Carpe diem

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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!"