Looking forward to WY

I'm plenty nervous about the endurance riding but I am SO looking forward to being in the middle of nowhere, talk will be about horses and a bit of gossip about endurance characters. I was literally in tears listening to radio this morning, but must remember that the MFM and the DNC are very practiced at spinning the story. Perhaps sanity will prevail and if it does not the world will still keep revolving. I really have sympathy for people in 1930's Germany now -- I am very late in waking up but am contributing to conservative candidates now. Is that strong enough action? At what point must I make a stronger stand against the fascists in socialist clothing?

Anyway, horse journal. I rode Shade 8 miles on sunday and she felt wonderfully strong. I did not get my usual short ride to make sure systems are go taken yesterday or today. I hope she is up for this, she walked off when I was going to ride this morning so I grabbed fat RazzMo and gave Shade and Grey the rest of their hay to eat while I took Ole on his ride --I needed to ride for sanity and to make sure my riding muscles weren't stiff as a board, Shade is fine with pasture browsing or if she has a problem I wont know it until tomorrow at the first pre-ride vet check but I need to get away anyway. I bought alfalfa cubes and more low-carb feed at the co-op monday and then found that the co-op cubes are the alfalfa meal ones that Shade was not wild about at Mountain Mettle -I'd gotten confused and thought those were some N brought from ND last fall -- so I stopped at Author's feed and got a bag of the HAY cubes that Shade has liked. Spoiling the horse instead of riding so much that I have confidence she can go 158 miles in 3 days, yep that's me.

Stooorme weather

LOL, my weak attempt to convey the breaking quality my voice would have if I tried to sing it. Its not actively storming, but it clouded up and it was windy a couple of hours ago. Its still cloudy, maybe Boulder will get some rain. Sigh I was on the verge of zipping down to impose on a friend this weekend to buy some portable (for horse trailer camping) panels she is selling. But did not hear back from her before the bank closed so she would have to take a check, and if *I* don't attack the goatsheads at home they will just go to town setting burrs. Dad is working on his tree trimming project and would need a few days to shift gears + I like to be sparing with the disking and do more hand-pulling. And my friend did not pick up on my hint and invite me to camp over and ride if I came down. I really hate to invite myself and I do need to ride this weekend. I can skip trailering out but I want to get 2-3 hours or so on Shade. Have to prep a little bit for the big 3-day attempt.

It was hot and muggy this morning so I wussed out rather than riding Grey Moun. Shade has enjoyed having all week off. Ole seems to have enjoyed the car trip runs. Spoiled dog, if I am not riding I run him and Mia if she comes before I even get the horses grain ready to make sure he doesn't get bored and sneak off while I'm putzing. I need to write a letter to my navy soldier.

I am NOT having fun with trying to get new plots going in GMT. My nice boss was too distracted to dig out the scripts a month or more ago when I added the wind data fields and now he would like wind plots to track tropical storms that are brewing in the caribbean/gulf area. Well at least I finally figured out I should pick a small subset of the over 300 stations to play with while I work out the bugs.

Rode Razz this morning and Shade had chiro

Shade was out in a few spots and he said she was collapsing to the right. I'm pretty sure I was uneven before she was. CJ got adjusted to, even though he was a cow and made me dink around for 3-4 minutes before agreeing to be haltered. He was out in a few spots also. At least when CJ is making me play games he is done within a few minutes. When Shade or Grey Moun decide to play its usually going to take at least 15 minutes and that is if they are in a small enough pen that I can just do a small circle and keep them moving.

Rode Razz to the irrigation ditch and back. Geez I needed to stretch more first or something and then he did a 180, which was not hard to stay on but I think it pulled on my groin pretty good. But I felt fairly even and he was not huffing too much. If he was mine and I had hours to while away I'd be searching for a dressage instructor. I might ride Grey tomorrow, I'm thinking of taking him to WY, then if Shade can't go all 3 days I can do the poker ride and if she can she'll have her buddy encouraging her to eat and helping keep stuff from getting sour from sitting out too long. I feel like I should offer a ride to someone but I don't really want to so I have not made any offers yet.

GAAAH -I don't have the personality to handle this boss

I am getting stress headaches, feel the need to flee the office for a walk at least ONCE a day, sometimes more. Too much stress for only 25% salary coverage. I would have to quit rather than be 100% his employee or I'd develop an ulcer or something. I have known that my 2 main supervisors are great to work for but boy am I getting a life lesson in just HOW great. Please god let funding there increase or my life takes a completely different direction; I cannot handle more than till about the end of the year split 3 ways and one of those ways making me ill part of the time.

Shade is looking pretty good. I have not kept close tabs on the stocking up after the tough 50. I'm such a negligent owner I didn't have ice OR poultice along last weekend. I had some ice gel packs in the home freezer that didn't get packed to the trailer and my poultice never got transferred from my little trailer. I looked for centered riding clinics or instructors and there are none listed for Denver. Closest listed right now is Steamboat Springs or an instructor in Guffey. I hope a clinic will come up that I can attend this winter. I will have to find off horse ways to work on my crookedness in the meantime. I am so lazy this week, I don't know that I will get on either Razz or Grey Moun at all. Sigh they need some work so I should force myself, plus I need some saddle time for my sanity.

I am feeling like a fifth wheel that they are trying to avoid with my various few riding buddies, and I cannot understand why --I haven't shown up way late at every trailhead meeting-at least not with folks this year, I don't insist on always being in front or always behind and using the horse in front for brakes or other things that bug me when I ride .... I must have habits that are annoying and I don't even know what they are to work on them, waaah waah waah. and I have to stop phoning D quite so much, I think she's getting a bit tired of me, not to the point of skipping answering but I've been taking too much of her time lately.
Mom is sick AGAIN. I am again thinking uncharitable thoughts that she is subconsciously making herself sick because she starting thinking she might be able to try to work again and folks were asking her when/whether she was practicing again. Its totally foolish --HER president and DNC party effed the country over with the 'health care reform' bill and I strongly suspect that insurance companies that used to cover therapy will soon stop because they will have to cut every thing they possibly can to counter balance all the mandates they are looking at. If I were a good person I would find a nice way to tell her that she should not worry about practicing unless she gets to doing so well she is willing to do it pro bono.

Ugh ride pictures show me heavy on the right

Guess I have a lot of work to get THAT fixed. Need to arrange lessons or more centered riding clinics.
pic?

SHE DID IT!

Shade completed the Mountain Mettle ride saturday, AND looks fine to ride friday July 2 unless some sht happens crops up. My air mattress was comfy to sleep on. I was up about every 90 minutes friday night, mainly to pee, and a couple times checking on Shade after hearing something that woke me up, but was able to quickly doze off when I crawled back into bed. I think I will try to get a step stool before the ride in WY. Saturday after riding all day it felt like taking the big step up to my couch cushion to climb into the nose was barely doable. I did not get off and walk down many hills so that is something I expect I'll do different in WY. The Mountain Mettle hills were long and gradual, excuse excuse and I just stayed in the saddle. Shade does not show any signs of back soreness so hopefully the saddle tweak and attempts to improve my riding have helped much.

I am just SO proud of my bay girl. Shade wanted to ride with the buddy that was next to us overnight and I kind of wanted to try also as Lynn is an excellent horsewoman but they were going too fast for Shades conditioning and/or ability, Shade was huffing and puffing trying to keep up. I pulled back and we matched up with Joe Long and a junior he was sponsoring and those 3 horses worked well together. Shade mainly got to just fall in line but she led a few times. Towards the end of the 2nd loop we caught up to someone who was riding just a bit slower and I pulled back with her, I felt like Joe was pushing the pace a bit faster than was ideal for Shade and we had great plenty of time to complete. So Shade got to do the last loop with a stallion. Ramone. Totally did not live up to that name, I thought he was a gelding until his owner/rider said something. Very very very well-mannered boy and OMG talk about drool worthy. Shade was not overcome by hormones thank goodness. She had one stretch where she was hogging trail when she was in front. Perhaps she was sticking her tail at Ramone to flirt but it seemed more like she just wanted to stay in front and was blocking him from any possibility of passing. I corrected that at least 60%, I was not 100% in alert at that point so a few times I didn't react instantly. Later when the trail wound through brush Shade was very happy to let the big brave stallion clear the path in front LOL. She hates to be in front when she can't see a good long ways down the trail.

TGIT --and I'm taking PTO tomorrow

And I really need this week to be over. Nothing disastrous, but it just seems to have dragged on and on already. I don't like the 'management' style of my new supervisor. I was hoping it would be easier with him on travel, but the skype calls are worse than being asked for spur of the moment meetings in his office. However the project I'm doing for him currently has great synergy with my two main projects so that is a big compensation. And my pet project with the other group was clobbered --Again, by someone modifying a common input template file and not letting me know to modify my script to keep in step --I am not wild about having just that one common template after being twice burned by it.

Monday a toilet in the buildings bathroom was clogged. Yuck, worse is that apparently no one called maintainence and the door was latched so the janitor couldn't deal with it --she probably had access to a plunger. Tuesday it was draining some, but very slowly so I took a coin and got the door open and flushed it every time I used the bathroom and eventually it got all the crap down, I put in some dish soap in the evening. Janitor got the gross residue higher in the bowl cleaned that night yay. Well they are issued rubber or nitrile gloves and I sure didn't have any. I may buy one of those disposable toilet brush things to keep in the office in case of repeat. I just could not ignore that nasty mess all day. Today I whiffed on calling maintainence myself and emailed the admins asking if they would. I'm on PTO tomorrow.

Shade was supposed to have a chiro appointment today but Dr T had written it for next week. Well she does not seem off, and now she is set to get adjusted between the big rides, I was thinking I should schedule him to come again next week but I don't think not getting adjusted before saturday will make or break the ride. I am nervous about this ride, I don't want to step down to the LD but I wish I had trained harder this spring. Of course I always have first 50 of season jitters, but Shade had some cramping towards the end of the season last year, and I want to ride all 3 days at the ride in two weeks so I had better manage to ride well and wisely.

And my leg seems off the last couple of weeks. Sometimes when I ride or sit the muscle(s)? at the top of my thigh in front feel all stiff, almost spasmy. Well I'm making that a word LOL. And if I don't remember to take home my string cheese that I bought and forgot for the memorial weekend ride that I spent at home after ruining my p/u injectors I am going to be annoyed. I should buy me some beer too, and should plug in my fridge and put some things in to pre-chill. I want my V-8 this weekend, and must make some lemon-ade elytes to send to away check. My mix will keep even if it gets warms and lemonade drinks ok even warm. LOL, my head is not too much on work although I have some stuff going that I'm waiting to finish before doing the next step and not JUST being a sluff off.

That was a weird coyote encounter.

Rode by a coyote today with Ole-the dog enjoying his 'walk' running around in the prairie dog colony on the other side of the coyote. Coyote barked at me, I shrug, thinking maybe has pups and is a bit extra territorial. Good sized though so maybe it was a male, especially since it then proceeded to tail us --mostly Ole I suppose, to the irrigation ditch. Ole has a dip while I watch to make sure the coyote doesn't decide it has advantage now and can attack. Ole chases coyote, coyote runs, Ole turns to head back to me, coyote follows him. Lather rinse repeat --over half a dozen times. Finally as I'm heading home and Ole is coming good I turn back and see the coyote watching someone else riding along with 2 dogs which I couldn't tell if they were good sized dogs or might be at risk so I turn around again to let the gal know about the coyote. Up closer the dogs were a golden lab and a cocker spaniel looking dog so they probably would have been fine. So I think Shade covered well over 4 miles doing our little 3 mile lollypop loop just to make sure she is ok before the saturday ride. I told dad if he wanted to hunt coyotes he should ride Razz that loop.

hmmm, I got to thinking while taking my save my sanity walk this afternoon that perhaps the coyote was just bored and was playing a game with Ole. It still makes me edgy, sure they are somewhat related to dogs, but they should have a healthy fear of humans IMO. Perhaps I'll have to ride Grey Moun that way with a 'noise maker' sometime.

I put the air mattress in my trailer today and filled it

Hmm, I may end up pulling it out to be a spare for home use. I should have gotten no more than a full, rather than getting queen size. Just because it was a 'queen' size before (minus taper for the nose). Also I may try to find one sold to go in a vehicle that is a bit shorter. This one is touching both windows. I was careful not to get an extra tall version like they sell for home floor use but its still 8 inches instead of the 4 that the original foam mattress was. With the mattress blocking a good 1/2 of the windows and being 4" closer to the trailer roof its a bit of a cave effect. I don't think it will be claustrophobically tight for sleeping but it was not so much $$, so I wont worry about it if I decide I need to order a new one. I will be sleeping or tossing on this one friday night so I'll decide after that whether to order a smaller size right away to create more room.

The horses are enjoying grass today. I kept them off the 'pasture' bit F-M so they wouldn't tear up wet ground too much and the grass where they have been grazing the most would have some chance to regrow.

3.5 miles sunday and 5.5 miles this morning

It is NOT the 'ride about 20 miles' in 1 or 2 days about a week before the ride as a final bit of good conditioning. But such is life. I think I have been more diligent about riding Shade than the last couple of years and she does have a good base at 13 years old and 21 50 mile completions. If the mountain kicks her butt I won't argue with the vet about whether to pull. If it is kicking my butt badly and Shade seems a 'little off' I will Rider Option pull. If we complete but it takes too much out of Shade and she cant do 3-days at Shamrock it will be just a typical Shamrock for me of riding only 1 or 2 days. Grey was pulled twice at that ride before I completed it and Shade was OT on one of her first few LD's there. But its a favorite ride. The setting is so peaceful, the RM gets cool stuff for completion awards, the vet is great and there is usually some yahoo or snake excitement or something so the scatterbrained redhead who muddles through --or not is probably not a top campfire story. I loff endurance because the people who do it are widely varied and very tolerant of different strokes unless its a 'ride the horse into the ground' to feed my ego style.

I'm not riding --sigh

I am in Boulder, grr, the SV internet wouldn't work this morning. And it was raining --varied from drizzle to light but was never off so I decided I could just go in and work at the office. But I don't want to be working. I did not even want to get up this morning, My back was insisting I get up but I would have done some stretches and gone back to bed if I didn't have to feed the horses, try to get to work web sites to perform my on-call duty etc. Oh I hope the internet works tomorrow and I get a patch of dry sky to get in a ride. If I could get around 12 tomorrow and 8 monday I think that would be a fairly good workout to set Shade up to feel ready to take on the mountain next saturday.

5 miles today

so with 3 miles yesterday and 1 possibly 2 miles tuesday from farting around in the paddock + 19 mountain miles on sunday -- I have still barely hit 30 miles on the week. I guess I should ride again tomorrow. It sure seemed easier to get in training miles back when I was semi-serious about the sport with Grey Moun. I probably rode very flat training miles and have been better this year at getting Shade to some hills so that helps a bit. Shade looks good, the rest of the horses (other than AJ) are getting a bit fat but they don't look like 7's yet on the bcs scale (1-9) 1 is starving, 9 is grossly obese. Shade is probably a 5.

I tied Sadie and left her while I did my loop on Shade this morning. It is good mental training for her but I will have to work in tying practice when I am dinking around the yard. I was too nervous being gone. It would take the decibel level of a medium caliber gunfight for the parents to become aware of anything and they were not even up when I left. Lazy bum's sleeping in past 9:30 every stinking day. I really should explore trying to find a living situation where I would be pulled along to keep up with someone with some ambition. But can't be too snarky, dad has been trying to replace the motor for big fan the ducts into the attic. Tuesday it wouldn't go, last night it was spinning backwards. I hope the fan blades and shaft are in true enough alignment that it wont strain the new motor. We have been limping it along for years, unsticking the blades with a broom handle before turning on the fan and it would run for around 30 minutes depending on how hot it was and then quit.

I have home internet again

and just in time. I cannot browse at work the last couple days without either browser hanging out and making me use the force quit option. Perhaps god or fate if you prefer has decided to help me stick to work tasks. I rode Shade this morning for just a little bit. Now if I had known that the tech was not going to show up until noon I could have taken her down the road quite a ways. Oh well. We free-longed Sadie. I had this thought of chasing Sadie around to get her some exercise but she just kept circling. Oh well that worked somewhat.

well we had a nice breeze saturday for hauling hay...

And she had sold out her field and would not have had hay to pickup today, plus it got hot pretty darn early so I guess things worked out pretty well. We should have stopped after getting the first trailer load though. It was such nice hay and Pam's mom had not charged us the extra for the certified hay and she fills out a form. So we went back for a second load. The bales that made it home from that load are going to be rather pricey per bale. We were all tired and hungry and when the trailer whipped around for bit heading home (it was dark because we had hung out chatting with Pam) there was various whining about 'what the heck, why isn't this pulling nice' but we just kept on. When I got the gate when we got home I noticed we had lost several bales of hay! Dad straps his loads pretty securely so that was a puzzle. Well next morning I noticed that a tire on the flat bed was ruined. I bet it blew out and that caused the trailer fish-tailing and the fish-tailing flung some bales off and caused the strap to come loose. So we payed for 90 bales and got less than 80 home, plus the tire is completely ruined and I don't know about the rim.

Sunday I rode Shade from swallowtail parking lot. It was hot in the lot but pretty decent as soon as we climbed to the first ridge. The parking lot was almost abandoned, I was wondering if there was something I should know keeping folks away. The parking lot floods and there was still a muddy patch on its north end but it would have been fine for 2-3 horse trailers and several cars. I guess everyone else drove up to the national forest to escape the heat, I wasn't sure how to get there and wanted to stick with the trailhead I knew just going by myself. We went about 9.5 miles out and then turned back. Shade was content to take it easy coming back and it actually took us longer than going out, much to my surprise, even though I had asked her to keep a pretty decent pace heading out. But no other horses hurrying back to keep up with and no buddy back at the trailer Shade just took it easy. She did not seem overly tired but I am a bit concerned that going 50 miles on the 19th is going to be a tough haul. I guess I'll find out if I can ride wisely enough to get a horse through a tough ride.

waah, nobody wants to ride with me

Can I get some cheese to go with this fine whine? I even started early, emailing Brigitt on tuesday and calling (leaving message) today since she hasn't emailed back but I don't know what kind of internet access she has == and calling Lynn yesterday morning and again in the evening. Did Lynn and group go to the endurance ride I bragged up and missed getting to myself LOUSY p/u breakdown and had a bad experience? Have I done something inconsiderate and they don't want to ride together ever again?

This is why I am so bad about making riding plans, I get so paranoid when I don't get any response so I avoid contact until I've set up an excuse like "well stupid me, I waited too late to contact anyone" etc etc. I guess I will haul hay tomorrow with dad, darn it I so SO wanted to escape for the weekend and just make dad get up earlier and haul hay one morning before work --we are not getting that much so I could have squeezed that in. I didn't ride yesterday or this morning, I was counting on getting a big ride this weekend to make up for that.

MUST generate stupid plots

gaah I hate making plots, the only thing worse is trying to decide what if any meaning to assign to them. My mind is mush already and have to generate several more plots.

LOL, wishful thinking math yesterday

My repair is about 20% of what I paid last year. Well at least that means that I did not pay quite as much last year. Yeah that makes me feel all better ....... well maybe a teeny tiny little bit better.

I rode 5 miles today, rode my 2 mile loop that goes up/down a good sandhill east-west and north-south clockwise and then counter-clockwise. I must go ride Indian creek or someplace this weekend. IC would be good cuz its supossed to be hot so the elevation will be really nice.

ouch: My pickup just got 15% more expensive

Ouch, not horrible ouch but still ouch. Oh and the service guy was too funny. " Your fuel pump was low in pressure and the low pressure damaged all 8 injectors. Its 36 46 to replace pump and injectors." Me "3000 600 46?" I knew it had to be because there is no way it could be only $36.46. Ah well, at least I have funds in the bank to cover it. I did not ask if I caused more damage limping home on friday after the pickup started stalling I don't want to know right now. If there is a next time that I feel any stuttering, which the truck has done intermittantly since at least the hunting trip - and I had been dismissing as having a shimmy with any uneven road surface, I will take it in and have the fuel pump checked out right away. I am a bit relieved that they did not announce "the fuel was crap at some point and that killed the pump or injectors"

Oh I did not make my endurance ride; I topped off the fuel tank in Lochbouie, pulled onto the interstate and did not have power to accelerate to highway speeds, then the pickup died; I was not even much on the shoulder so I tried to start it again and it did start and I ran on the shoulder, than the exit ramp then decided to limp home rather than have to wait for a tow vehicle that could deal with the BAT. So I rode for a grand total of 22 miles spread over 3 days this weekend rather than driving to sompleace scenic and entering a 50 at a formal ride. I will probably paste that in from my laptop when I finally get home internet restored on thursday. I really depend too much on the internet, but survived the weekend, got some fencing projects done, hauled some manure for mom's garden, we sent dad off to enjoy a charity motorcycle ride on saturday and sunday. He had fun but slept 1/2 the day monday.