2013 Tevis Crew Story

My fourth Tevis Experience is in the bag!  This was my first time Officially Crewing for someone - in previous years I've volunteered with the webcast and just pitched in to crew with my friends unofficially.  This year, I crewed Mel's third attempt - she got her first buckle in 2010, but she was lacking a Cougar Rock picture, so she had to go back.  ;)

In some sort of misguided attempt to convince the indomitable Amanda that endurance is the best horse sport, I dragged her with me again.  We left the house bright and early on Friday morning and headed across the street to the Chevron for ice, beer and gas.  Amanda pumped the gas, I got the ice and beer, and we hopped in the truck to zoom up to Truckee.  I started the truck, hit the gas, turned the wheel hard left and crunched into the concrete pole guarding the gas pump.  Where the fuck did that thing come from!?

I was briefly tempted to wait and see how long it'd take G to notice what I'd done, but I went ahead and put that shit on Facebook immediately.  :golf clap:

It didn't crunch the gas filler-upper area, and it didn't bend anything bad enough to make irritating noises at high speeds, so I'm probably just going to call it a battle scar and leave it alone.  At least it's not as bad as the time I shot my truck...

We headed up to Robie Park and found our team around noon.  Our crew-mates were Mel's sister Loreleigh and brother Tristan, with trailer transport provided by boyfriend Matt.  They'd all been through this rodeo before, and I'd go through that rodeo again with them.

We spent the afternoon going through Team Farmel's "paperwork" - entering, vetting, checking tack and stuff, and fiddling with boots.  I found some of my usual friends - ~C was taking pictures for the webcast, ATG was selling tack, Lucy and Ashley were crewing for Kaity and her half-Arab half-Appy Kody.

American Trail Gear

 Vetting in.

 Isn't Kody beautiful?

Then it was time to bail and get back to civilization.  C and I have a tradition (can you call it a tradition after three years?) of drinking lots of margaritas eating at a tex-mex place in Truckee the night before the ride.  There were five of us this year and we had a great time, even getting to sing Happy Birthday to C's awesome kiddo on his 11th birthday.  We got a room in a historic inn for the night and turned in.

Kind of.  The hotel was no-for-reals historic, right on the main street by the train tracks, and they run a lot of freight up that railroad at night.  And there was no AC.  And it was still 80 or so when we crashed, so of course we had to leave the windows open or suffocate.  I grew up a hundred yards from a railroad, so I slept like a baby, but the others said they woke up every ten minutes when another train roared through town.

We were up and at 'em at 5.  The webcast team headed off to the Highway 89 crossing, and Amanda and I went back to 267 and I-80 to wait for the rest of the team.  Matt was moving the trailer to the fairgrounds, and he stopped and dropped off all most of the gear and Tristan and Loreleigh.  We zipped down to Robinson Flat, just over 100 miles by vehicle, in a couple of hours.

I may have roared past a state trooper at 80 mph and only gotten away with it because the dude behind me was going 85.  As one does.

We schlepped the necessary gear up from the parking area to the actual check and got set up with an hour to spare.  We did a terrible job of taking pictures of each other, but I found this one on Facebook.  Look, I really was at Robinson.

Mel came in right on schedule and we took care of business.  Farley pulsed down fast and vetted through looking good.  The vet thought maybe he saw something on the trot-out, but we figured it out pretty fast - she'd managed to mangle a boot at some point and she was standing partially on the side of it.  Swapped that one out, swapped out the necessary gear, got the rider back on the horse and got them gone again.  

We headed down to Foresthill to settle in for the long wait.  It was pretty hot by then and we didn't like each other very much, so we set up the easy-up for shade and split up for a couple hours.  Since we only had the truck and no trailer, we got a nice spot in the trees along Bath Road.

I threw my sleeping bag down in the shade and settled in for a nap.  But I was rapidly reminded of why I don't like camping - ants were wandering over me.  I decamped to the back seat of the truck, which was only like 10 degrees hotter than outside, but it was somewhere between 95 and 110F outside so I just lay in the truck sweating.  Maybe I passed out or maybe time just rolled by. Eventually I gave up and wandered over to get food.

Previous years I've been at Foresthill, there's been a dude selling hamburgers.  This year they had a new food vendor with a huge crew of fantastic cooks.  For $10 I got pork tips, rice, veggies, potato salad, watermelon, and lemonade!  They also had hamburgers, hot dogs, green salad, lemon chicken, garlic bread, cobbler, and chips - it was A+ food.  

My nap spot, prior to the arrival of the ants.

I didn't take any more pictures at Foresthill.  Just look at last year's Tevis and substitute your favorite riders for the ones in those pictures.  ;)  

At 5, the sun was headed down and the heat was slightly less oppressive.  We all felt more charitable toward each other by that point so we drove up to Michigan Bluff/Chicken Hawk to see what there was to see.  I knew we couldn't drive in to either check, but I was hoping I'd get to see Michigan Bluff. The road was closed with cones so we went a little further and found a creepy cult.  

We drove up to this gate at the end of the road and said, "If we go in there they are going to capture us and brainwash us."  I backed down the road to a gravel turnoff and got turned around and we fled.  

Yeah, that's not spooky at all.

Wikipedia backs us up on this one, yall.  Creepy cult retreat center.  

Mel came rolling in right on time, at 7:30 or so.  I was expecting her to be pitifully whiny, but instead she was ragingly angry, which I took as a good sign!  She'd been eating and drinking and electrolying herself, and it showed.  She slithered off Farley (who looked great) and announced that she hated everyone and was never doing endurance again.  I was like, "yes dear, let's walk over and vet Farley and you can tell me all about it."  She begged the vet to pull Farley while I trotted the mare out, but alas, the vet told her she had to go on.  

We offered her hot food, expecting her to puke on us for asking, but instead she said she wanted some. Amanda got her a plate of pork tips and rice while she changed, and she fell upon it like a starving wolf.  We all sort of blinked and looked at each other, like "where'd nauseous, crying, headachey Mel go?"  Mel wanted a different saddle, but there was no string girth for the Aussie, so we put the Wintec back on and re-equipped it.  Farley ate for a while, took a power nap, and had one more snack of an entire baby watermelon.  Mel announced that she might possibly continue if we gave her Vicodin.  I said I'd give her Vicodin and beer at No Hands Bridge if she'd just get back on the horse and go.  We got Mel's headlamp and glowsticks taped down, snapped the glowsticks, shoved the rider back on, and got them out two minutes after their hold was up, at 8:48.  Victory!

I found ~C and checked my hazy memory of how to walk to No Hands, then helped finish flinging crap in the truck and we were away again.  We got stuck in the usual traffic jam headed down to Auburn, but honestly, it's one of my favorite parts of Tevis.  Seeing all these people, coming from all over the country to drive hundreds of miles for their riders is just breathtaking to me.  There's so much love that goes into this ride - the riders are insane, yes, but they love the trail.  The crews love the trail and their riders enough to caravan around the Sierras all day and all night.  And the volunteers are the best of all.  It's a whole community of people who work hundreds of hours behind the scenes, getting the trail in shape, getting all those checks set up and manned and broken down - it takes my breath away, every single year.  

Of course we went to In-n-Out.  

Of course it was amazing.

Then we found the trailer, moved some crap around, found Farley's stall, and got set up for their arrival.  None of this was particularly easy, since none of us had stopped at the Fairgrounds on the way up and I had only the vaguest memories of where things are, but we got it done.  I set an alarm for 2:15 and Amanda and I settled in for a nap in the truck about midnight.  

I didn't fall asleep, just lay quietly with my eyes closed.  Eventually it was time to go, but I got lost getting out of the fairgrounds, then I got stuck in an epic construction traffic jam on the way to the overlook.  Somehow I got out of my truck and there was a woman showing me a cool red and white color-morph of a cottonmouth snake.  I was like, that's cool and all lady, but I gotta go.  She came chasing after me insisting that I touch the damn snake and I did, and it didn't even feel like a cottonmouth because its scales were smooth, not keeled like a real cottonmouth, and oh duh Funder, this is a dream.  Thank god my alarm went off because who the hell knows what would've happened next.  

I sat up gasping and groggy.  Loreleigh had walked over to go to No Hands with us and Amanda was sitting up looking really confused.  I turned off my phone alarm and I had a text from C - Mel was pulled lame at Franciscos.  Fuck!  

We wandered around the fairgrounds for a while, trying to figure out where she'd appear when they transported her back.  Sherri from American Trail Gear was out walking Roadie one last time and she dragged me into their Winnebago for an icy shot of fireball whiskey.  We talked for fifteen minutes or so and I left so Diana could get some sleep, and Mel and Farley appeared.  

Farley didn't look like she had a tendon injury - nothing was puffing up or really hot.  We started icing both her front legs, in case.  I got bored and headed over to the finish line, where I got to see Kaity and Kody finish - goooo Kody!  I headed back up to Farley's stall, laid down on a bale of hay with a hoodie wadded up under my head and a sleeping bag draped over me, and had a pretty epic power-nap.  

When I woke up, a rider who shall remain nameless snapped at me within ten seconds of my eyes opening, so I went off to my truck to sulk and unload.  I got my good nature back eventually and drove back around to the barns for an extended farewell.  

Mel allowed as to how maybe she doesn't entirely hate endurance, and perhaps as soon as next week she'll love it again.  (This is entirely normal for the day after a ride.)  Farley looked very good.  She's still off at the walk and trot, but it looks like maybe it's higher up in her leg, like she strained a muscle above the knee - much, much better than a tendon injury.  I finally got to meet Irish Horse - she got to sweep way up high, from the start to Red Star, so she had a hella long day Saturday too.  

Then Amanda and I left.  Without picking up my fleece stirrup leather covers from ATG, again - I forgot to pick them up at Renegade, so we said we'd meet up at Tevis, and damn if I didn't forget them yet again.  They'll have to mail them to me!  

We had a quick and pleasant trip back to the temperate Bay Area.  

Hahahaha, I am a funny, funny woman.  Actually, we had an excruciatingly slow trip through the hell-like Central Valley into the bullshit congestion and ridiculous fog of Oakland.  At one point it took me 30 minutes to go two miles.

But!  I didn't run into anything on the way home and we eventually made it!  I had the most epic shower in the world and spent all day napping on the couch.  Graham said every two hours I'd sit up in a panic, look around for a few seconds, and collapse again.  I begged him to order food before I passed out, so there was Vietnamese bun waiting when I woke up at 8, and then I went back to sleep in my own bed at 9.  

If you're curious, it's about 250 miles if you're crewing, from the Auburn Fairgrounds to Robie to Robinson back to the Fairgrounds.  I did 509 miles door to door.  

I can't wait to go back next year.  Maybe I'll even ride?  And even bigger maybe I'll finish?  Either way, riding or crewing, I'll see you next year, Tevis.

2013 Tevis Educational Ride, Foresthill to Auburn

...or, Only One Day?  You Wuss!

Apparently they tweak the Ed Ride a little bit every year.  This year, there was a bike race on the upper part of the trail on Saturday, so we were scheduled to ride the trail out of order.  Saturday was Foresthill (60some miles) to Auburn (100 miles), and Sunday was Robinson Flat (30some) to Foresthill (60some).

It's pretty crucial to preride FH to Auburn.  Yes, Tevis is held during the full moon, but it's black as tar under the trees.  You have to believe that your horse knows the trail and trust her to move down it fast enough to finish, and your horse deserves to know where the end is.

The logistics of Tevis are mindblowing, but the logistics of the Ed Ride are even more amazing to me.  You must have crew for Tevis, and your crew moves your rig from point to point to meet you.  You don't have to have crew for the Ed Ride - the outstanding volunteers will move your rig for you.  I'd signed up to have ~someone~ move my trailer, but Wayne talked his friend into coming and we ended up having Dean move my trailer to haul both horses around.

So here's D the day before.  She's just a tiny bit thinner than I'd like, but not too bad.

This year, they did a staggered start.  Mentor-rider teams left every five minutes, so we wouldn't get caught up in that "fresh horse racing with the pack"thing.  The three of us left at 6:30 on the dot.

We rode through the tiny town of Foresthill, which was oddly deserted - on race day, everyone in town brings lawn chairs and coolers and sits by the trail/road, cheering the riders along.  Bill Gore was there taking pics, and of course he got some beautiful shots of Dixie.

About a mile outside of town the first disaster started to unfold.  My Pretty Princess started slinging her head.  That was the fourth time she's done that - once at Washoe '12, when the flies came out by the lake. Once at Rides of March '13, when the old saddle was pinching and I was sick and riding like shit.  Once at Washoe '13, when the sleet came in sideways.  And once at TevEd, and I didn't know why.  I wasn't riding like shit!  The saddle and tack fit perfectly at Washoe a month previously!  I couldn't see any flies!  What the hell, horse!

And she wasn't just flipping her nose up and down.  When she does this shit, she will drop her head between her knees and toss her head so hard the reins will go over her ears.  She'll thrash her head back to my toes.  She is paying no attention to her feet when she's doing this, and I knew if she tripped we'd go over the damn cliff and it'd be a bad scene.  I got off at one point and tightened up her girth and crupper - maybe the saddle was sliding forward and hurting her shoulders?  Obviously I took no pics at all, but trust me, it's a gorgeous trail.  Just wide enough for one horse to comfortably trot, lots of natural water and small rock pools, very nicely maintained trail.  Lots of gentle up and down but nothing too killer.  Dixie started drinking at 12 miles, maybe, and kept drinking great all day.

I just chocked up the reins as short as I could and booted her forward every time she tried to toss her head and toughed it out.  By the time (10 am) we got to the first vet check at Francisco's, I was ready to pull.  I came in and the volunteers asked how my ride was going and I blurted out my woes.  A volunteer immediately knew what was wrong.

"Oh, it's flies!  I live out here and my gelding does the same thing.  There are hordes of teeny tiny biting gnats out right now.  Slather on some fly spray and see if that helps."

So I did.  I got her pulsed down and vetted, borrowed some fly spray, and just coated her head in it.  If you're one of the four people who's been reading this thing all along, you'll remember that back in '09 the spray bottle was our biggest nemesis.  Dixie used to absolutely panic if you went anywhere near her with a spray bottle - like galloping around the round pen til she was completely lathered.  Well, it's 2013 and she's learned to tolerate all kinds of previously-intolerable bullshit from me, so I just yanked her head down and squirted her all over with fly spray and she was a big girl about it.

She'd rolled in the red dust at FH the day before and she was just manky with it.

And she did not toss her head again.  Lesson learned #1.

So we headed out again.  The river crossing was lovely and not too deep.  There's a dam higher up the American River, and on Tevis Day they hold the water back so the flow is very low.  But they won't hold it for the Ed Ride, and the river gets pretty high after 1:30.  We got there well before and the water was only up to the horses' bellies.  I knew I shouldn't, but when the water touched my feet it felt so good and cool that I let my feet get wet and it felt amazing.  Bill was there again, taking more gorgeous pics of my gorgeous girl.

\m/

The climb up after the river.  Don't we just look like we know what we're doing?  ;)

The second section wound along above the American River, and we started to see other trail users.  Two guys had fishing poles and those floating chairs, and Dixie was like, oh that's NBD and walked right past them.  She has the best brain :)  The river was just gorgeous below us.  The day was starting to heat up, but I was drinking and eating and I felt fine.  The last section of road into the Lower Quarry was pretty hot and rocky, and the horses were all hot coming into the second check, but they made it.

"I hate you, human.  Are we ever going to turn around?"

Dixie took a little while to pulse down, but once she did she stayed near 50.  A lot of hot-and-tired B's on her card, but she was eating and drinking and we only had six miles to go.  We headed out along the river again.  We worked up the canyon, away from the big Hwy 49 Foresthill bridge (it's like 700+ feet high above the river) and popped out at No Hands Bridge, which is much lower and shorter and used to be a railroad bridge.  It's not infinitely wide, but it's easily wide enough for a car and it's got some little guard rails and well it's called No Hands Bridge so when I saw the photographer I had to do it.

Just beautiful.

A selfie.

 Look, Mom, no hands!

And then the evaporative cooler on the back of my helmet dried out.  I got hot.  I went from "huh I'm kinda hot" to crushing heat headache & making bad decisions in about 20 minutes.  I was out of water for Dixie, I was almost out of water for me, it was blindingly hot, and Dixie was huffing along at about 100 breaths per minute.  I got off and started walking her and that just got me hotter, but I'll be damned if I hurt my horse when I can possibly spare her.  I walked uphill in the heat, which isn't something I can do, but Dixie was so hot and we were only two miles from the finish and I was just terrified that I'd colic/thump/tie-up her.  Finally Wayne and Becky convinced me to get back on - I probably looked half-dead - and we dragged ass into the fairgrounds.  I took my helmet off because it was SO HOT and I didn't care if I fell off and died.  

There's a big rock tank of cool water just at the border of the fairgrounds.  I yanked D's bridle off and she went in up to her nostrils and drank, and I soaked my helmet and stuck it back on and the cold water running down my back was better than drugs, dude, it felt SO GOOD.  I yanked all of Dixie's tack, hung it on the fence, and walked her up to the hoses.  She was probably at 120 when we came in. I sprayed her down for a few minutes - somebody was talking to me so I don't really know how long it was, less than five minutes - and checked her pulse.  She was down.  I took her over to Melissa Ribley and she vetted out perfectly.  We did the thirty-whatever miles in 7:15, a completely respectable pace.

It was Dixie's first point-to-point ride, and I think she just lost heart toward the end.  She can be directionally challenged, but she knew that we were nowhere near the trailer and she couldn't understand why we hadn't turned around yet.  But when I yanked the saddle at the fairgrounds she knew we were done, before she even saw her trailer.

Here she is back at Foresthill.  I really think she looks almost exactly as good as she did the day before. I know it's not the same angle but I was doing real good to take a post-ride pic, period.

I fought that crushing headache til after 6, but I did manage to do one extremely smart and productive thing:  I trimmed her hooves.

Friday night I'd gotten Kevin and the Easyboot people to come look at Dixie's horrible feet and ridiculous boots - everybody who looks at the way her Gloves fit double-takes, because there's just no way they should stay on.  But they do!  Oddly, I lost two back boots on Saturday, but the fronts stayed on.  You can kind of see how abysmal they look in the Lower Quarry pic, if you're a boot nerd :)

Anyway, Kevin said take off a lot more toe, at the very least go back to the white line.  It's the kind of thing I know, and if I was looking at someone else's hoof pics I'd say "well duh, pull the toe back," but that's why you need outside eyes sometimes.  Dixie has incredibly thick hard feet, and I was dreading working on them.

After the ride, I thought "I should pull those wet boots off and let her feet dry out."  I sat there for a moment in the shade, and then I thought, "... and I really should trim them while they're soft and wet."  It was so hard to force myself to trim - I had to do one foot, then stagger back to the shade and drink another bottle of elyted water, then do another foot, etc.  But I got it done, and soggy feet are so much easier to trim.  I think in the future on trim days I'm going to boot her, hose her legs, ride for an hour, then pull the boots and trim her soggy feet.  It was that much easier.

And ~oddly enough~, the boot fit looked much better after the trim.  :rolleyes:

Then I decided not to ride Sunday.  It wasn't for points or miles.  I want to do Sunriver 100 in two weeks, and I really didn't want to override her and injure her.  I live close enough, and I have wonderful friends in the area, and I can come back and ride the canyons some other weekend before we try Tevis next year.  And the consequences of getting heatstroke in the canyons are very high - there is no easy way out, if I heatstroked out down there.  I do not know if I could walk out if my horse couldn't haul me out, and it just wasn't worth it overall.

I was so close to doing everything perfectly, too.  I know that if I get conditioned for the heat, if I keep my neck cooler wet, and if I eat and drink regularly, I can do this.  But I wasn't conditioned, and I really didn't want to injure myself, so I pulled.  Partly I feel like shit for not being Tough Enough and Badass Enough, but I think that's just pride talking and I made a good decision.  :-/

So I played trailer driver on Sunday!  We all got up at 4 am, loaded Vader and Mocha Jack in my trailer at 5:15, and headed up to Robinson Flat.  Wayne's friend and I waved them off at 7 and headed back down at 7:30.  I packed up my camp and loaded Miss D and got on the road for home at 9.

Next: the usual post-ride gear/training stuff.

2013 Tevis Educational Ride, The Talks

So Friday I loaded up the usual assortment of junk and headed up to Foresthill for the Tevis Educational Ride.  I learned so much and I cannot recommend it more highly.  Yes, it's expensive - $300 for two days, and you don't even get AERC miles.  But it's absolutely worth it.

Just in case you're reading this, but you're not an endurance person - Tevis is the original endurance ride.  It goes from Lake Tahoe to Auburn, CA, down through the western Sierras.  It's one hundred miles, and you have 24 hours to complete it.  It's brutal and epic and a life goal for a surprising number of people.  Year to year, only about 50% of the starters complete the ride successfully.

I have volunteered/crewed Tevis every year (thanks, C, for dragging me to them!) since we moved to the area, so I had some idea what to expect, but I'd never ridden a mile of the trail before.  The Ed Ride breaks down the last two-thirds of the trail into two days:  one day to ride from Robinson Flat to Foresthill, and one day to ride from Foresthill into Auburn.

I camped and rode with my friend Wayne (featured in Washoe, Red Rocks, and a NEDA ride the year before that), and he befriended the RM and got us a gaited mentor.  Not just any gaited mentor, either; we got Becky Lange.  She's attempted Tevis four times and completed it three times on her amazing little KMSH, Mocha Jack - always finishing quite well, in 11th place in 2011!  But she's not a racer; she usually does multidays on him.  A perfect mentor for our goals!

I'm gonna break this post up into The Talks and The Ride:

There were speakers both nights, and honestly, I was kinda of whatever about listening to speakers.  I'm a visual learner; I've read tons of articles and ride stories about Tevis; and I only showed up to let my horse learn the trail.  But the speakers were absolutely the added value that made the weekend more than worth the price!

I left the ride packet in the trailer, so I know I'm going to forget something, but here's my best guess at remembering what I learned from the speakers:

Kevin Myers was there from Easycare.  He talked about boots and said the same thing I tell people:  boots work great if you're physically and mentally able to commit to them.  You have to be able to touch up the trim yourself, even if you have a great trimmer coming every six weeks.  It's not that hard if you're able-bodied, but I could see how if you have arthritis, for example, you'd just use shoes.

A successful racer talked about how to maximize your placing, but once I figured out he was a racer I kinda quit listening, to be totally honest.  A lot of the advice that applies to people trying to top-ten will only hurt people who are just trying to complete.

Rob Lydon, a local vet/RM, talked about the four most common pulls they see at Tevis and what we the riders can do to try to prevent them.  In no particular order:

1. Wounds.  Just hope your horse doesn't trip on a rock.
2. Colic.  Keep them eating to keep the guts active, make sure they calm down at vet checks.  Horses, like all mammals, divert blood flow from the innards to the run-fast muscles when they get amped up on adrenaline, and if they run in a state of anxiety for too long their guts shut down and they colic.  They need to move calmly down the trail, eating snacks, and they must eat pretty much the whole time at the vet checks.  
3. Thumps (synchronous diaphragmatic flutter).  When horses get hot, they sweat.  Sweating depletes electrolytes in the body, and if the horse gets too depleted, ~something I don't understand~ happens with the nerves by the heart and it triggers the diaphragm to contract.  You can see the flank twitch; apparently it's very distinctive once you've seen it before.  Make sure the horse is conditioned for the exercise and heat and give the right amount of electrolytes.
4. Tying up (exertional rhabdomyolysis).  Another too-hot too-much-exercise problem.  This is another one where I don't think I'm qualified to explain what's happening inside the horse, but what the rider will see is a bitchy horse that doesn't want to move, is obviously in pain, and has hard cramping muscles instead of jello-soft squishy muscles.  And it's another one that can be prevented (sometimes) with adequate conditioning and the right amount of electrolytes.

The bitch of it is that the right amount varies from horse to horse and from day to day, and there's no way on the trail to be sure that you're giving enough electrolytes, but not too much and not the wrong balance of sodium and potassium.  And that's why we have vet checks, and why there are so many vet checks at Tevis - none of these problems (other than massive wounds, of course) are particularly terrible if they're caught early and treated with fluids promptly.  But they'll kill your horse dead if you keep cowboying down the trail.  

And a woman whose name I didn't write down talked about massage.  I was really not interested in the massage talk; I figured it'd be another of those you're a horrible person if you don't get your horse regular massages from a certified massage therapist lectures.  I already know I'm a horrible person for not getting my horse regular massages, chiropractic sessions, TENS treatments, and aquatherapy; additionally, I'm a horrible person for not keeping her in regular dressage training and supplementing her feed with various herbs and drugs.  I get it.  I'm awful.

But that's not what she said.  She told us one little anecdote about how she saved her ride with massage - back in the 90s, she finished the ROC and got rained on waiting to vet out.  The horse cramped and showed as grade 3 lame.  The vet said you've got 45 minutes to try to work out this cramp, come back before then.  She went in a barn out of the rain, massaged her horse for 20 minutes and loosened him up, and went back out to vet through and get her completion.  Then she showed us exactly what she did, and told us the book to buy.  She also said T-touch is helpful, so I'm going to look into that even though it seemed a little woo-woo when I first read about it.

(Did anybody write down the name of the book?  OF COURSE I didn't get that either, d'oh.)

So I headed back over to Dixie and tried the first two massage techniques on her.  She gave me her usual why the hell are you touching me attitude at first, then some really surprised ears, then she sighed and started licking and chewing.  I am absolutely going to massage her every single time I see her from now on - it's not even physically hard to do.  I can't possibly describe it but I'll make someone video me or find a good video for you.  

That's the talks - coming up next is the trail, and the few pics I took, and why I did one day and not two!  Feel free to correct my horrible layman's descriptions of vet problems in the comments :)

Tevis 3

The crews spread out up the gravel road leading into camp. Half of them jumped their riders, stripped tack, and started sponging before the riders even hit the in timer. Seems counterproductive to me, but nobody went overtime so I guess it didn't matter.





I videoed most of the arrivals, then wandered down and got some pics of the vetting, then wandered back toward the truck and discovered Kirt and Chad gluing a rear boot on Farley. I took a bazillion pics of that.



Eventually I found Tara, who I was supposed to meet to swap breastcollars with, then met back up with C. We roared back down the mountain, and on the way down I noticed the dead areas from the '08 fires. They didn't cancel Tevis cause of the smoke, they cancelled it because flames were licking at the so-called road leading to camp.



Anyway, we headed down to Foresthill. I was starving, and someone was selling hamburgers, so I had one. FH is down at 3000 feet or so, and it's actually kind of humid, and it was unbelievably hot. Between the carbs from the bread and the disgusting wet heat I felt really gross really fast. I kicked back in a camp chair with my hat over my face and just endured for an hour or so til I felt better.

(Disclosure: it was like 90 degrees and 30% humidity. I am a wuss and living in the desert mountains has spoiled me.)

Eventually I recovered and started wandering around again. Riders started rolling in - of course Heraldic and Greyson looked amazing - and I watched some vetting and some departures.

Mainly I started to notice how many spectators and volunteers there were. I talked to a lot of people, and maybe half of the s and v were even horse people! The rest of them were just there to watch and help because it's Tevis and it's amazing. That totally blew my mind.

Random spectators:


Crockett Dumas had a lady in a very pretty sundress and sneakers trot out his horse. Melissa Margot (sp?) made it in on Cabo and of course had someone else do her trotout. (If you don't read ridecamp - she has a shattered femur and rode with a huge brace. She trained Cabo to lie down if she needed to dismount on trail. And Cabo is, I believe, one of two gaited horses to complete this year.)

Sundress:




Melissa Ribley looked like she was hurting. She caught a tree branch with her face very early on and came in to RF with a gash on her cheek - got her horse vetted before she let someone suture her cheek, then rode on. She got pulled after FH, which must've sucked so bad!



C really wanted to stay at FH til cutoff at 8:30, but she very graciously hauled me to Auburn at 8 so I could get to Kinkos before it closed. We looked pretty normal at camp but I'm sure we looked like vagrants at Kinkos. C set up camp in the corner, plugged in her laptop, and finished uploading pics. I got on a computer, printed the counteroffer, signed it, and faxed it.

Then we headed over to In n Out and got burgers. (My husband will cry when he reads this and realizes how much delicious junk food I actually ate.) Then on to the fairgrounds in time to watch JC's amazing horses come in.

Those two horses blew through 100 miles of rough country in 17 hours and were still fresh and forward at the finish. Absolutely amazing animals! I got a little teary when they did their victory lap. :)

"Hey, trotted 100 miles, now I'm chillin in a stadium, what's up?"


When we heard that 3d place was an hour behind, we decided to head home. We didn't want to camp in the truck again, and the thought of taking a shower at home was irresistible! We were pretty tired by the time we hit Reno, but we made it home safe.

See? A very surreal, very cool weekend.


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Tevis 2

I don't trust this program not to eat my enormous post, so I'll split it up.

After 89, we hopped back in the Durango and headed to get coffee. The 7-11 had a bear proof trash can out front, so I took a tourist picture of it. I took a couple of "Hey Ma lookie here!" shots - they're all in the iPhone album.



Then we went back to I-80 and zoomed down to Auburn, then got on a tiny road and zoomed back east. The road got smaller and the views got more stunning, and after an hour or so we were on a Theoretical Road carved into a mountain, headed up to Robinson Flat. There may have been some dude named Robinson at one point but it sure as hell wasn't flat!

Not flat, but pretty like WOAH.


Here's one for EG:


We got swank press parking by some huge logs. Yes, they were the biggest logs I've ever seen. Yes, I got pictures of me standing by them, looking really dorky in really comfortable clothes. Hey Ma!



On the way up to RF, when I had a half a bar of cell signal, the realtor called and asked if we could meet him at 1? LOL, of course. I yelled to call G, then lost the call. Managed to get out a few texts telling G that if he'd sign to accept the counteroffer, then put it in our Dropbox, I could sign and fax it back that night in Auburn.

We had an hour or so to wait in RF. I wandered around and boggled at everything. That's also the point where I realized how HARD it is to crew Tevis. I think most rides the crew has to work really hard to not punch the rider for being a bitch, but at Tevis you have to drive literally hundreds of miles, drag gear miles in carts, clean up, AND not punch the bitchy rider.



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Tevis

Tevis is almost indescribable. I've followed it for years - read all the ride/crew stories, watched the videos, etc. But the actual camps - the sheer scale of this ride - was just amazing.

We drove up Friday to Robie Park, which is totally isolated and stunningly beautiful. Checked out all the vendors and got a free syringe of (local!) elytes. Found most of our blog friends - I still don't know where Mel hid her camp - and settled in to watch the vetting.

Here's Merri:


And Zach:


And some guys from some horse racing HDTV channel - I really want to find out who they were and watch the show!


Here's C, somebody I didn't know, and Karen Chaton:


Karen's Bo is a metrosexual. He is confident in his masculinity.


Jonni at Trot On Hank was adamant that I not take a picture of her, but she graciously allowed me to photograph Hank's water scoop! (Anybody else, if you don't want your picture online for some reason, let me know and I'll take it down.)


Susan Garlinghouse leased a horse to do Tevis and it didn't vet in - how sad for her. :(

I met Kirt and Chad from Renegade and had a long, awesome conversation with Kirt. I thought he had a great observation about high/low in front feet. I've noticed that almost all horses have it to a degree - usually it's very slight. And the high heel foot usually rests under the horse, while the low heel foot is slightly extended. He hypothesizes it's because so many of our horses don't graze for their food - a horse can stand like it "prefers" to eat hay, then keep standing that way all day while it hangs out. Horses that are grazing naturally alternate which foot is slightly extended. Makes sense.

He is all in favor of conditioning barefoot. Reminded me that an occasional bobble on rocks (not continuous limping!) is the horse's way of protecting itself from a bruise. (Here's the primal tie-in: if you're running barefoot or in those VFF's, you'll bobble on sharp rocks too.) That made me feel better about training bare on our rockier trails.

Now this is how you go horse camping in a van. It's got a winch! And a pop up top and sturdy mud tires and it may be the only van I've ever seen that I really wanted.


This is a grey paint that made me think of Endurance Granny and Phebes:


We left before the RM and went to Truckee and feasted on Mexican. Then we camped for the night in a little park a couple miles from the highway 89 crossing. We slept pretty good in the back of the SUV, and 5:30 came soon enough.

We got down to the highway crossing about 10 minutes before the riders started to come through. The morning was barely chilly. Just dim enough that I couldn't get still photos without flash, so I ended up shooting video clips of almost all the riders as they came up the embankment by the road. The horses all looked great and were still fresh.

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Au revoir

Off to Tevis. Not really au revoir, either - I should have internet most of the time I'm out there.