It was not the most productive conditioning weekend. Better than my normal at home riding has been but not as much good work as I had hoped for.
Saturday I showed up and they were all brrrr, not wanting to ride but the mom and daughter that had picked out the trails did saddle up and ride with me. Daughter got cold and was taking a break and mom rode out to catch up to the others who were doing a slow ride so we could ride together to check out other trail and ask the ditch rider to open a locked gate. I should have gone with her to catch them but passed because of not wanting to hold her up while I got mounted. Ugh for being old and fat.
After talking to the ditch rider when we went out together we barely rode any farther so it was probably less than 10 miles total that I did on Tanza. Better than 4 or 5 at home but not the 12-15 I had hoped to get in.
I woke up real early on Sunday and went back for the organized event to ride the 25. That was going fairly well until about 8 or 9 miles in they went in the lake where it was a nice shoreline. Tanza did want to join in getting a drink and got brave and stepped in the water. But there were tree branches right at the water line and after he had stepped over he had a "SOMETHING touched my leg" moment and went leaping into the lake. I came off on the second leaping stride and had a moment of panic when water was not just the 18 inches or less I expected and my face went under as I was yelling whoa for Tanza. It was only 30 inches so I was able to just scramble to my feet and wade out but in less than 60F weather with a good breeze the ride leader said I would get hypothermia if I rode on so I ended up getting a ride back to the base camp area in a Blazer to get my trailer and hauling Tanza home. I had a dry Tshirt and polar fleece vest and blankets and someone lent me a wool serape cape so I was not too cold back at camp.
The best thing out of that day was buying an endurance saddle that I think will fit Lady very well at the silent auction they had to raise extra money for the Hope Held by a Horse charity.
I've been using the Wintec on Sadie this spring and liking it. I think the narrow tree saddle I bought actually will fit Lady even better than the Wintec did so now I can send her to Golden with a good saddle and keep both the Wintec and my treeless in case I want to swap back to it at home. I could have sent Lady with no saddle or the barrel saddle K has using on Lady but the barrel saddle doesn't fit Lady real well, requires an extra thick pad to not hit her withers + she might use it on Razz this summer when Lady is gone. And I'm more comfortable with them not just using the bareback pad or a makeshift saddle on Lady, a well fitting saddle will be safer for her and anyone riding her.
The work week was a bear with lots of morning meetings + raining on Monday so my only weekday morning ride was a quick 3 miles on Sadie on Friday. I am getting over being wowed by the new guys' smarts. That is a good thing overall but there is always the letdown as I realize the person I had put on a pedestal has great plenty of faults and is not going to have any brilliant solutions to difficult problems that I just couldn't see because of not being as smart.
I am pecking away on doing some 'estate planning' They rolled out a new app at work to show off our great benefits and it did give me a shortcut to seeing what my work insurance was. It is enough that I can skip buying another policy so that is nice. I think I can set up the accidental death policy benefit to go to DL who agreed to be the 'god parent' for Lady and Sadie and that will cover most of the costs of caring for them if I die in a car crash or break my neck coming off a horse. I need to think about how much of retirement benefit to give to the siblings vs charity.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment