I was going to title this "the rug is yanked out from under me" but that phrase always makes me think of the scene from Ghostbusters:
I just discovered that High Desert has been rescheduled. (THANK YOU, ~C!) There's a tiny little notice on the AERC website, if you happen to think to check it before you, oh, BUY ICE and PACK YOUR TRAILER, but no, I did not get a phone call or an email or a Facebook posting. I am wicked pissed.
And I'm incredibly disappointed. I feel like the tablecloth has been yanked out from under me. I was in such a mood, all day - I have been hoping and planning and training for this for ten and a half months. I wussed out at ROM but I'd screwed up my courage to enter the 50 at HD. And all of a sudden, I've got no 50 this weekend. Whiskeytown is full. I don't have a health cert, cause I wasn't planning on leaving Nevada. And I don't even have a Coggins yet - I didn't need one for HD and I was going to get it in early May when I get her teeth done!
So right now my New Plan is to do 25/25. I'll go out to Red Rocks tomorrow or Saturday, hopefully with some friends, and do 25 miles out there, then trailer to Silver Springs for the NEDA on Sunday and do another 20 then. Well. I guess that's not 25/25, it's more like "20 and I'm bored / 20 and we're done" but WHATEVER.
I mean, look at this horse. THIS HORSE NEEDS RODE.
Bah.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Intermittent update: Stuff I Read, spring '12
OMG, the last time I did this was the beginning of March. Surely I can remember a whole month ago? Surely? Ok, here we go!
I got caught up on Laura Crum's kindle releases. Well, today she released Hayburner, and I'm clearly slacking because I haven't read it yet. ;) But I'm almost caught up on her books! I'm still really enjoying them - she writes such good, realistic characters. Nothing in them makes me really grit my teeth - the men and women are multidimensonal and they interact with each other believably. And her place descriptions are amazing! Having read Slickrock I desperately want to learn to pack. She really captures the beautiful, remote, terrifying, captivating reality of the mountains. (I could do without all the calamities that befell Gail!) And maybe this sounds weird, but central California doesn't sound like such a strange place to me. I've been to the Bay Area, so I know what the climate feels like, and I can really imagine what Santa Cruz / Watsonville / Salinas are like. It's not such a scary unknown.
Interspersed with the Gail McCarthy books, my Kindle died. It was heartbreaking. I was without an ebook reader for like five whole days, yall. Luckily I had a paperback on hand - I bought it on a trip to Borderlands with my friend AWS last summer, but, urgh, it's made of dead trees and I have gone digital. Still, I was glad to have Soulless by Gail Carriger, dead trees and all, nearby in my time of need. It's steampunk-y, and I have never been all that fond of steampunk. Something about the gadgetry + the Victorian setting + the hipster love of the genre has always turned me off. But I really liked Soulless, and the rest of the books in the series. They don't take themselves too seriously, without (quite) descending into farce. The characters are good, the pacing is good. The first book is the weakest, and I never quite got over my annoyance with the twee names of the background characters, but they're solid.
Then, much to my delight, the new Holly Black book, Black Heart, came out. It's the third in a trilogy - White Cat, the first book, was utterly captivating. Red Glove, the second, was kinda meh, but that's not unusual for the second in a trilogy. (I mean, other than Ents/Gandalf the White, does anything happen in The Two Towers? Every time I reread LOTR, I completely skip all of Frodo's boring-ass journey into the land of blah blah gollum shadow. Second books are a necessary evil.) But anyway, Black Heart made up for the second book. They're YA, but very dark and gritty, and the main character is so confused and so likeable.
Continuing my streak of new-book good luck, I realized that A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison was out. Yes, I know. It's totally urban fantasy, and nobody wants to admit to liking urban fantasy. That's ok. I have no shame and I'll admit to it and you can sneak off and read the whole Hollows series without telling your snobby friends. Kim Harrison's books are really good urban fantasy - you have to like the genre to begin with, but if you do, you'll love them. Dead Witch Walking is book 1, and APB is book 10 - there will be 13 books in the series, so it's headed toward a finish.
Fresh off the heels of my success with Gail Carriger, I tried to read some shit called The Affinity Bridge by George Mann. I might go back to it... but I'm 16% of the way in, not captivated by the plot, and annoyed at the two-dimensionality of the characters. Like Soulless, it's steampunk, but it's boring steampunk.
Likewise, I made it 15% of the way into some utter shit called Hounded by Kevin Hearne. I guess it's urban fantasy, but it's shitty urban fantasy. The main character is 2000 years old yet thinks and acts exactly like a grown mortal adult, and there's all this background filling in that detracts from what little progression the plot makes in the first 15% of the book, and bahhhhh life is too short for this nonsense.
Then Aarene said I should read Divergent by Veronica Roth, and I am somewhat ashamed to admit to yall that I read it in one sitting. It's YA / dystopian future. There are plot holes you could drive a dump truck through. None of the characters quite come to life like Cassel Sharpe or Rachel Morgan did, but I could not stop reading it. I can't really tell you why it was such a good read, but it was.
I need to read The Hunger Games, because I have a sneaking suspicion that Divergent is, mmm, in the same vein. Anyway, consider Divergent to be a YA "airport thriller." It's captivating yet not very deep.
I got caught up on Laura Crum's kindle releases. Well, today she released Hayburner, and I'm clearly slacking because I haven't read it yet. ;) But I'm almost caught up on her books! I'm still really enjoying them - she writes such good, realistic characters. Nothing in them makes me really grit my teeth - the men and women are multidimensonal and they interact with each other believably. And her place descriptions are amazing! Having read Slickrock I desperately want to learn to pack. She really captures the beautiful, remote, terrifying, captivating reality of the mountains. (I could do without all the calamities that befell Gail!) And maybe this sounds weird, but central California doesn't sound like such a strange place to me. I've been to the Bay Area, so I know what the climate feels like, and I can really imagine what Santa Cruz / Watsonville / Salinas are like. It's not such a scary unknown.
Interspersed with the Gail McCarthy books, my Kindle died. It was heartbreaking. I was without an ebook reader for like five whole days, yall. Luckily I had a paperback on hand - I bought it on a trip to Borderlands with my friend AWS last summer, but, urgh, it's made of dead trees and I have gone digital. Still, I was glad to have Soulless by Gail Carriger, dead trees and all, nearby in my time of need. It's steampunk-y, and I have never been all that fond of steampunk. Something about the gadgetry + the Victorian setting + the hipster love of the genre has always turned me off. But I really liked Soulless, and the rest of the books in the series. They don't take themselves too seriously, without (quite) descending into farce. The characters are good, the pacing is good. The first book is the weakest, and I never quite got over my annoyance with the twee names of the background characters, but they're solid.
Then, much to my delight, the new Holly Black book, Black Heart, came out. It's the third in a trilogy - White Cat, the first book, was utterly captivating. Red Glove, the second, was kinda meh, but that's not unusual for the second in a trilogy. (I mean, other than Ents/Gandalf the White, does anything happen in The Two Towers? Every time I reread LOTR, I completely skip all of Frodo's boring-ass journey into the land of blah blah gollum shadow. Second books are a necessary evil.) But anyway, Black Heart made up for the second book. They're YA, but very dark and gritty, and the main character is so confused and so likeable.
Continuing my streak of new-book good luck, I realized that A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison was out. Yes, I know. It's totally urban fantasy, and nobody wants to admit to liking urban fantasy. That's ok. I have no shame and I'll admit to it and you can sneak off and read the whole Hollows series without telling your snobby friends. Kim Harrison's books are really good urban fantasy - you have to like the genre to begin with, but if you do, you'll love them. Dead Witch Walking is book 1, and APB is book 10 - there will be 13 books in the series, so it's headed toward a finish.
Fresh off the heels of my success with Gail Carriger, I tried to read some shit called The Affinity Bridge by George Mann. I might go back to it... but I'm 16% of the way in, not captivated by the plot, and annoyed at the two-dimensionality of the characters. Like Soulless, it's steampunk, but it's boring steampunk.
Likewise, I made it 15% of the way into some utter shit called Hounded by Kevin Hearne. I guess it's urban fantasy, but it's shitty urban fantasy. The main character is 2000 years old yet thinks and acts exactly like a grown mortal adult, and there's all this background filling in that detracts from what little progression the plot makes in the first 15% of the book, and bahhhhh life is too short for this nonsense.
Then Aarene said I should read Divergent by Veronica Roth, and I am somewhat ashamed to admit to yall that I read it in one sitting. It's YA / dystopian future. There are plot holes you could drive a dump truck through. None of the characters quite come to life like Cassel Sharpe or Rachel Morgan did, but I could not stop reading it. I can't really tell you why it was such a good read, but it was.
I need to read The Hunger Games, because I have a sneaking suspicion that Divergent is, mmm, in the same vein. Anyway, consider Divergent to be a YA "airport thriller." It's captivating yet not very deep.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Long slow distance around Washoe
So Sunday (I know, I'm so slow!) we trailered down to Washoe Lake and rode with R. Dixie "knows" R's gelding Ranger and they are both levelheaded creatures who get along great. (Ranger is one of the last DR Thunder Bask babies, and I gotta say, I'm really impressed. Too bad he's w/t/c only!)
(^^ smiley face tights!)
I'd given Dixie a neck clip earlier in the week. I got a really nice line along her shoulder, then a different nice line along the other shoulder, and, well, it turned into a neck-and-shoulder clip.
I clipped the underside of her belly too. I will probably run the belly line a little further up and clip the lower part of her hindquarters later this week, but I was afraid if I did too much I'd piss off the Snow Gods and they'd smite me with a blizzard.
I met up with R at her house and we trailered a couple miles away to Jumbo Grade, to avoid a big hill. We had plenty of hills scheduled already!
R is fun and easy to talk to, so the first couple miles flew by as we chatted. But when we got to the top of Jumbo Grade, I was missing a boot! I had to backtrack maybe a quarter mile down a mustang trail to find it, but I got it back on and had no more problems with boots. It was the front left - when I'd slapped it on that morning I'd wondered if it was a little crooked, but when I looked at it again later it looked fine. Guess I was right the first time. I need to trim the front boots back and I just haven't yet - maybe tomorrow!
We trotted along the ridgeline, with R explaining how the Washoe endurance ride trails come through the hills on the different loops. She'd offered to take me on the "yellow loop" or take a shortcut through an aspen grove, and I said I wanted the prettier ride, so aspens it was!
"Aspen grove", my ass. It was a forest! A teeny weeny forest, but the biggest one I've seen in Nevada. The trees were substantially taller than me and Dixie, and I couldn't see the end of them. Definitely a forest.
(I mashed the "enhance" button on a lot of these. Cell phone cameras just don't do well at altitude - the shadows are usually way too dark and the lighted areas are often washed out. I "enhance" a lot of my photos, but I invariably feel kinda guilty when I don't tell yall, because lytha always discloses her image enhancements!)
ANYWAY. They're aspens, so they're a popular target for Undying Redneck Love Manifestos. AB + YZ 1994, yeah! I thought about hopping off and carving "F <3 G" on one of them, but I contained my inner redneck to look classy in front of R.
We meandered through the forest and up a valley and BAM we were on top of the mountain. 7,336' - not too shabby, but not an amazing accomplishment. (We started at 5400, and the lake itself is right at 5000.')
Ears up, looking around.
Looking down at Washoe Lake, and over to the Sierras, and on the other side of them, Lake Tahoe.
I can see my house from here! Ok, not really, but I can see Peavine - it's the farthest big peak, at 11 o'clock, and my valley is at 12 o'clock.
I like this pic a lot. There's R, and Ranger is "listening" to her, and little Lady the indomitable Border Collie, and Slide Mountain / Mt. Rose just chillin' out in the background.
After some picture-taking by the humans, and some very limited grazing by the horses, we continued on our way. (Dixie and Ranger did in all the grass on the peak, and I bet they didn't get a good mouthful each - it's still really early for grazing up there.)
We headed south, toward Carson City.
Everything's so hazy because it's Nevada. If it's not snowing, it's on fire. (The Forest Service was doing a controlled burn in Dog Valley, up by my house, and the smoke hazed up the whole valley.)
OMG PEOPLE!
They were out walking an English Mastiff and another dog, which normally would've been of notable size but it looked so teeny next to the mastiff that I really don't remember much about it. Maybe 50 lbs? Anyway, you can clearly see two people and one XXL dog in that picture.
We made it past the people uneventfully and down to the Cinder mine. I mean, I don't think they mine cinders or something, it's just called the cinder mine. I googled it, of course, and there's some Cinder Companies who are operating or have operated mines in Nevada, and some extinct-volcano cinder cone mine locations, but none of them seemed like the one we rode past. ANYWAY. It looks cool, and the road is nice for the heavy trucks.
We sort of wishy-washied our way down the mountain toward the park. This is exactly why I never ride a given trail for mileage or time the first time I ride it - we mutually agreed to pass up a trail around a hill toward Carson to head toward the lake, then we came to a fork and I knew that one spur went nowhere so we passed that, then R knew that the next turn went nowhere so we passed that, and before we knew it we were back down the most direct path to the lake.
Did I mention it was Easter? The volunteer fire dept Easter egg hunt had just finished, and when we headed to the troughs at the horse parking area, a mob of tiny children appeared to :high pitched squeal!: PET THE HORSIES! :squeal squeal!!!: Our horses were like "oh mobs of screaming kids, no big deal."
Have I mentioned lately what a freakin' outstanding brain my horse has? And how impressive R's horses are? Ain't no thang.
We'd been in the saddle for about 4 hours, but the horses weren't sweaty and tired at all. They were just cool with it.
We took a lunch break in the pavilion. R had some chili cheese Fritos from the food truck (argh it's the one Southern food I have never learned to love) and I had some delicious almond butter + nutella goo. Dixie had a little slurp of water, and Ranger drank like it was going out of style, cause he's got more sense than her or something.
Then we roared north up the twisty fun singletrack to the end of the park, crossed the road, and trotted on back to "camp."
The parking area is multiuse for horses and dirt bikes, and the dirt bikers were out in force by the time we got back. Ain't no thang. Our horses were (NWS!) honeybadgers about it.
I logged 16.7 miles, almost 3k' elevation gain, in 4:40 elapsed time / 3:46 riding time.
Technical stuff: I electrolyted Dixie a lot. Definitely overkill, for the amount of clipping I'd done and the amount of aerobic exercise she did, but I'm still slowly ramping up how much salt I give her for a long workout. She wetted her mouth at the several little springs along the way, and drank a bit from the trough at the park, and chowed down on her sloppy mash at the trailer. The ratio of electrolyte powder to applesauce was higher than I've done before, and it didn't inhibit her appetite.
I let her, well, nuzzle the water in the earlier bits of the ride, as a sort of not very scientific experiment. Mel did a great writeup on the hydration seminar at the AERC convention, and the takeaway message for me was "if a horse gets her mouth wet, it temporarily shuts down her thirst receptors." Dixie is the queen of rinsing out her mouth but not actually drinking. I thought I'd let her act normally on this ride, and when we do High Desert I am not going to even let her sniff water til 10 or 12 miles in. I know, it sounds so cruel, but I know she is absolutely fine doing at least 15 miles with no water at all. I would like for her to learn that if she sees/smells water she needs to DRINK IT, not rinse her mouth out and wait for something better a couple miles further along. So no more me urging her to drink - I'm going to electrolyte her up and keep her away from the water unless she pulls me to it and demands to drink. We'll see how that goes.
I carroted Dixie all day. Actually, I forgot to bring carrots and R let me raid her stash, but the point is, Dixie got bites of carrot off and on all day.
I drank my whole camelbak of elyted water, plus a small bottle of water I bought at the park. R insisted on powdering me down with some crazy dry sunblock, and my face got a little pink but not burned. (My forearms, which escaped her, are very pink.) I ate better than my horse - some nuts, the almond butter, and a powerbar, plus a hearty snack of hummus and fruit and beer at the trailer afterwards. (Thanks again to R, for letting me chow down on your good stuff!) If I can eat that well on a 50, I'll feel great at the end.
I wore the smiley face tights, which ROCK, and the Patagonia panties, which worked just fine. (TMI! I've been doing my short home rides commando, and that also works just fine, but I wanted a long test with actual underwear.) I also swear by, uh, cycling lube. I use But'r, but YMMV - a lot of endurance riders like Bodyglide or Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. Try one, try all. Your ladybits will thank you. Or your manbits, whatever you've got down there.
I got off once, I think, for a steep downhill that was like a waterfall of fist-sized rocks. I had such horrible experiences early on with trying to remount Dixie in the middle of nowhere, and I'm really cautious about dismounting when I don't know there's a place to remount ahead. I wore my knockoff barefoot shoes, and my feet were comfortable in the stirrups. When I did get off, I could feel that I was walking on boulders, but the rocks didn't hurt my feet or anything. Somebody asked earlier how the barefoot shoes handled rocks, and I can now say that they protect your feet adequately but not excessively. I didn't feel invincible, and I didn't hurt my feet.
It was a really fun day, and a good long ride with a friend. No speed records, no calamities, no amazing breakthroughs. Just two good broke horses hauling their humans around for the day (and one amazing Border Collie keeping watch over us all!)
Next ride: One more hill workout tomorrow or Thursday, then HIGH DESERT on Saturday. I've got Dixie chowing down on huge mashes of salted beet pulp, Stable Mix, and ration balancer, plus epic amounts of hay. She'll be well fueled, and I think she's in better shape than this time last year. Time to roll the dice!
Next up in the blog: A little house stuff I haven't mentioned that I suppose I should blog about. Or some book reviews? Or some recipes? What do you want to hear about between now and Friday?
(^^ smiley face tights!)
I'd given Dixie a neck clip earlier in the week. I got a really nice line along her shoulder, then a different nice line along the other shoulder, and, well, it turned into a neck-and-shoulder clip.
I clipped the underside of her belly too. I will probably run the belly line a little further up and clip the lower part of her hindquarters later this week, but I was afraid if I did too much I'd piss off the Snow Gods and they'd smite me with a blizzard.
I met up with R at her house and we trailered a couple miles away to Jumbo Grade, to avoid a big hill. We had plenty of hills scheduled already!
R is fun and easy to talk to, so the first couple miles flew by as we chatted. But when we got to the top of Jumbo Grade, I was missing a boot! I had to backtrack maybe a quarter mile down a mustang trail to find it, but I got it back on and had no more problems with boots. It was the front left - when I'd slapped it on that morning I'd wondered if it was a little crooked, but when I looked at it again later it looked fine. Guess I was right the first time. I need to trim the front boots back and I just haven't yet - maybe tomorrow!
We trotted along the ridgeline, with R explaining how the Washoe endurance ride trails come through the hills on the different loops. She'd offered to take me on the "yellow loop" or take a shortcut through an aspen grove, and I said I wanted the prettier ride, so aspens it was!
"Aspen grove", my ass. It was a forest! A teeny weeny forest, but the biggest one I've seen in Nevada. The trees were substantially taller than me and Dixie, and I couldn't see the end of them. Definitely a forest.
(I mashed the "enhance" button on a lot of these. Cell phone cameras just don't do well at altitude - the shadows are usually way too dark and the lighted areas are often washed out. I "enhance" a lot of my photos, but I invariably feel kinda guilty when I don't tell yall, because lytha always discloses her image enhancements!)
ANYWAY. They're aspens, so they're a popular target for Undying Redneck Love Manifestos. AB + YZ 1994, yeah! I thought about hopping off and carving "F <3 G" on one of them, but I contained my inner redneck to look classy in front of R.
We meandered through the forest and up a valley and BAM we were on top of the mountain. 7,336' - not too shabby, but not an amazing accomplishment. (We started at 5400, and the lake itself is right at 5000.')
Ears up, looking around.
Looking down at Washoe Lake, and over to the Sierras, and on the other side of them, Lake Tahoe.
I can see my house from here! Ok, not really, but I can see Peavine - it's the farthest big peak, at 11 o'clock, and my valley is at 12 o'clock.
I like this pic a lot. There's R, and Ranger is "listening" to her, and little Lady the indomitable Border Collie, and Slide Mountain / Mt. Rose just chillin' out in the background.
After some picture-taking by the humans, and some very limited grazing by the horses, we continued on our way. (Dixie and Ranger did in all the grass on the peak, and I bet they didn't get a good mouthful each - it's still really early for grazing up there.)
We headed south, toward Carson City.
Everything's so hazy because it's Nevada. If it's not snowing, it's on fire. (The Forest Service was doing a controlled burn in Dog Valley, up by my house, and the smoke hazed up the whole valley.)
OMG PEOPLE!
They were out walking an English Mastiff and another dog, which normally would've been of notable size but it looked so teeny next to the mastiff that I really don't remember much about it. Maybe 50 lbs? Anyway, you can clearly see two people and one XXL dog in that picture.
We made it past the people uneventfully and down to the Cinder mine. I mean, I don't think they mine cinders or something, it's just called the cinder mine. I googled it, of course, and there's some Cinder Companies who are operating or have operated mines in Nevada, and some extinct-volcano cinder cone mine locations, but none of them seemed like the one we rode past. ANYWAY. It looks cool, and the road is nice for the heavy trucks.
We sort of wishy-washied our way down the mountain toward the park. This is exactly why I never ride a given trail for mileage or time the first time I ride it - we mutually agreed to pass up a trail around a hill toward Carson to head toward the lake, then we came to a fork and I knew that one spur went nowhere so we passed that, then R knew that the next turn went nowhere so we passed that, and before we knew it we were back down the most direct path to the lake.
Did I mention it was Easter? The volunteer fire dept Easter egg hunt had just finished, and when we headed to the troughs at the horse parking area, a mob of tiny children appeared to :high pitched squeal!: PET THE HORSIES! :squeal squeal!!!: Our horses were like "oh mobs of screaming kids, no big deal."
Have I mentioned lately what a freakin' outstanding brain my horse has? And how impressive R's horses are? Ain't no thang.
We'd been in the saddle for about 4 hours, but the horses weren't sweaty and tired at all. They were just cool with it.
We took a lunch break in the pavilion. R had some chili cheese Fritos from the food truck (argh it's the one Southern food I have never learned to love) and I had some delicious almond butter + nutella goo. Dixie had a little slurp of water, and Ranger drank like it was going out of style, cause he's got more sense than her or something.
Then we roared north up the twisty fun singletrack to the end of the park, crossed the road, and trotted on back to "camp."
The parking area is multiuse for horses and dirt bikes, and the dirt bikers were out in force by the time we got back. Ain't no thang. Our horses were (NWS!) honeybadgers about it.
I logged 16.7 miles, almost 3k' elevation gain, in 4:40 elapsed time / 3:46 riding time.
Technical stuff: I electrolyted Dixie a lot. Definitely overkill, for the amount of clipping I'd done and the amount of aerobic exercise she did, but I'm still slowly ramping up how much salt I give her for a long workout. She wetted her mouth at the several little springs along the way, and drank a bit from the trough at the park, and chowed down on her sloppy mash at the trailer. The ratio of electrolyte powder to applesauce was higher than I've done before, and it didn't inhibit her appetite.
I let her, well, nuzzle the water in the earlier bits of the ride, as a sort of not very scientific experiment. Mel did a great writeup on the hydration seminar at the AERC convention, and the takeaway message for me was "if a horse gets her mouth wet, it temporarily shuts down her thirst receptors." Dixie is the queen of rinsing out her mouth but not actually drinking. I thought I'd let her act normally on this ride, and when we do High Desert I am not going to even let her sniff water til 10 or 12 miles in. I know, it sounds so cruel, but I know she is absolutely fine doing at least 15 miles with no water at all. I would like for her to learn that if she sees/smells water she needs to DRINK IT, not rinse her mouth out and wait for something better a couple miles further along. So no more me urging her to drink - I'm going to electrolyte her up and keep her away from the water unless she pulls me to it and demands to drink. We'll see how that goes.
I carroted Dixie all day. Actually, I forgot to bring carrots and R let me raid her stash, but the point is, Dixie got bites of carrot off and on all day.
I drank my whole camelbak of elyted water, plus a small bottle of water I bought at the park. R insisted on powdering me down with some crazy dry sunblock, and my face got a little pink but not burned. (My forearms, which escaped her, are very pink.) I ate better than my horse - some nuts, the almond butter, and a powerbar, plus a hearty snack of hummus and fruit and beer at the trailer afterwards. (Thanks again to R, for letting me chow down on your good stuff!) If I can eat that well on a 50, I'll feel great at the end.
I wore the smiley face tights, which ROCK, and the Patagonia panties, which worked just fine. (TMI! I've been doing my short home rides commando, and that also works just fine, but I wanted a long test with actual underwear.) I also swear by, uh, cycling lube. I use But'r, but YMMV - a lot of endurance riders like Bodyglide or Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. Try one, try all. Your ladybits will thank you. Or your manbits, whatever you've got down there.
I got off once, I think, for a steep downhill that was like a waterfall of fist-sized rocks. I had such horrible experiences early on with trying to remount Dixie in the middle of nowhere, and I'm really cautious about dismounting when I don't know there's a place to remount ahead. I wore my knockoff barefoot shoes, and my feet were comfortable in the stirrups. When I did get off, I could feel that I was walking on boulders, but the rocks didn't hurt my feet or anything. Somebody asked earlier how the barefoot shoes handled rocks, and I can now say that they protect your feet adequately but not excessively. I didn't feel invincible, and I didn't hurt my feet.
It was a really fun day, and a good long ride with a friend. No speed records, no calamities, no amazing breakthroughs. Just two good broke horses hauling their humans around for the day (and one amazing Border Collie keeping watch over us all!)
Next ride: One more hill workout tomorrow or Thursday, then HIGH DESERT on Saturday. I've got Dixie chowing down on huge mashes of salted beet pulp, Stable Mix, and ration balancer, plus epic amounts of hay. She'll be well fueled, and I think she's in better shape than this time last year. Time to roll the dice!
Next up in the blog: A little house stuff I haven't mentioned that I suppose I should blog about. Or some book reviews? Or some recipes? What do you want to hear about between now and Friday?
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Brain returned, body sound!
Today we hauled off to the vet. I'd been planning on having them come out on Saturday to do spring shots, but then my friend R invited me to ride on Sunday, and I dunno about you but I feel like crap the day after a shot. And, as R pointed out, if I hauled her in, I could get a basic lameness exam and hopefully feel better about getting back into ~real 50 mile endurance~.
(Those are "sarcasm quotes" - I'm pretty agnostic about the Great 50-Mile Debate. Periodically a huge flame war will erupt on Ridecamp, the endurance listserve, about whether LDs are real endurance rides, worthy of prizes and year-end awards and general recognition, or if they're just the home of green horses and old horses and timid riders. I think 50s are more special, I think they require a lot more management for the metabolic stress, and I also think "just" riding 25-30 miles is a hell of an accomplishment that should be rewarded.)
So yesterday I called and cancelled Saturday's visit and got an appointment for today. It was at 2 pm, but without really thinking it through I hooked up the trailer at noon. Then I groomed Dixie for a while, but I'd left my phone in the truck, so when I got bored scraping white hair off of her I loaded her and we pulled out. At 12:20. Argh, I was going to be so early, and you know what that means - if you're early, the vet's late. I stopped at a Starbucks in the mall parking lot and even got into a conversation with a random dude who had admired my pretty mare, but I still got to the vet clinic at 1:20.
The only problem with Comstock Equine is that it's right on a busy highway. Like, a four-foot chain link fence and 8' of grass is all that separates the trailer parking from the four-lane highway. Oh well, Dixie's a pretty good endurance horse, she'll cope. I tied her on the side away from the highway and hung a bag of hay and hopped up on the fender. She paced around nervously for five minutes, then chilled out and ate hay and dozed off... for the next hour+. Yep, the vet was late.
But I had my iPhone so all was well. Here's my secret go-to for alleviating boredom: givemesomethingtoread.com and longform.org. Both of those sites offer up medium to long articles, drawn from current events and from classics. I read quite a few articles - the most interesting were The God of Gamblers and Paintballing with Hezbollah.
But anyway, her brain has returned! YAY FOR SNOOZING BESIDE A HIGHWAY! And the vet finally showed up (she had some tooth and hoof emergencies that threw her whole day off) and she totally remembered us. I mean, the girl with the spiky hair and the enormous paint TWH are hard to forget, but you never know.
Wellness exam: heart and gut sounds good, no sand in the guts. Teeth have hooks. (FINALLY. I get them checked every year, but - I feel like a bad horse owner admitting this - in the five years I've owned her, I've never had her teeth floated.) Good weight, blah blah. Got the four-way (Eastern and Western encephalitis, tetanus, West Nile IIRC), Rhino/flu, and strangles today. We agreed that I'll come back in May for her teeth, Coggins, health cert, and rabies. And I think one more that I'm forgetting. The vet is very conservative on floats, so I feel ok letting her do this - I don't think she's going to go crazy and flatten all of Dixie's grinding surfaces.
I don't usually vaccinate strangles, but every barn I talked to wanted it done, so we did it. I knew it was intranasal, but I was thinking more like when I get Cersei vaccinated for kennel cough and they squirt a puff of something up her dainty doggy nose. Nope, strangles IS intranasal, but it gets squirted WAY up in there. Dixie flipped her head straight up and waggled her nose around like she was a pissed off camel getting ready to spit, and we all got well out of her sneeze range and laughed at her. I still don't think it's a very effective or worthwhile vaccine, but I highly recommend it for the laugh factor alone.
Eventually, she decided not to sneeze killed virus all over us, and we did the lameness exam. Her front legs feel perfectly normal, and she moves... weird but sound. Both the vet and I watched her for a quite a while. Straight lines on hard ground, circles on hard ground, and circles on soft ground. She did a running walk and a pace on a straight line, and some weird stuff in circles.
Let me back up. I know this is the world's longest blog post about the world's least eventful vet visit, but bear with me if you're at all interested in gaited horse gaits.
Dixie does this smooth trot thing. She's done it for two years now - sometimes it's a perfectly sittable trot, and sometimes it's a sproingy you-better-post-that trot. They sound almost identical, and they both have the same diagonal throw-you-forward trot feel, but one of them is definitely an easy gait and one is a dressagey trot. I decided the nice one was probably a foxtrot. In most of her recent ride pics, it's a foxtrot.
But lately she's started doing something even weirder - instead of having the diagonals lift off together and come down rears-first, she trots on one lead and foxtrots on the other. So it's RF and LH up together, LH then RF down; LF and RH up together, LF and RH down together. It feels almost like a canter. It is, in fact, the lazy half-ass canter I've mentioned before in our hill work. I think it's not desirable because (a) it's not four-bear or two-beat and (b) I have never heard of such, so I don't let her do it under saddle for more than a few strides. She'll move up to a canter or a rack, or down to a foxtrot, when I ask. But without a stupid human up there jigging the reins, she did the Weird Thing A LOT on the longe on a circle.
The vet and I watched her for a long time. She switches "diagonals" according to what direction she's going - I think we both thought she was lame the first time she did a circle at the Weird Thing, but then she swapped "leads" when the tech sent her out in the other direction. And I told the vet that yes, it's something she offers under saddle. We pronounced her sound. It looks weird, but it's totally consistent, it's not a weird flinch, and she swaps "leads" so it's not some muscle problem higher up.
So I came home, thrilled at how GOOD she looks. I mean, she feels good under saddle, her attitude is good, she looks good on the longe when I'm holding the lead, but it's not the same when you're standing inside the circle directing the show. And I thought "I wonder if that Weird Thing is a real gait? I should check!" And you know what I found out?
Not only is the Weird Thing not a real gait, she wasn't foxtrotting. A foxtrot lifts the diagonals together, but the front hits first. Most of her ride photos are either step-pacing or real foxtrotting. There's no such thing as an official gait where the diagonals lift off together, and the rears hit first. And since that doesn't even exist, of course the Weird Thing doesn't exist.
Oh well. She looked really good, really efficient daisy-clipper movement, not stiff or hesitant. I'm going for it. Put my entry for High Desert 50 (link to .pdf) in the mail today. Gonna give Dixie a few days off for the shots, then do a long ride (hopefully with R!) this weekend and maybe another hill set on Tuesday of next week.
I think I've put a heart rate monitor on the I'd-Like-To-Buy list, too. I am really getting interested in finding out what her most efficient gaits are on various types of terrain. Off to breathe into a paper bag re: High Desert...
(Those are "sarcasm quotes" - I'm pretty agnostic about the Great 50-Mile Debate. Periodically a huge flame war will erupt on Ridecamp, the endurance listserve, about whether LDs are real endurance rides, worthy of prizes and year-end awards and general recognition, or if they're just the home of green horses and old horses and timid riders. I think 50s are more special, I think they require a lot more management for the metabolic stress, and I also think "just" riding 25-30 miles is a hell of an accomplishment that should be rewarded.)
So yesterday I called and cancelled Saturday's visit and got an appointment for today. It was at 2 pm, but without really thinking it through I hooked up the trailer at noon. Then I groomed Dixie for a while, but I'd left my phone in the truck, so when I got bored scraping white hair off of her I loaded her and we pulled out. At 12:20. Argh, I was going to be so early, and you know what that means - if you're early, the vet's late. I stopped at a Starbucks in the mall parking lot and even got into a conversation with a random dude who had admired my pretty mare, but I still got to the vet clinic at 1:20.
The only problem with Comstock Equine is that it's right on a busy highway. Like, a four-foot chain link fence and 8' of grass is all that separates the trailer parking from the four-lane highway. Oh well, Dixie's a pretty good endurance horse, she'll cope. I tied her on the side away from the highway and hung a bag of hay and hopped up on the fender. She paced around nervously for five minutes, then chilled out and ate hay and dozed off... for the next hour+. Yep, the vet was late.
But I had my iPhone so all was well. Here's my secret go-to for alleviating boredom: givemesomethingtoread.com and longform.org. Both of those sites offer up medium to long articles, drawn from current events and from classics. I read quite a few articles - the most interesting were The God of Gamblers and Paintballing with Hezbollah.
But anyway, her brain has returned! YAY FOR SNOOZING BESIDE A HIGHWAY! And the vet finally showed up (she had some tooth and hoof emergencies that threw her whole day off) and she totally remembered us. I mean, the girl with the spiky hair and the enormous paint TWH are hard to forget, but you never know.
Wellness exam: heart and gut sounds good, no sand in the guts. Teeth have hooks. (FINALLY. I get them checked every year, but - I feel like a bad horse owner admitting this - in the five years I've owned her, I've never had her teeth floated.) Good weight, blah blah. Got the four-way (Eastern and Western encephalitis, tetanus, West Nile IIRC), Rhino/flu, and strangles today. We agreed that I'll come back in May for her teeth, Coggins, health cert, and rabies. And I think one more that I'm forgetting. The vet is very conservative on floats, so I feel ok letting her do this - I don't think she's going to go crazy and flatten all of Dixie's grinding surfaces.
I don't usually vaccinate strangles, but every barn I talked to wanted it done, so we did it. I knew it was intranasal, but I was thinking more like when I get Cersei vaccinated for kennel cough and they squirt a puff of something up her dainty doggy nose. Nope, strangles IS intranasal, but it gets squirted WAY up in there. Dixie flipped her head straight up and waggled her nose around like she was a pissed off camel getting ready to spit, and we all got well out of her sneeze range and laughed at her. I still don't think it's a very effective or worthwhile vaccine, but I highly recommend it for the laugh factor alone.
Eventually, she decided not to sneeze killed virus all over us, and we did the lameness exam. Her front legs feel perfectly normal, and she moves... weird but sound. Both the vet and I watched her for a quite a while. Straight lines on hard ground, circles on hard ground, and circles on soft ground. She did a running walk and a pace on a straight line, and some weird stuff in circles.
Let me back up. I know this is the world's longest blog post about the world's least eventful vet visit, but bear with me if you're at all interested in gaited horse gaits.
Dixie does this smooth trot thing. She's done it for two years now - sometimes it's a perfectly sittable trot, and sometimes it's a sproingy you-better-post-that trot. They sound almost identical, and they both have the same diagonal throw-you-forward trot feel, but one of them is definitely an easy gait and one is a dressagey trot. I decided the nice one was probably a foxtrot. In most of her recent ride pics, it's a foxtrot.
But lately she's started doing something even weirder - instead of having the diagonals lift off together and come down rears-first, she trots on one lead and foxtrots on the other. So it's RF and LH up together, LH then RF down; LF and RH up together, LF and RH down together. It feels almost like a canter. It is, in fact, the lazy half-ass canter I've mentioned before in our hill work. I think it's not desirable because (a) it's not four-bear or two-beat and (b) I have never heard of such, so I don't let her do it under saddle for more than a few strides. She'll move up to a canter or a rack, or down to a foxtrot, when I ask. But without a stupid human up there jigging the reins, she did the Weird Thing A LOT on the longe on a circle.
The vet and I watched her for a long time. She switches "diagonals" according to what direction she's going - I think we both thought she was lame the first time she did a circle at the Weird Thing, but then she swapped "leads" when the tech sent her out in the other direction. And I told the vet that yes, it's something she offers under saddle. We pronounced her sound. It looks weird, but it's totally consistent, it's not a weird flinch, and she swaps "leads" so it's not some muscle problem higher up.
So I came home, thrilled at how GOOD she looks. I mean, she feels good under saddle, her attitude is good, she looks good on the longe when I'm holding the lead, but it's not the same when you're standing inside the circle directing the show. And I thought "I wonder if that Weird Thing is a real gait? I should check!" And you know what I found out?
Not only is the Weird Thing not a real gait, she wasn't foxtrotting. A foxtrot lifts the diagonals together, but the front hits first. Most of her ride photos are either step-pacing or real foxtrotting. There's no such thing as an official gait where the diagonals lift off together, and the rears hit first. And since that doesn't even exist, of course the Weird Thing doesn't exist.
Oh well. She looked really good, really efficient daisy-clipper movement, not stiff or hesitant. I'm going for it. Put my entry for High Desert 50 (link to .pdf) in the mail today. Gonna give Dixie a few days off for the shots, then do a long ride (hopefully with R!) this weekend and maybe another hill set on Tuesday of next week.
I think I've put a heart rate monitor on the I'd-Like-To-Buy list, too. I am really getting interested in finding out what her most efficient gaits are on various types of terrain. Off to breathe into a paper bag re: High Desert...
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Tragic theft at my house
Sometime early this afternoon, my horse's brain was stolen. My husband thinks it was aliens, but I suspect government scientists. :(
This morning one of the moving companies came by to estimate the house. After he left, I had two hours to kill before the next person came, so I caught my very mannerly mare, tied her up with a hay bag, and groomed her for over an hour. I went at her with the trusty Slick 'n Easy, which always sounds like a club song to me, but anyway, I got all the loose hair off, eventually. Here's some purty conformation shots. Dixie was perfectly behaved - she wiggled at the beginning and I whopped her on the shoulder and after that she just sighed deeply and let me go over her about ten times.
I jacked with the levels on this one because I was shooting into the sun, but I'm looking at the horse more than the prettiness of the picture.
I checked her feet - the fronts are totally clear of thrush, but now there's a bit in the back feet, so I treated them. I trimmed a bit off one of her heels, but there wasn't much to do. Dixie was an angel for the hoof work.
Then I turned her loose in the back yard to feast on the lush spring grass.
If you click to embiggen you will, in fact, see green stuff on the ground.
Dixie wandered around and looked at things. After she ate all the grass, I fed her some carrots, then I let her loose beside the barn. Eventually, the second moving company rep showed up and I put her back in her paddock.
THAT'S THE LAST TIME I SAW HER BRAIN.
The moving lady did her thing, I ate some lunch, and I went out to catch my horse again for a ride. She was all snorty and fidgety but I paid her no nevermind and mounted up to do the double hill ride. We headed out.
Dixie spooked at the dogs she's seen on every ride we've ever done. She looked real hard at a car at a cross street. She tried to bolt sideways at a canter at a crossroads in the trail. We popped over a tiny hill and she slammed on the brakes to stare in utter horror at a mylar balloon caught in a sagebrush by the trail. She couldn't walk past it on the trail and had to sidepass 10' off into the thornbushes to get by it. Then a plastic bag in a bush, then another plastic bag, then the mini horses, then the dogs ARRRRRGH. Eventually we started up the hill proper and she didn't get better but I did make her work too hard to fret over malignant bushes.
We went down the back of the hill and out into the valley, a bit further than we usually go, but I wanted to go out for an hour. The return trip was slightly better - she was rateable - but the damn mylar balloons tried to kill her again. When we got home I tied her up by the fence where she eats dinner, every single night since we moved here, and went in the house to get a drink of water. When I came back out she was standing at the end of her lead as far as she could get from her bucket.
I walked out. Dixie rolled her eyes at me and snorted. I looked at what she was looking at. I'd left her beet pulp bucket, the very same white bucket that always has food in it, the one she's always trying to get her nose in to see what good stuff is in there, yes, that bucket was laying on the ground under the feed bucket on the fence. I resisted the urge to hit my head on the fence and instead moved the deadly white bucket in the barn. She still stood at the end of her lead and snorted. I had to scoop out a bit of her delicious ration balancer beet pulp mush and hand-feed it to her to prove that there wasn't a demon hiding in her feed bucket.
Horses! :flings hands in the air: So did aliens steal her brain? Has she been taking lessons from Bill and Juanita's mustangs? Is this my punishment for not riding for a whole week?
This morning one of the moving companies came by to estimate the house. After he left, I had two hours to kill before the next person came, so I caught my very mannerly mare, tied her up with a hay bag, and groomed her for over an hour. I went at her with the trusty Slick 'n Easy, which always sounds like a club song to me, but anyway, I got all the loose hair off, eventually. Here's some purty conformation shots. Dixie was perfectly behaved - she wiggled at the beginning and I whopped her on the shoulder and after that she just sighed deeply and let me go over her about ten times.
I jacked with the levels on this one because I was shooting into the sun, but I'm looking at the horse more than the prettiness of the picture.
I checked her feet - the fronts are totally clear of thrush, but now there's a bit in the back feet, so I treated them. I trimmed a bit off one of her heels, but there wasn't much to do. Dixie was an angel for the hoof work.
Then I turned her loose in the back yard to feast on the lush spring grass.
If you click to embiggen you will, in fact, see green stuff on the ground.
Dixie wandered around and looked at things. After she ate all the grass, I fed her some carrots, then I let her loose beside the barn. Eventually, the second moving company rep showed up and I put her back in her paddock.
THAT'S THE LAST TIME I SAW HER BRAIN.
The moving lady did her thing, I ate some lunch, and I went out to catch my horse again for a ride. She was all snorty and fidgety but I paid her no nevermind and mounted up to do the double hill ride. We headed out.
Dixie spooked at the dogs she's seen on every ride we've ever done. She looked real hard at a car at a cross street. She tried to bolt sideways at a canter at a crossroads in the trail. We popped over a tiny hill and she slammed on the brakes to stare in utter horror at a mylar balloon caught in a sagebrush by the trail. She couldn't walk past it on the trail and had to sidepass 10' off into the thornbushes to get by it. Then a plastic bag in a bush, then another plastic bag, then the mini horses, then the dogs ARRRRRGH. Eventually we started up the hill proper and she didn't get better but I did make her work too hard to fret over malignant bushes.
We went down the back of the hill and out into the valley, a bit further than we usually go, but I wanted to go out for an hour. The return trip was slightly better - she was rateable - but the damn mylar balloons tried to kill her again. When we got home I tied her up by the fence where she eats dinner, every single night since we moved here, and went in the house to get a drink of water. When I came back out she was standing at the end of her lead as far as she could get from her bucket.
I walked out. Dixie rolled her eyes at me and snorted. I looked at what she was looking at. I'd left her beet pulp bucket, the very same white bucket that always has food in it, the one she's always trying to get her nose in to see what good stuff is in there, yes, that bucket was laying on the ground under the feed bucket on the fence. I resisted the urge to hit my head on the fence and instead moved the deadly white bucket in the barn. She still stood at the end of her lead and snorted. I had to scoop out a bit of her delicious ration balancer beet pulp mush and hand-feed it to her to prove that there wasn't a demon hiding in her feed bucket.
Horses! :flings hands in the air: So did aliens steal her brain? Has she been taking lessons from Bill and Juanita's mustangs? Is this my punishment for not riding for a whole week?
Monday, April 2, 2012
Ride endurance, become a demonstrably better person
Yall, I am quite pleased with how well I've got my shit together lately, and I think it's all because of endurance.
I coasted through the first thirty years of my life, honestly. School was easy and I never had to try very hard, and it never actually caught up to me, even in law school. It's not like I did all that well, but I wasn't at the bottom of my class or anything, and I didn't have much follow-through. You know how it goes - at the beginning of the semester/year, you make grand plans and fill out a Dayrunner full of exactly what you need to do to pace yourself and fully comprehend all the material, but about three weeks in that all falls by the wayside until the week before finals, when you suddenly attempt to cram the whole semester's worth of education into your brain. If you're at all good at test-taking, it's not hard to pass, and it's honestly easier to cram than to diligently study a little every day.
And even when I first got into horses, I did the same careless stuff. Forget to check the weather and ride in the rain. Put off buying hay til you're down to your last couple flakes. Take the bridle home and oil it, then forget it at home and ride in a halter. You know, normal stuff.
Then I started going on longer rides, and thinking very deeply about the logistics of ridecamping, and my actions started having immediate consequences. Forget my water? I can ride three hours anyway and get miserably dehydrated, or scratch the ride (I was boarding at the time) and have to reschedule it. Wear the wrong clothes and suffer. Worry that my suffering was hurting my riding and therefore my horse.
And the sheer amount of planning was pretty daunting. It would've been an easier road if I had an Arab. It would've been an easier road if I had a trainer - but endurance trainers are few and far between, and one of the reasons I picked endurance was because you don't need a special horse or a trainer. How many miles had I done that week? When was my next rest day, when was my next long ride, when should those things happen? Do I need boots? A crupper? Electrolytes? Supplements? Riding clothes? I was the only person who could answer those questions.
At first I just made up the answers and guessed at the gear we'd need, but gradually, I started dialing it in to more accurate answers. My poor husband and my poor mentors suffered patiently through my figuring it out process, and I like to think that I've become much less annoying these days. ;)
When the training at home turned into trailering out and ridecamping, the stakes went up again. I was somewhat ready for it at that point, and to date I have not forgotten the horse, saddle, bridle, or water. (I think I've forgotten everything else at least once, but those are the really crucial elements.) I gradually figured out what needed to go on the lists, and how to pack and check off the lists, and how much time it took to do each of the bazillion discrete tasks you need to do to finish a ride.
And at some point, all these newfound organizational skills started to bleed over into normal life. Moving from Ohio to Nevada (pre-endurance) was very spur of the moment. We got it done, but it didn't go perfectly smoothly, and I didn't do some crucial tracking on some long-term elements (it took three weeks for my truck to ship, and four weeks for my horse to ship - the shippers screwed up, but I didn't follow up either!) Moving from the Reno apartment to our house (post-endurance) went much better. I got about 75% of our stuff packed in the three weeks before the move, much to my husband's consternation. (I don't think he really planned on living with a tower of boxes in the dining nook.) And now I'm getting ready to move again, and I am on the ball.
I've had a pretty good idea of my boarding options and price ranges for two months. I got all those barn tours done over the weekend. We have a plan for finding a house. The property manager came today, and I know what my next steps are there. I've got a couple of moving companies coming tomorrow to estimate the move. The house is show-quality clean, and it's been clean for three weeks. I know who I need to call and when I need to call them. I'm on it.
And again, I blame/credit this all to endurance. For one of my first rides, I just threw a bunch of shit in a duffel bag and went haring off to a ride, and when I came back the house was destroyed and there was no food and all the clothes were dirty and I was exhausted and it sucked. The next ride I did, I made sure I had some easy to cook food in the fridge and some clean clothes waiting (in the dryer) for when I got home, and life was much better. The ride after that, I actually folded all the clean laundry and I washed the sheets before I left, and it was heavenly. It was like some basic life lesson finally clicked: If you prepare properly ahead of time, things will magically be much better.
If you, too, would like to become a better person, I suggest that you take up some overwhelmingly complicated hobby, such as endurance riding. :)
I coasted through the first thirty years of my life, honestly. School was easy and I never had to try very hard, and it never actually caught up to me, even in law school. It's not like I did all that well, but I wasn't at the bottom of my class or anything, and I didn't have much follow-through. You know how it goes - at the beginning of the semester/year, you make grand plans and fill out a Dayrunner full of exactly what you need to do to pace yourself and fully comprehend all the material, but about three weeks in that all falls by the wayside until the week before finals, when you suddenly attempt to cram the whole semester's worth of education into your brain. If you're at all good at test-taking, it's not hard to pass, and it's honestly easier to cram than to diligently study a little every day.
And even when I first got into horses, I did the same careless stuff. Forget to check the weather and ride in the rain. Put off buying hay til you're down to your last couple flakes. Take the bridle home and oil it, then forget it at home and ride in a halter. You know, normal stuff.
Then I started going on longer rides, and thinking very deeply about the logistics of ridecamping, and my actions started having immediate consequences. Forget my water? I can ride three hours anyway and get miserably dehydrated, or scratch the ride (I was boarding at the time) and have to reschedule it. Wear the wrong clothes and suffer. Worry that my suffering was hurting my riding and therefore my horse.
And the sheer amount of planning was pretty daunting. It would've been an easier road if I had an Arab. It would've been an easier road if I had a trainer - but endurance trainers are few and far between, and one of the reasons I picked endurance was because you don't need a special horse or a trainer. How many miles had I done that week? When was my next rest day, when was my next long ride, when should those things happen? Do I need boots? A crupper? Electrolytes? Supplements? Riding clothes? I was the only person who could answer those questions.
At first I just made up the answers and guessed at the gear we'd need, but gradually, I started dialing it in to more accurate answers. My poor husband and my poor mentors suffered patiently through my figuring it out process, and I like to think that I've become much less annoying these days. ;)
When the training at home turned into trailering out and ridecamping, the stakes went up again. I was somewhat ready for it at that point, and to date I have not forgotten the horse, saddle, bridle, or water. (I think I've forgotten everything else at least once, but those are the really crucial elements.) I gradually figured out what needed to go on the lists, and how to pack and check off the lists, and how much time it took to do each of the bazillion discrete tasks you need to do to finish a ride.
And at some point, all these newfound organizational skills started to bleed over into normal life. Moving from Ohio to Nevada (pre-endurance) was very spur of the moment. We got it done, but it didn't go perfectly smoothly, and I didn't do some crucial tracking on some long-term elements (it took three weeks for my truck to ship, and four weeks for my horse to ship - the shippers screwed up, but I didn't follow up either!) Moving from the Reno apartment to our house (post-endurance) went much better. I got about 75% of our stuff packed in the three weeks before the move, much to my husband's consternation. (I don't think he really planned on living with a tower of boxes in the dining nook.) And now I'm getting ready to move again, and I am on the ball.
I've had a pretty good idea of my boarding options and price ranges for two months. I got all those barn tours done over the weekend. We have a plan for finding a house. The property manager came today, and I know what my next steps are there. I've got a couple of moving companies coming tomorrow to estimate the move. The house is show-quality clean, and it's been clean for three weeks. I know who I need to call and when I need to call them. I'm on it.
And again, I blame/credit this all to endurance. For one of my first rides, I just threw a bunch of shit in a duffel bag and went haring off to a ride, and when I came back the house was destroyed and there was no food and all the clothes were dirty and I was exhausted and it sucked. The next ride I did, I made sure I had some easy to cook food in the fridge and some clean clothes waiting (in the dryer) for when I got home, and life was much better. The ride after that, I actually folded all the clean laundry and I washed the sheets before I left, and it was heavenly. It was like some basic life lesson finally clicked: If you prepare properly ahead of time, things will magically be much better.
If you, too, would like to become a better person, I suggest that you take up some overwhelmingly complicated hobby, such as endurance riding. :)
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Endurance driving: barn tours
Just got back to the house from an 830 mile road trip. That's 440 miles of there and back and 390 driving around there.
I got up Thursday, dropped Cers with the boarding kennel, and drove to SF. I went straight through the city and down to Pacifica, where I called First Barn Manager and got directions down to her first property, right on the PCH between Pacifica and Montara. As you can imagine, the views are breathtaking. There's a bit of Bus Plunge Highway, with switchbacks between rock-slidy cliffs going up and crashing-surf cliffs going down, but after just a couple miles it flattens out into a scenic drive along the coast. FBM showed me three properties she manages, and they were all similar - I'd call them mostly paddocks with shelters. There was some pasture, but the horses out there are all supplemented with grass/alfalfa so that's no good. The second of her properties had a couple of available paddocks that were long, skinny, and drained pretty well, so if I ended up there that's what I'd choose. They all backed up into Open Space land with established trails, and they were reasonably priced.
Then I drove down into Half Moon Bay and over the hills north into the peninsula (another bus plunge road). When you zip up to the top of the hills, you're in this long skinny zone of undeveloped land where the San Andreas fault is, with a huge rift lake (Crystal Springs) running east-west along it. Shockingly beautiful.
I-280 runs along the fault, and it's got to be the most beautiful interstate in America. It's 8 to 10 lanes, divided, and everybody goes about 85 mph, but you can't see a damn bit of human habitation. It runs along the southwest side of the Santa Cruz hills, so you can't see the intense development in the peninsula or the less-developed coast. Just you and a hundred other people driving as fast as possible through rolling green hills, with a lake beside you.
View of the lake and 280:
I took 280 out to Woodside and stopped off at The Horse Park At Woodside. I wanted to see how long it'd take to drive from out there back into the city, and The Horse Park seemed as good a place as any to turn around. The Horse Park At Woodside is the kind of place that demands initial capitals any time one mentions it, and it is categorically not the place for Dixie and me. It is a place for Andrea. (Or maybe pre-Texas Andrea - I think she is slowly but surely becoming a redneck. Welcome to the family!) Anyway, I pulled in there, looked around, and pulled right back out and went back up 280 to 101 and into SF about 5 pm. It took me about 20 minutes to tear-ass back up to South SF and cut over to 101, about 20 minutes to zoom up 101 to the Potrero exit, and about 20 minutes to make it to my exit, one mile further up the road. Oy vey. Bridge traffic is bullshit.
I parked the truck at G's work, met up with him, and we taxi'd over to the apartment and went to the little Vietnamese joint across the street from his building. Everybody's been saying it's not a good year for crab, but dammit I wanted crab, so I got crab, and... it wasn't very good. I couldn't get the meat out of the shell. I didn't care! It took twice as long as usual but I ate every bit of it.
The next day, I rolled promptly out of bed and trucked on down to Portola Valley, to meet Second Barn Manager. This one is in Arastradero Preserve, which looks like it connects to Foothills Park and all the Open Space stuff up in the hills. If we get a house down that way, that's definitely where I'm boarding - they happen to have a one-acre pasture where the horses are already eating grass hay, with an opening because a pony passed away. One acre is bigger than she has now! The people seemed nice - I talked to a couple of boarders before SBM showed up - and it's not too fancy, very reasonable rates. I don't know if we can get a house out that way, but I'm going to call the manager tomorrow and send her a deposit to hold that space in the pasture for me. Pasture plus grass hay plus trails is absolutely perfect.
After that, on to Third Barn Manager, on Skyline Bus Plunge Boulevard near the Bus Plunge to Half Moon Bay. This was easily the fanciest barn on my list - stalls run $850, and most stuff is a la carte (blanketing, grain, trailer parking, lessons, etc.) But they had pasture board with grass hay, and trail access, so I went to go see. I got there way too early and watched the owner give jumping lessons to his ... office staff? working student? and a couple of boarders. Lovely covered arena, with seating to watch people work, and blankets and a heater. The heater was necessary because it was 50 degrees with a brisk cloud moving through! A beautiful facility though, and TBM was really quite polite and friendly. About 150-250 more than Second Barn, but grass hay and trail access. No requirement to be in training, and no requirement to use their trainer (one jumping trainer, two dressage trainers). I do not think it's really where I need to be, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, and if I ended up there Dixie would be perfectly happy. My biggest worry is that it's very cold up there all year - while part of me thinks that'd be just peachy I think Dixie would suffer if I took her down to some hot endurance ride, and that road is too hairy for me to haul out regularly.
I drove down from the hills and out to Foster City on the bay to have lunch, then drove around looking at neighborhoods. As far as I can tell, it's kind of like the east coast of Florida - unbroken development, with a new city name sign every couple of miles. Totally amazing that only two miles away there's all this beautiful undeveloped land. Everything's just crammed in and the zoning doesn't make intuitive sense to me.
Fourth Barn - I really liked it. Beautiful horses, a beautiful barn but most of them were on pasture, a dressage arena built into the side of the hill so as you rode it looked like you were looking over a cliff down to the ocean far below, tons of pastures built into hills... and no trail access. And no grass hay, just grass/alfalfa or wheat. And no way to haul out!
The barn was up a mile of potholed switchback gravel road, off of La Honda Road. Here's a screenshot. I dunno if I put the marker in exactly the right spot, but it was somewhere along there...
Most of the horses there are retirees or older horses, and I wouldn't hesitate to send my retiree there either! We realized pretty quickly that I wasn't a good fit and had a nice conversation anyway - she told me about the area, some places to look to find private boarding if I wanted, that kind of stuff.
Then back into the city and out with G's work friends for a little while, then off to bed.
Saturday we got up and headed out for another heroic day of driving. The last barn was a place that had been closed for several years and is getting ready to reopen. It's 5 miles south of Half Moon Bay, up a warm and sunny little canyon - the BM says she grows tomatoes, so it can't be too cold and foggy! The property is a tiny little space running up a hill - the owner's house overlooks the barns. There's one barn that will have stalls, three or four individual paddocks, and three two-horse paddocks. The paddocks are all graveled, so no standing on soggy ground. About 10 minutes' ride up to the end of the canyon takes you to a trailhead into Purisima Creek. Grass hay, trailer parking, wash rack, reasonable rates. If we end up in Pacifica / HMB, that's my choice down there.
After looking at that barn, G and I drove around the peninsula all day. We looked for a shoe store, got infuriated with the GPS, got snappy with each other, ate lunch and made up, got coffee in HMB, and parked by the ocean and watched the tide come in. Eventually, we went back into the city and met up with friends for dinner. I was super tired and came totally unglued when the place we were going to eat dinner at said a two-hour wait. I mean unglued like I was bawling on G's shoulder when two of his friends hopped out of a taxi to meet me for the very first time. It was such a good first impression. But I pulled it back together and we went to a bar with Asian food and had a good time anyway. (Fried rice with pork belly and kimchee! OMG so good!)
And today, back to Reno! The cats survived on kibble, the neighbor took great care of Dixie, and Cers was just delighted to see me. (But the kennel told on her - she also had fun while she was there!) This week I've got a property manager coming to look at the place and two moving companies to give me estimates, and I need to fit in some riding.
The next AERC ride is High Desert, where we did our first fifty last year, but it was not an easy ride. I am thinking about doing the 30 at High Desert (lots of hills and rocks, but only for 30 miles) and doing the NEDA ride in the same area the next day (20 miles, pretty flat). I'll get 50 miles in a weekend and will feel ok to tackle a 50 at Washoe at the end of the month. I know I have got to quit dithering and just enter a 50 at some point. I know. Real soon. I just want to cry when I think about Dixie limping to the vet check. I will suck up and do a 50 soon.
I got up Thursday, dropped Cers with the boarding kennel, and drove to SF. I went straight through the city and down to Pacifica, where I called First Barn Manager and got directions down to her first property, right on the PCH between Pacifica and Montara. As you can imagine, the views are breathtaking. There's a bit of Bus Plunge Highway, with switchbacks between rock-slidy cliffs going up and crashing-surf cliffs going down, but after just a couple miles it flattens out into a scenic drive along the coast. FBM showed me three properties she manages, and they were all similar - I'd call them mostly paddocks with shelters. There was some pasture, but the horses out there are all supplemented with grass/alfalfa so that's no good. The second of her properties had a couple of available paddocks that were long, skinny, and drained pretty well, so if I ended up there that's what I'd choose. They all backed up into Open Space land with established trails, and they were reasonably priced.
Then I drove down into Half Moon Bay and over the hills north into the peninsula (another bus plunge road). When you zip up to the top of the hills, you're in this long skinny zone of undeveloped land where the San Andreas fault is, with a huge rift lake (Crystal Springs) running east-west along it. Shockingly beautiful.
I-280 runs along the fault, and it's got to be the most beautiful interstate in America. It's 8 to 10 lanes, divided, and everybody goes about 85 mph, but you can't see a damn bit of human habitation. It runs along the southwest side of the Santa Cruz hills, so you can't see the intense development in the peninsula or the less-developed coast. Just you and a hundred other people driving as fast as possible through rolling green hills, with a lake beside you.
View of the lake and 280:
I took 280 out to Woodside and stopped off at The Horse Park At Woodside. I wanted to see how long it'd take to drive from out there back into the city, and The Horse Park seemed as good a place as any to turn around. The Horse Park At Woodside is the kind of place that demands initial capitals any time one mentions it, and it is categorically not the place for Dixie and me. It is a place for Andrea. (Or maybe pre-Texas Andrea - I think she is slowly but surely becoming a redneck. Welcome to the family!) Anyway, I pulled in there, looked around, and pulled right back out and went back up 280 to 101 and into SF about 5 pm. It took me about 20 minutes to tear-ass back up to South SF and cut over to 101, about 20 minutes to zoom up 101 to the Potrero exit, and about 20 minutes to make it to my exit, one mile further up the road. Oy vey. Bridge traffic is bullshit.
I parked the truck at G's work, met up with him, and we taxi'd over to the apartment and went to the little Vietnamese joint across the street from his building. Everybody's been saying it's not a good year for crab, but dammit I wanted crab, so I got crab, and... it wasn't very good. I couldn't get the meat out of the shell. I didn't care! It took twice as long as usual but I ate every bit of it.
The next day, I rolled promptly out of bed and trucked on down to Portola Valley, to meet Second Barn Manager. This one is in Arastradero Preserve, which looks like it connects to Foothills Park and all the Open Space stuff up in the hills. If we get a house down that way, that's definitely where I'm boarding - they happen to have a one-acre pasture where the horses are already eating grass hay, with an opening because a pony passed away. One acre is bigger than she has now! The people seemed nice - I talked to a couple of boarders before SBM showed up - and it's not too fancy, very reasonable rates. I don't know if we can get a house out that way, but I'm going to call the manager tomorrow and send her a deposit to hold that space in the pasture for me. Pasture plus grass hay plus trails is absolutely perfect.
After that, on to Third Barn Manager, on Skyline Bus Plunge Boulevard near the Bus Plunge to Half Moon Bay. This was easily the fanciest barn on my list - stalls run $850, and most stuff is a la carte (blanketing, grain, trailer parking, lessons, etc.) But they had pasture board with grass hay, and trail access, so I went to go see. I got there way too early and watched the owner give jumping lessons to his ... office staff? working student? and a couple of boarders. Lovely covered arena, with seating to watch people work, and blankets and a heater. The heater was necessary because it was 50 degrees with a brisk cloud moving through! A beautiful facility though, and TBM was really quite polite and friendly. About 150-250 more than Second Barn, but grass hay and trail access. No requirement to be in training, and no requirement to use their trainer (one jumping trainer, two dressage trainers). I do not think it's really where I need to be, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, and if I ended up there Dixie would be perfectly happy. My biggest worry is that it's very cold up there all year - while part of me thinks that'd be just peachy I think Dixie would suffer if I took her down to some hot endurance ride, and that road is too hairy for me to haul out regularly.
I drove down from the hills and out to Foster City on the bay to have lunch, then drove around looking at neighborhoods. As far as I can tell, it's kind of like the east coast of Florida - unbroken development, with a new city name sign every couple of miles. Totally amazing that only two miles away there's all this beautiful undeveloped land. Everything's just crammed in and the zoning doesn't make intuitive sense to me.
Fourth Barn - I really liked it. Beautiful horses, a beautiful barn but most of them were on pasture, a dressage arena built into the side of the hill so as you rode it looked like you were looking over a cliff down to the ocean far below, tons of pastures built into hills... and no trail access. And no grass hay, just grass/alfalfa or wheat. And no way to haul out!
The barn was up a mile of potholed switchback gravel road, off of La Honda Road. Here's a screenshot. I dunno if I put the marker in exactly the right spot, but it was somewhere along there...
Most of the horses there are retirees or older horses, and I wouldn't hesitate to send my retiree there either! We realized pretty quickly that I wasn't a good fit and had a nice conversation anyway - she told me about the area, some places to look to find private boarding if I wanted, that kind of stuff.
Then back into the city and out with G's work friends for a little while, then off to bed.
Saturday we got up and headed out for another heroic day of driving. The last barn was a place that had been closed for several years and is getting ready to reopen. It's 5 miles south of Half Moon Bay, up a warm and sunny little canyon - the BM says she grows tomatoes, so it can't be too cold and foggy! The property is a tiny little space running up a hill - the owner's house overlooks the barns. There's one barn that will have stalls, three or four individual paddocks, and three two-horse paddocks. The paddocks are all graveled, so no standing on soggy ground. About 10 minutes' ride up to the end of the canyon takes you to a trailhead into Purisima Creek. Grass hay, trailer parking, wash rack, reasonable rates. If we end up in Pacifica / HMB, that's my choice down there.
After looking at that barn, G and I drove around the peninsula all day. We looked for a shoe store, got infuriated with the GPS, got snappy with each other, ate lunch and made up, got coffee in HMB, and parked by the ocean and watched the tide come in. Eventually, we went back into the city and met up with friends for dinner. I was super tired and came totally unglued when the place we were going to eat dinner at said a two-hour wait. I mean unglued like I was bawling on G's shoulder when two of his friends hopped out of a taxi to meet me for the very first time. It was such a good first impression. But I pulled it back together and we went to a bar with Asian food and had a good time anyway. (Fried rice with pork belly and kimchee! OMG so good!)
And today, back to Reno! The cats survived on kibble, the neighbor took great care of Dixie, and Cers was just delighted to see me. (But the kennel told on her - she also had fun while she was there!) This week I've got a property manager coming to look at the place and two moving companies to give me estimates, and I need to fit in some riding.
The next AERC ride is High Desert, where we did our first fifty last year, but it was not an easy ride. I am thinking about doing the 30 at High Desert (lots of hills and rocks, but only for 30 miles) and doing the NEDA ride in the same area the next day (20 miles, pretty flat). I'll get 50 miles in a weekend and will feel ok to tackle a 50 at Washoe at the end of the month. I know I have got to quit dithering and just enter a 50 at some point. I know. Real soon. I just want to cry when I think about Dixie limping to the vet check. I will suck up and do a 50 soon.
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