I arrived on Thursday around 11pm. Judy and her husband Dennis met me at baggage claim, we loaded my bags and then we were off to their house. About halfway to the house I realized I had left my camera bag on the plane :( Inside was my brand new camera that I purchased specifically for this trip. Ugh. I hate when I do stupid things! We were not about to turn around and go back so I waited until I got to their house and then tried to reach customer service for Southwest Airlines. Guess what? When you leave something on one of their planes you CANNOT talk to a real person. Evidently they feel that it's acceptable for you to just go online and fill out a lost item report and just hope to hear something back from them. NOT ACCEPTABLE. I filled out the stupid form and still haven't heard anything. I have complained on Facebook and Twitter to no avail. Likely, I will not get my camera back. I'm mostly mad at myself for leaving the camera on the plane. I would just feel better speaking to a person. It's sad that there aren't any honest people around anymore that will return things they find.
Friday morning we got up and Judy showed me around their property. She and Dennis have 10 Arabian horses, 2 goats (Manny & Chico), 2 dogs (Anderson & Vida) and 2 cats (Dexter & Dino). She introduced me to "Nick" who was to be my mount for the endurance ride on Saturday. He is a cute little 9 year old chestnut Arabian gelding standing only 14.1hh. Good thing I'm short and don't need a tall horse :) He had been to a few endurance rides this summer already so he was conditioned well for this ride (unlike me). Around noon we got Willy (Dennis's horse), Tre (Judy's horse) and Nick (my horse) loaded up in the trailer and took off for Lake Sonoma. It was about a 3 hour drive northwest from Brentwood through wine country. Really beautiful!
After arriving at Lake Sonoma we unloaded the horses, got them vetted (they have to pass a vet check or you can't start the race) and then we saddled them up so Nick and I could get acquainted and so we could check the condition of the trails. It had rained there earlier in the day and we worried about the trails being slick and muddy (which they were in some some spots). We rode about 6 miles. Nick and I got along great! He is a super nice horse who knows his job and is ready to do it. We got back to the trailer and got the horses their dinner. We then got ourselves some dinner and made a plan for the morning. The 50 mile ride was to start at 7:30am. I slept in the backseat of the truck since the living quarters in the horse trailer only sleeps two. Not the most comfortable place I've ever slept but not the worst either. On the bright side, when I woke up at 5:30am, it was pitch black outside and when I looked up in the sky it was full of stars! The beauty of it brought me to tears. It's easy to miss those little things when you live in the city.
It was definitely a bit colder than I expected it to be but overall the weather was amazing. The ride went off without a hitch. The course was beautiful; a lot of up and down; some through the trees; some out in the open; a wooden bridge crossing. Nick's forte is hills so we did a lot of galloping up the hills. That was super fun! The horses has to pass a vet check at two points during the ride and one after the ride. All of our horses passed with flying colors. Dennis ended up placing 4th overall with Willy. He was actually in 2nd place for a while but took a wrong turn near the end of the ride that cost him some time. Judy and Tre were 12th and Nick and I were 13th. I believe there was somewhere around 50 horses/riders competing in the 50 miler and another 45 or 50 competing in the Limited Distance 30 miler. Not a bad finish for me considering I haven't ridden virtually at all in the past 4 years. Trotting and cantering for 50 miles is tough. We had to take it a bit easy on the downhill portions of our last loop because my knees were killing me.....
After the ride we loaded the horses up and made our way home stopping briefly at In & Out Burger to treat ourselves :) Arrived home around 6:30pm and bedded the horses down for the night. Then I took the best shower ever!
I will be hanging out with Judy and Dennis until November 9th and then I leave for Africa. We plan to go wine tasting and to take a trip to Alcatraz while I'm here (among other things).
Take care everyone and I will post more later.
"A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves--strong, powerful, beautiful--and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence".
 |
| Nick and I after the ride |
 |
| Nick getting some food and water at the one hour hold |
 |
| Nick before the start |
 |
| Judy and Tre |
 |
| Beautiful scenery from horseback |
 |
| Me and some scenery :) |
 |
| Judy and Tre; Dennis and Willy |
 |
| The view from a horse |
No comments:
Post a Comment