I still love this horse but he had 20 seconds of monster this weekend.

My ankles today

His legs today

No fill in his legs after doing about 106 miles (that were only counted for 100, grrr) over two days and no poultice or wrapping after the 2nd day cuz of my bruised ankle.


Was long hot days of riding.   The trails had a good bit of rock on them and between B and her horse not ready to go very fast on Saturday and it was hot, and then Tanza having a stupid meltdown on day 2 about 14 miles into the ride and and it was hot we took over 11 hours with the two 45 minute holds to complete the roughly 53 miles each day.   Even if the rides had been sanctioned as the 55 mile rides they should have been or the distance reduced to be just 50 miles or a wee bit less like almost all other rides do the pacing was slower than at Medicine Lodge.

But we did gitRdone.    Tanza's meltdown happened when I had noticed my camelback was dripping water down my back and butt as we came into a water tank with volunteers and ham radio guy.  I found the leaking plastic bottle and got it handed to a volunteer eventually, but the old timer I was riding with was not aware that I was dinking and had started to leave.  Tanza got his fear of being left behind on and started trotting to catch up to him and then freaked out about the camelback flopping and making extra noise as I had it twisted around to my front.   Tanza was crow-hopping and I lost all brakes and steering and he was headed right for the wire gate that was just left lying only 90 degrees open since they intended to close it after the riders were done.   I came off and Tanza, thank GOD, swerved away from stepping in the wire gate trap but came down on my ankle with a hind foot.

But it did not hurt too bad for riding, since it was only a fraction of my weight on it as I was posting and B, that hauled to the ride with me and was not riding on Sunday trotted Tanza at the vet checks and helped me out A LOT, so we were able to complete.   I don't know if I will ever go back to that ride.  I don't like rides being longer than sanctioned for; and this one also had a 3 mile lollypop stick in and out of basecamp, with like a mile of rocks over the 3 miles  for all 3 loops of the 50 as well as having a lot of rock overall and not really being scenic enough to justify a lot of rock IMO.    If you can't avoid a lollypop its better to try to just have two longer loops or something but I don't know that they were really that limited in trail options.    Also on day two we were riding new loops and the markings were confusing.   I was lucky to be with the old timer or I would have turned the wrong way and done an extra 5 miles on Sunday, but he had studied the map and followed that rather than confusing markings.  4 gals riding together just a bit behind us were not so lucky and did do the extra miles; 3 were able to complete in the 50 mile 12 hour window anyway.

Last night I fed the horses late, giving them grain because Shade and Lady needed their herbal powders for their arthritis even though Tanza did not Need to replace calories burned in any big hurry, he looked good and was trotting out with a big floaty gait once we got home.  My dad was "I would have fed hay for you"   then this morning I tell him he will have to clean Tommy's (cat) litter box downstairs for a few days so I don't have to go up and down extra stairs " So you did not clean it last night?"   NO I sure did not.

And at work I am trying to get the stinking senior software engineer, who is now going more science track, but is still the highest level software position level at my work to fix his stinking code after he put in an option for the next gen. satellite missions that is breaking processing for our old missions.  I get so disgusted with him NEVER, EVER running a small test batch on a couple days of old mission data with standard configurations that we use to make sure his changes put in place for the new mission(s) are not breaking the old processing.   Testing backwards compatibility is software engineering 101, and it is not so time intensive that he needs to just hand that off to a junior person in our tiny little group.  It takes like 5 minutes to launch a test batch job;  it only gets time intensive if a bug was introduced and has to be corrected and of course he should be able to fix any bugs way faster than anyone else when he is the one making changes.   Snotty lazy twerp.

Wow I love my red gelding

He was mostly my "rare gem" this weekend.    Was NOT going to take his e-lytes in the morning and then didn't drink OR eat on trail the first 25 miles but I got him dosed with a small amount at the hold and he drank well on the next 15 miles and was grabbing grass as we finished the loop.   He didn't eat as well as I would like at camp, and has been on the clay all winter and not getting too many elytes or any that are not supposed to be slow release or buffered to be easy on his tummy.   So perhaps he just has to relearn that he needs to eat at rides.   He did pretty much keep eating, just was not tucking into his mashes nor hoovering more hay than normal.  He always eats a bit less hay then I would think he'd want at rides but I figure its because of getting grass and mashes.   Maybe he got more grass than I realized.   His gut sounds were good so think I need to not be in panic mode.

We finished in a bit over 6 hours of riding time.   Really great for not conditioning much all winter but the ride was a bit short so its not faster than 8 MPH.  I would like to get to 8 MPH or a bit faster as a normal pace with him this year because I want to try a 100 and need to be finishing the first 50 miles more quickly to have time for slowing down because night, hungry! after 50 miles or so and etc.    So if Tanza stays sound and the creek don't rise I plan to work on finishing faster than last year and doing more 2 and 3 day rides this year and then hopefully aim for an easy 100 late in the season and do the tough 100 that I've always wanted to do next year.

Charity ride went well

I rode with the "50 miler"  group.   I have learned from the last two years that there is no actual 50 miles of riding.    This year was pretty good.  It was an out and back that felt like it was 25 miles or a bit more and L set a pretty fast pace.   After the first 9 miles or so Tanza decided he didn't need to keep up.   The trail was not marked but soft road shoulder was showing good hoof prints so I figured we'd be fine even if it was a loop trail and I thought they had said it was an out and back so I talked the other straggler whose horse was really not wanting to try to catch up into easing off the pace.

The only bad thing with not keeping up is we ended up having two trains that we had to wait on because we had to cross the tracks.    Tanza was nervous with the first one.  It was coming up behind us so I turned him toward it and then let him do an animated trot the wrong way as the long old train went by for over a minute.   He is a good boy, but when he has nervous energy like that I figure its best to just direct it forward to make sure I don't get up and down or spins that might have me on the ground.

The day got hot and Tanza was feeling hot and tired the last couple of miles back to camp but overall he handled it so well that I think I will do a 50 this weekend instead of 2 LDs.  I am so very blessed to have this horse.   I only felt like I was hot and tired at the ride location but when I got home I was horribly stuffed up.   Took some sudafed and just ate snacky foods and went to bed early rather than cooking for dad or getting any stuff done.

I took mom's Wintec AP saddle, some AP fleece pads and some riding breeches for their silent auction.  The ride organizer bought the breeches at least but I bought some leg quilts because its so hard to find quilts in 12" instead of taller, plus a cute planter for house plant and a leather frame.   The frame is cute but its made with a plastic that is not super clear instead of glass so I will probably try to replace that -- hopefully I don't have that as a "should do this" for years.