Gulp, our orbit scientist is leaving

I knew she would leave in the next year.  I just figured it would more likely not happen until 2-3 months from now and that there would be 4 weeks notice rather than 2 weeks so the handoff of what she developed would not be so rushed.

The good news is that I drove over 450 miles to northern Wyoming and rode 100 miles this weekend.  Tanza did well.  Our pace was slower than what I'd like to be at but I haven't done enough conditioning and on day 1 it was ride with folks who were going to go over 8 mph or stay with the slower group.   Slower group ended up with 6 mph pace, rather than 6.5 to 7 I would have liked.  Oh well.   On Day 2 Tanza stuck with young riders who were doing 8 mph pace on the first loop.  Actually he insisted on passing them towards end of loop.   And then starting loop 2 he was getting tired and as they started out cantering and passed us he was "meh, I don't need to stay with them."   I don't love that our pace slowed down so much that overall ride pace was only 6 mph by the end of the day but he was on day 2 and I have not done enough conditioning miles on him to push him past the pace he was volunteering.  

I enjoyed the weekend overall,  a few minutes here and there of feeling over heated and over tired but I remembered to enjoy being on the trail on my awesome horse most of the time.   Met a gal on my route and had the wonderful blessing of having her drive a good part of the way from where I picked her up on Friday (I only drove 90 miles after her place and she drove the rest which was about 180 miles)  and she drove around 120 miles on Sunday which made things much easier for me.  She also crewed for me a bit on Sunday,  she was hurting from riding on Saturday and just volunteered in camp on Sunday.  

That gave her lots of time to visit with the other folks attending the ride and she had a great weekend and is excited to get into the sport here.   She used to live in upstate New York, moving, having a saddle fit issue that ended up with getting bucked off and a back injury had resulted in her not riding much since moving to WY a couple years ago.  So I helped promote the local rides to a new person, yay me.   She recently got a rescue Akhal Teke horse and one of the gals at the ride is a huge lover and promoter of the AT breed so that was a nice side benefit for S too.