting. Absolutely no drama. Ain't no thang. (Boot failure: The toe strap came unstrapped. The velcro on those boots is pretty old, and I'll need to replace it before I do an e-ride in them, but I was pretty impressed with how well they stayed on in wet deep sand.)

In fact, the only drama was back at the trailer, where I had to beat* my poor horse into walking over and getting tied up at the trailer to eat hay. She didn't want to stop. That's three rides in a row now where she's very clearly said "I'm not through and I'd like to do more please." I think tomorrow I'll get up early and go up the road to Cold Springs and let her scramble up the foothills of Peavine - maybe that'll satisfy her!

*Ok, I twirled the lead rope at her butt for a while then cracked it quite forcefully on the saddle to make her move. Abusive, I know.

I am going to break one of my unspoken rules and tell yall that I love that horse. She is a fine beast. I didn't know what I was doing with her but I was stubborner than her and she's turned into quite a good trustworthy mount.

Got 'er done

2011-07-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I went and rode. I was in a complete tizzy about it all day, and I finally just settled on a plan and did it without thinking too hard about it. I hauled Dixie 9 miles up the road to the end of Antelope Valley - it's a little different from our usual trails, and there's a couple miles of mostly flat packed sand roads. We did 4.8 miles in 53 minutes.

It's been a while since I really rode Dixie, so it was a good chance for me to notice what a good horse she is. Her "I don't wanna you can't make me" dead slow dog walk is 4 mph. Her super easy smooth jog, the one that's almost easier to sit than to post, is 8 mph. She gaited a bit for me but I didn't try to get her to stay in it. She's pretty bored with the trails right around the house and she's awfully barn sour if I ride her away from home, which is why I wanted to trailer out - but out in a new place she was alert but not spooky. I rode the whole hour on a loose rein.

We rode up a road about half a mile to a T, turned right and rode another mile to a cattle guard, turned back to the T intersection and kept going up the road for another mile, then turned around for the trailer. I really thought the poor horse was lost again (bless her heart) because she wasn't at all excited to turn back for the trailer. But she didn't perk up at all when she saw the trailer, and in fact she tried to duck onto a side road when we were just a few hundred feet from the trailer. I really think she wanted to keep going. How cool is that?

I brought the butterball, aka Cersei, with me. Poor Cers, I didn't ride with her much this spring and then this summer Dixie's been out of work so this was her first ride in months. You have never seen a dog so excited to fling herself into heat exhaustion. I should've brought some water for her, but I honestly didn't think she'd need it on such a short ride. Bless your heart, fat dog! She's sacked out on her couch now.

I kinda haven't mentioned our weather because I don't want anyone living east of me to hunt me down and kill me, but... I went in the hottest part of the day and it was a scorching 85 degrees with a soggy 29% humidity. When we got back, I hosed Cers down, then Dixie, then Cers again. I have decided that Dixie needs her face sprayed more. It's just not that unpleasant on a hot summer day. She makes horrible faces and flings her giraffe head up in the air, but when I quit rinsing her face and point the hose at her lips, she does the flappy lip thing. :)

Endurance stuff:

Yall, I need a new pad. The stupid woolback bunches up under the saddle when I ride hills. It's completely unacceptable. I've had a couple of recommendations for Haf Pads so I'm thinking about one of them. Here's my criteria:

Dixie has skin like an elephant and thick hair.
She's round with medium withers.
Saddle is western-type so it's got fleece underneath.
Saddle fits fine with minimal padding - the Woolback is maybe 3/4" or 1" thick.

Any suggestions?

Lake Almanor, hopefully!

2011-07-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

I've finished all the new/new-to-me books and I'm just waiting for the new Dresden Files, so I might as well try to post. I really have started working through the backlog of unread blog posts, I promise!

Barring calamity, I'm off to Lake Almanor at the end of the month... on an Arab! I've ridden this super fun, all heart, great recoveries grey mare twice now, and I'll probably ride her in the 50. Her owner has two horses ready for the 50, and we might swap last minute, but I really do think the grey is fun so I'll probably ride her if I get the chance. She reminds me a lot of Dixie, without the extra gaits. Trotting downhill is weird, yall. So is trotting at 12 mph! When are you going to break into a rack, horse?? She's skinny and jiggy, and she's got a nasty habit of stumbling hard on level ground when she's daydreaming about whatever Arabs think about, but I like her anyway.

I am trying so hard to get my nerve up to ride Dixie again. We went out on Thursday or Friday for a couple miles of easy neighborhood walking and a bit of sand gaiting. She was totally sound, totally fresh, no heat or swelling since then.. but I'm so scared of breaking her. Nobody can tell me the magic formula of X miles Y times per week, and I desperately want that. I rehabbed her exactly like I was supposed to, and she looks great, and what do I do now? For once in my life I desperately want an Authority Figure that I can believe in 100% for guaranteed perfect results.

Tomorrow I'm going to do the pit loop. It's about five miles, easy, flat. I'm reaching out to people in town to hopefully get some company for some easy 5-10 mile rides later this week and next week. This is so hard - harder, in a different way, than when she first came up lame, and even harder than riding her when she terrified me.

The Kindle calls

2011-07-12T15:57:00.000-07:00

I'm such a bad blogger!

A couple weeks ago, I finally decided to read Harry Potter. I guess the ads for Deathly Hollows made me remember it? I tried, when they first came out, but I didn't want to read kids' books at the time. If you remember that far back (oh god I'm old), A Game of Thrones had come out the year after the first HP book, and I was really in love with dark gritty fantasy then. If you've read them both (or even seen the movies/series) you will understand what polar opposites they are. But people kept telling me HP gets better as he gets older, so I settled down and started slogging through the series.

I'd gotten to the point where they weren't so bad when I went camping with Mel. When I came back I reclaimed the house, then got sucked back into them over the weekend. I read 4 on Saturday, 5 and 6 on Sunday, and polished off the last one yesterday. They really are pretty good! I am kind of jealous of the kids who got to grow up reading them.

Then I got up this morning and half of Facebook was showing off their copies of A Dance With Dragons, so I had to get that for the Kindle immediately. Honestly I'd given up on that bastard GRRM ever finishing DWD, much less the series. It took him six years to write it, and he kept writing other crap I don't care about in the meantime and going to cons and blogging about sports and I got immensely frustrated with him. Honestly, I'm pretty sure he delayed the damn thing til AGOT finished on HBO - which is no doubt a shrewd business move and all but SIX YEARS? Ridiculous.

Other media: Torchwood USA looks even goofier than Torchwood UK was but I'm willing to forgive a lot to see Jack and Gwen again. True Blood continues to make me howl with laughter. In two weeks we get new Dresden Files!

Other stuff: Dixie's rehab is still going uneventfully. The banty managed to hatch out three (full size) chicks so far. She took off to set on infertile eggs right before the roosters started crowing and doin' their thing so I shoved some fertile eggs from the big hens in there with her. At least one of the chicks has feathered feet - SO CUTE. They're not moving around yet, but better pics will come.

I am really dreading cleaning out the stinkbomb eggs from her nest.

Anyway. I have now flung myself into DWD. See you in a couple of days.

Camping gear roundup

2011-07-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Gear:
I was pretty sure my feet were going to blister. It was close - they were super hot and sweaty - but they didn't. Go go wool socks! I've had the same hiking boots for two years and they're getting pretty beaten up/broken down, so I give all the credit to the socks. I just bought some new knockoff smartwool-type socks at Sierra Trading Post.

My new women's Camelbak backpack worked just fine and fit much better than my old men's camelbak. It came with a reservoir with a baffle! You know how good water tanks and waterbeds have baffles to keep the sloshing to a minimum? The reservoir in the new Camelbak had a baffle. I guess it worked, but honestly sloshing never bothered me that much.

I bought Cersei a self-inflating roll-up travel dog bed at Costco, and she seemed to think it was acceptable. My summerweight sleeping bag was perfect, and I actually brought my own pillow from home - I slept amazingly well.

I last-minute splurged on a nonstick camping skillet. I'm glad I did - those eggs would've stuck like MAD on my existing steel camping skillet - but I have to get used to how thin camping stuff is and how hot propane travel stoves are. I am considering bringing my flame tamer next time! Any camping cooking tips?

I also bought a big cooler at Costco earlier this year. I dithered a lot about it - I had a perfectly useable small cooler - but it was only $30 and seemed like it would make my life a lot easier. I'm glad I did - a 7 lb block of ice kept a six pack of beer and a ton of random food cool for three full days with no problem. And I could bring the small cooler with Cersei's chicken in it without worrying about nasty chicken salmonella on my good people food.

Camping without horses, with bonus horses!

2011-07-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

Over the holiday weekend I went camping with Mel and her adorable puppy. We're both horse campers who are temporarily without camping horses, so we set off into the wilderness with just our dogs for company.

Well, not really wilderness. We met up at Nevada City, which is doubly misnamed - it's in California, and it's hardly a city. Skillman Campground, the site of the Wild West ride, was reserved that weekend, so we stayed a couple miles down the road at White Cloud.

I got there first and got my truck tent set up. I love that thing, and I'm on the verge of recommending it - I want to see how it does in a real rainstorm and in colder weather before I gush its praises.

It's a little lower down than Reno, only three or four thousand feet. A little more humid, but with all the lovely trees you'd ever want to see. We just chilled out and talked the first night. We ate my lettuce with dinner. I grew something, and it tasted really good!! Saturday we got up, drank coffee and talked for a couple hours, then briskly hiked over to Skillman.

Part of the trail to Skillman is the Wild West trail, so it was cool to hike it and think about riding it. I haven't done a forest endurance ride yet, but I did a lot of forest trail riding in Memphis. It was similar - the trail was much nicer, because it's a hiking/biking/horse trail and not an outlaw trail cut out by four-wheelers. Definitely single track, but there were spots where you could edge a horse off the trail to let people pass.

The most awesome thing was the lack of spiderwebs. In Memphis we'd dutifully take turns riding first in line - the first person eats all the spiderwebs. There just weren't many in the Sierras.

We found a mysterious little concrete tank beside the trail! It looked like a stock tank, but I don't think anyone's ever run stock in that forest. I guess it was some kind of catchment system for the snowmelt. But Cersei knows a good thing when she sees it, and she immediately plunged right in and got a big drink and cooled off. Mel's puppy Tess got a dainty little drink, and we continued on our way.

There's a day-use trailer parking area about halfway between White Cloud and Skillman, and that's where we saw the poker ride signs. When we started seeing horses, I put Cers back on the leash and we kept making our way very slowly toward Skillman.

We were, of course, model dog-owning citizens. We got our mutts off the trail, on leash, and spoke loudly to the riders as they approached. The first few groups went by without a problem, then we came to The Wreck.

There were three horses tied to trees off the trails, with one guy watching the horses. We edged past them, a little confused, and came upon an injured rider and a woman keeping him company. We talked to them for a few minutes while more riders slowly came past. He'd come off his horse somehow, but when he tried to stand up his knees buckled, so he sat down to wait for help. It didn't look like a major injury, but of course I thought of Kate and wondered if there was something worse happening. But someone had gone back for help, so there wasn't much for us to do except keep hiking.

I don't think either of us really realized just how big that poker ride was. We were only a mile or so from Skillman, and that was our completely arbitrary goal, and if there's one thing endurance riders do, it's get to the arbitrary goal. So we kept on - we'd hike as fast as possible for a hundred feet or less, then duck off the trail and loudly greet the horses as yet another group came by.

It took forever! We nodded knowingly at the endurance riders. I ID'd a cute little Paso - they are so distinctive with their paddling gait. The dogs behaved very well. Neither of them barked or put up a fuss.

About halfway through that part of the trail, I decided poker rides are just Not My Thing. Dixie would be utterly unsuited to standing in a long line of other horses on a singletrack forest trail, and I would be bored senseless. Where's the trotting? No one was trotting!

The whole thing was a classic case of shockwave congestion. I don't mean that in a ghoulish stare-at-the-wreck way, but I think every single rider who came upon the injured fellow had to stop and ask if he was ok and if help was on the way. There was just a huge bottleneck behind him.

Eventually, we hit Skillman. We found more water for the dogs and ate our snacks and I cooled my feet off. Mel was wearing crazy minimalist Vibram shoes so she didn't need cooling off. But I got a good look at Skillman, and I see why entries are limited, trailerpooling encouraged, etc. Beautiful site, but not very expansive.

We thought about hiking on, but decided if we headed back to White Cloud we'd avoid the poker traffic. So away we went, talking and walking.

Cersei had a blast at the tank on the way back. She was tired and hot, but she perked right up and leapt into the water and brought me sticks. Little Tess jumped in the water, paddled around, then jumped out and curled up in Mel's arms. Puppies are so cute when they're tired and cold and wet.

We saw so many new things on the way back! I showed Mel what Evil Cheatgrass looks like, and she showed me Evil Poison Oak. Everything was very young, if that makes sense - it looked like May but it was really July. The Sierras had an amazing winter and the snow took months longer to melt. (Squaw Valley was still open for skiing that weekend!)

I found a magnolia. I have no idea what a freakin magnolia tree was doing growing in the California Sierras, but there it was. And we saw these pretty blue flowers - lupines, I think?

The trail opened out and there was an amazing view of Scotts Flat lake, too!

Eventually we realized that we weren't just seeing the same trail with new eyes, we weren't seeing the same trail at all. We'd missed a turn. I cussed my dog, who was ranging ahead of us and had clearly led us astray. We discussed how Dixie would also have led us astray, but Farley actually has functioning trailer radar and would've urged us onto the right trail.

My feet were hot and I slurped the last of my elyte water out of my camelbak while Mel consulted the GPS. She figured out how far back the turn was and we set back off. We took a rather obvious (in retrospect) fork in the road, climbed one more steep hill, and were suddenly back on familiar ground.

When we got back the dogs collapsed together and put off such major Z's that we decided it was nap time. I slouched down in my chair and went to sleep for a bit, then woke up enough to stagger off to bed. I think Mel did the same but I was too busy snoozing to notice her! One glorious nap later and I was ready to face the world again. The GPS reported that our hike was 10 miles - pretty impressive (to me) on foot, but really makes you appreciate the horse/bike/car as a mode of transportation.

I built a fire and sadly overcooked our steaks. Camping cooking is hard, yall! I burned the eggs both mornings - stupid 1 millimeter thick camping cookware - and totally misjudged my fire for the steaks. It wasn't hot enough to really sear the steaks, but it was hotter than I thought, so I ended up on the well done side of things. :( The nice thing is that if you're tired, anything tastes great!

Sunday we woke up early, drank coffee and talked still more! then packed up and headed out. If you're keeping track at home, that's more talking than I usually do in two weeks - but it was FUN! No really awkward silences, lots of good conversation ranging far and wide. I can't wait to do it again, with or without horses.

Vacationing muse

2011-07-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

I have so much to tell yall but I can't get it together to write a decent post!

I went camping with Mel. Camping is fun! Believe it or not, I'd only been (horseless) camping once before in my life, and it rained and the WWII tent leaked so we walked home in the middle of the night, which wasn't hard because we'd only walked a mile into a cow field in the first place. And I've blogged every time I've been horse camping - it's been a rapid learning curve but I'm getting it figured out. Camping without a horse is much easier than horse camping and (I suppose) almost as much fun. Anyway, I've got lots of pictures and I swear I'll try and get up a real post soon.

Then I went to SFO. Of course I had Korean fried chicken and watched surreal k-pop MTV, and I went to a fun Fourth party, and I melted my new food processor. G needs to email me the picture of the damage!

The Mystery Plant turned out to be a turnip. A three pound turnip. That's on the house site. Then today I dug out two more beds beside the house, added compost, topped them with straw-mulch, and edged them with rocks - I'll put pics of that on the house site too.

Dixie has proclaimed herself healed and acted like a dumbass two days in a row - spooky and hot on the ground, cantering in place in horse jail. I figure extra riding can't do more harm than airs above ground, so today I rode her a whole block down a new street. I don't think the exercise will help as much as the mental stimulation from novel things. She's been content all evening, so if her leg stays tight we'll just walk further down different blocks of my neighborhood.

Yall may be on to something with the bareback thing. I actually put a saddle on her today - I wanted some stirrups in case she spooked - and it was kinda weird.

Saturday I'm off to ride crazy ay-rabs again! Plotting my return to endurance with A - she has plenty of horses that need 25s and 50s, so maybe we'll go off to a ride soon.

I was planning on taking Dixie in for a recheck in two weeks, but I might take her in next week. I don't really know how to restart her - mentally. I am just terrified that she'll reinjure because I pushed it too soon. Even if she trots out 100% sound for a lameness vet and there's no tendon disruption on u/s, how do I get up the nerve to ask my horse to do that again? Right now I'm thinking I'll just restart slowly - we'll sign up for two days of 25s and I'll see how she feels after the first day, and if that goes well maybe gulp a 50 again? No idea on a timetable yet.

So - everybody else has had a horse that hurt itself and went back to regular work. How do you deal with the fear of Doing It Again?

Everybody loves prosopagnosia stories

2011-07-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that I have face blindness. It's a real thing - I am awfully lazy about a lot of things, but it's not that I'm just too lazy to pay attention to faces. The part of my brain that is supposed to store people's faces just doesn't work very well, so I have a lot of coping strategies. People seem pretty fascinated by this, so I thought I'd tell you a little more about it.

G and I went to a 4th of July party yesterday. It was small, thank god; I just give up completely if I go to a large gathering. I've met the hosts before, so I was pretty sure I was good with them. Another couple showed up and I quickly noted the differences - black dress instead of blue and white dress, bearded instead of clean shaven. A's dad was in town, so he was easy as the oldest guy there. A single guy showed up - shit, he's got a beard too - but his hair was redder than anyone else's so I could pick him out too. Then another couple showed up and the man was also an older white guy. Shit! But he had a soul patch, and A's dad did not, so all I had to do was pay attention to the facial hair there.

I think normal people don't even think twice when they meet people. If you meet someone and talk to him for a while, you just remember his face, right? And you can imagine what he looks like the next day? I can't do that, at all. I have to memorize faces the way I memorize anything else - the shape and markings of a horse's face, or where I parked the truck in that parking garage, or what the new box of tea looks like. It takes a surprising amount of effort for me.

It's easiest if I remember externalities, like clothing, hair, and accessories. That doesn't help day to day, and it's why I'm so utterly awful at recognizing people out of context. No, I won't know you if I run into you at the grocery store - but I'll definitely pretend to!

Before I realized that I am fundamentally different from normal people, I honestly did not understand why they put missing kids on milk cartons and wanted criminals on the 5 o'clock news. How the hell do yall see a grainy mug shot on America's Most Wanted and then recognize that person in line at the grocery store? I will never understand it.

Anyway, it was a fun party, made more so because I could tell people apart. Larger parties are fun too, but in a much different way, because I'm often not quite sure if I've talked to a given person before that evening. My life is always an adventure. :)

Better post while I can

2011-06-29T21:01:00.000-07:00

The dreaded Blogger Flu has finally caught up to me. I can't log in to anything blogger related from Chrome, but apparently I can from Safari - for now.

Today I rode my horse :) I'm not supposed to ride til this weekend, but you know I don't listen good. I just slipped on her bareback and we walked four houses down the street, then back - less than 5 minutes riding. It was lovely.

I'm actually really enjoying rehabbing Dixie. We seem to spend a lot of time hanging out together. She really likes the new patio chairs - she likes to watch me when I sit out there in the mornings and afternoons.

My kitten is a killing machine. She brought me a whole nest of baby voles, one at a time - five in 24 hours. That was a lot of effort and required a day of sleeping, but today she rejoined the hunt and brought me an adult vole. Atta girl. Just... make sure they're dead, ok? I don't like the ones that still squeak.

Anybody like True Blood? New season premiere did not disappoint.

I did a bunch of stuff around the house - cleaned and de-cluttered, hauled trash to the dump, worked in the yard, and got most of my tools organized in the garage. Now I can pack tomorrow and go camping this weekend - then maybe to SF for the 4th, but I'll be back Tuesday at the latest.

Not that it matters. I bet Blogger will still be a temperamental bitch when I come back. Sigh!

Hay feeder update

2011-06-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the pictures of my slow hay feeder.

The white mesh is hockey netting. It's extremely sturdy and the holes are a good size to slow down a horse, but not frustrate it completely.

My attachment system is so ridiculously ghetto, but I can't figure out a better way to keep the hay in the net without starting over completely. Sigh. It's a piece of PVC woven through the top squares of the net, then that's clipped to to the lip of the backing with Romex.

I think the backing is a shelving unit. There were a bunch of wire mesh L-shaped things in the barn when we bought the place, and one of them ended up in my hay feeder. It looks like something from a closet organizer kit to me. But there are no sharp ends and it doesn't trap water!

The rest of the feeder is just scrapped together. The legs are 2' long - because I could cut four legs out of one 8' 4x4. There are plywood ends and some 2x4s bracing it all together. I tried various things, but ended up tying the metal shelf in place with more Romex. No sharp ends, easy to reposition if you have thumbs.

I went ahead and Romex'd the whole damn thing to that telephone post in the pasture. It's not a live wire post, it's just a very sturdy 12' post standing in the pasture. Obviously I didn't put it there, and taking it out seemed like way too much trouble. But it keeps frustrated Dixie from knocking over her hay feeder, so it can stay.

Sharron Angle would be proud

2011-06-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

I just traded a chicken for a birdbath. Go go gadget economy!

One of the banties became an escape artist. She ate part of my garden while I was gone, so I shored up the fence and she stayed in for a day. Then she started getting out again. From Tuesday-Sunday I caught her 1-3x a day and threw her back over the fence with the others. I was complaining about her to M and she said bring her over - M is down to two elderly hens. Later I told M that we should go to a yard sale and find me a bird bath, and she offered me one she wasn't using. I forgot it when I left - but when I got home, the damn chicken was out again. So I threw her in a feed sack, fed everybody else, and went down the street and bartered her for a bird bath.

Look! Guaranteed to not eat your garden plants.

*edit* Just for the record, I think Sharron Angle is dumb as rocks and it gives me great pleasure to vote against her.

Carpe diem

2011-06-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

We lived in Ohio for maybe 9 months and when we left, we'd only made a handful of friends. And I don't mean lifechanging best friends, I mean people who we'd met in person, had contact info for, and would consider eating a meal with. It was pretty embarrassing, actually.

At some time in the moving process, I don't really remember exactly when, I decided to change my fundamental approach to people. Instead of only meeting people in person and interacting with them if the stars were aligned perfectly, I was going to default to actually doing stuff and only back out if circumstances were just awful. It's really hard for me, even after two years of practice, but I just do stuff all the time now.

So earlier this week I realized the weather was just lovely and I wished I could ride. Since this spring I've had a couple of people remind me that there are more endurance horses than riders, and point out that if I ever need a spare horse I can catch ride, so I posted on a brief email on Ridecamp. I almost immediately got two responses, from different people nearby. Yesterday I drove north to Janesville and had a beautiful ride in the Plumas NF.

This is Fire. Isn't she cute? :)

Yes, she's an Arab. (OMG I RODE AN ARAB!) She was so sensible and kind that I really kept forgetting how green she is.

We were up in the eastern Sierras, and the views were just breathtaking. Very different from my usual desert riding. I was utterly lost, but Fire had more than enough go to keep up with everybody so I didn't worry.
Mountaintop, looking west:

Looking east:

Equipment failure: I rode with the sheepskin cover on my saddle again. That thing has got to go. I can't do hills with it - every time the horse picks up a trot up a hill I get almost bounced out of the saddle. How embarrassing! It's really a shame, cause it makes the saddle fit my butt a lot more comfortably. Maybe it's just the fleece over the fenders that's the problem and if I had a seat-only cover it'd work? I might try that some day.

I also forgot to bring ANY WATER AT ALL. Hurf durf. I have two new Camelbaks to try out, too! When we got back to the trailers, I found a half-liter of water rolling around in the backseat of the truck and gulped that down.

We did about 7.5 miles in just over 2:30, but there was 2600 feet of ascent in there. There were some crazy steep hills! Fire was quite surefooted and I never really worried that she'd trip.

She was not so good on the water crossings. Her owner A thought she'd have done better, but the horse A was riding freaked out completely about every puddle we came across, and Fire picked up on that. I can't blame her for ignoring the strange human on her back and assuming her pasturemate is right and water is evil :)

It's a LONG drive, an hour on the highway, but I'll go back for sure. If we do a couple more training rides on Fire, she'd be ready for an LD this fall and I'd ride her in that. Hopefully next week I'll get a ride in with the woman who lives just up the road from me. Ideally, when Dixie gets back in riding shape I'll have lots of new friends to set up training rides with!

SF #5: I want a houseboat!

2011-06-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

Look at these utterly adorable houseboats outside of Marin! I want one.

G insists that he's known people who owned houseboats and they only seemed like a good idea at the time and I'd end up hating it and where would I put Dixie, but I don't care!

Look at this adorable little park they live in! It's like the complete opposite of a trailer park!

SF #4: Cars

2011-06-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

This one's for the car fans.

We saw a Maserati on the bridge:

And an Aston Martin in Sausalito:

A purple truck with a green bike by the park:

And a spectacularly badass MG that had just driven all of Highway 50 (plus part of I-80):

SF #3: Good eats & good friends

2011-06-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Oh my god, the food.

The worst thing I can say about the food in San Francisco is that most coffeeshops get their pastries from the same bakery. That's it. That's my harshest criticism.

We had some Fine Dining Experiences and some totally normal moderately priced food, and it was all outstanding. Of course I demanded my Cocobang mere hours after I got in - we carted my bags to the pied a terre, I chilled out briefly, then we trundled off for Korean fried chicken. That was before I went picture crazy so you'll just have to imagine it. After that, I turned into That Food Nerd Who Takes Pictures Of Her Food.

Somehow when I went to SF in February I didn't eat crab, and the season closes at the end of June, so I definitely wanted to get some this time around. We had Vietnamese crab at Thanh Long. View this and weep:

With shrimp pâté puffs for a starter:

And molten chocolate cake for dessert:

Then Friday night we met up with G's excellent new friends. Unfortunately the guy is also named G, so I shall refer to them as a unit: G&AWS. Apparently G has shown them my blog, so, uh, hi yall! :D They are very compatible people - they also like to drink, curse, and eat really good food.

The menu was so inspirational I took a picture of it. God, I'm such a nerd. (Yes, Dad, that's $24 for a plate of fried chicken!)

In for a penny, in for a pound: here's the drinks menu. It was a wine restaurant and these were the only cocktails! I had a Bloody Maverick (yes, I ordered it because it had bacon in it) and a Cherry Bomb (A++ would drink again):

Butcher plate. We decided the green spirals were pickled fiddlehead ferns. The stringy green thing by the cauliflower was definitely a pickled ramp. The duck prosciutto was really amazing and I'm seriously going to try to make some soon.

The pressed pork was unbelievable. Porky and juicy and gooey, and the skin on top was potato-chip crisp.

Ice cream is The Thing in SF right now. We walked a block down the street to a moderately popular artisanal hand crafted heirloom locally sourced low fuel cost roof grown organic free range cruelty free fair trade equitable lovingly created made this way ice cream parlor. This is a scoop of salted caramel (!!) on a scoop of crème fraiche (not as earthshattering as I expected):

Saturday we drove around and ended up feeling a bit peckish in Sunset. I fired up Urbanspoon and there was a Thai restaurant with 93% a block from us, so we went there. It was a weird time of day and we were the only people in the restaurant, but they still served up the most awesome Thai dish I've ever had. Spicy basil duck - but deep fried. The basil was flash-fried and the duck was like duck cracklins - exploding fat and almost jerkyfied meat.

Sunday we went back out with the G&AWS for pizza. It's in North Beach, and there was an Italian festival going on, so we got excellent people-watching while we waited for our food. And waited. AND WAITED. The kitchen lost our order, so our late lunch ended up taking like 3 hours. That's ok, though - we ate calamari and drank (a lot) and talked and spilled drinks on each other. Eventually pizzas started pouring out of the kitchen for our table. By that point I'd forgotten I had a camera. After we'd gorged on pizza, the restaurant comped our desserts, so I forced myself to eat some breathtaking tiramisu and managed to squeeze in an espresso macchiato.

And Monday morning, as I was driving out of town, I found an empty spot on the street next to The Last Coffeeshop Before You Get On The 101 From Potrero. It was the last possible chance for SF to wow me. I got a handmade cinnamon orange roll to go with my latte. I don't know if I've ever had a handmade cinnamon roll that I didn't make myself. Amazing.

Yes, I gained 12 pounds in four days. I don't really care!

SF #2: A truly noble bird

2011-06-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday we rented a Zipcar and zipped around SF and North Bay. We saw a gang of vesperadoes, tough looking Mexican* dudes in matching leather jackets on... scooters. Of course we had to get a picture, to prove it to yall on the Internet, so G went roaring off down Great Highway in hot pursuit of them. Did you know that Vespas can almost outrun a BMW? It's true! But we caught them, and I got my picture.

Then we realized that they had the most noble of birds for their totem - the turkey. Ben Franklin would be proud.

*Can I say Mexican dudes or is that racial? Men of Hispanic origin. How bout that?

Sounds sound!

2011-06-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

This is a terrible video, but Dixie sounds very even in it. Close your eyes if you get seasick!

Sound sound! from Funder on Vimeo.

So, it's been 2.5 weeks since she got hurt. She's really been a model ~~prisoner~~ patient. The hockey hay net, I think, is a large part of her happiness in life. Gotta remember to take pics and do an updated post about it. If you don't have pasture, you really should consider making some kind of slow feeder for your horse!

Today I took her out for a very short walk and a very satisfying grazing session. Some of my front yard cheatgrass has finally gone to seed, and like Merri says, horses only like it when it's still alive. She picked out the green and purple cheatgrass and seemed to really enjoy the stuff that looks kinda like dandelions.

I could still feel a tiny bit of warmth in her leg before I left last week, but now it's totally gone. She hasn't had filling in the leg since a couple days after the injury. I'm definitely feeling hopeful at this point :)

Gonna try to trim her some tomorrow morning. She was due for a trim a couple days after the injury, but she wasn't comfortable standing on three legs so I postponed it. I can muddle through her hooves for a trim or two, and I'd rather do it myself as slowly as I need to for a bit.

SF #1: I am a wizard

2011-06-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

So I think rather than trying to do a HUGE POST about SF, I will just do vignettes. This is the best one, IMO.

Friday we had fabulous taqueria food for lunch, then rested a bit. G worked and I chilled out. I was cold (LOL COLD IN JUNE) and wanted to go down to Old Navy (LOL I'M SO CLASSY) and get a cheap summerweight hoodie. (Now I understand summerweight winter clothes!) Anyway G had the iTunes on shuffle, and a Violent Femmes song came on. It wasn't Add It Up and we talked about how that is the superior VF song and how it's a shame we don't have it. Then after enough work and chilling out had been accomplished, we walked down to the big Old Navy by Union Square.

We turned the corner off of Geary and there he was. A grungy looking guy who looked vaguely like Ethan Hawke circa 1998, with a guitar, belting out "why can't I get just one fuck~"

I turned to G and announced "I am a wizard!"