A Ride on the Wildside

At some point hopefully I will catch up on all that is going on around here.  I went back and read some of my older posts and realized that there was more that I wanted to add/say but I just never got there!!

So anyway – my best friend is here visiting from PA this month and it just so happened that the day after she got here, there was a benefit ride/run/walk/bike out at the Great Pond Mountain Land Trust.  My good friend Sharon was manning one of the aide stations and it promised to be a great day.  The trees were gorgeous shades of yellow and orange and although it was overcast, the temperature was mild and there was no breeze to start with!  The basic idea of the ride was a gate to gate ride which covers 8.8 miles.  There were 4 aide stations along the way and at the start each person was given a card, if you got 4 punches your card got put into a drawing at the end of the day.  Sharon also did a couple of raffles at her station – Meg nor I won anything but we had a blast!    There are plenty of side trails off the main road that goes thru the wildlands but we stuck to the main strip.  We met several other riders and there were A LOT of bikes and walkers as well.  Some of the bikes were not very considerate of the horses, whizzing past without saying anything.    The first bikes we encountered were at Sharon’s station, we were standing still and when I saw the bike I hopped off Buddy.  Given his traffic issue I figured he’d totally flip over bicycles.  Not so.  The goober couldn’t have cared less about those bikes.  Buddy was phenomenal, I guess I probably shouldn’t have expected anything less from him, he is by far the most level headed horse we have!  Meg rode Zandy and she proved yet again what a great girl she is!!  This was her first ride since she had the abscess and although she did seem a little ouchy trotting downhill she was completely sound on the flat and going uphill – I think the downhill ouchies had a lot to do with the actual “cut” where the abscess burst thru than anything else.  On the way out, Buddy had plenty of pep.  On our way back though, he was acting like I’d just ridden him 1000 miles non stop.  Nevermind the fact that we’ve gone out and ridden two and three times the distance/time that we’d spent riding on this day at least once a month all summer long.  It didn’t occur to me until the end of the ride that we have always come in from the South Gate so climbing the hill that was the mid point of this particular ride would have been the end of our “normal” rides so he was dragging his feet like crazy not wanting to go any further when we turned around.  Zandy knew that we were headed back to the trailer though and she kept leaving us behind!!  All in all it was a great day, it was nice to be riding with Meg again although I do wish that Sharon and Zephyr had been able to ride with us!!  We made it back to the trailer and the horses loaded right up and we headed home.  I did have a little difficulty walking for the next couple days – my hips have really been bothering me lately and I think because we did a good bit of trotting and even a little cantering my body was protesting!!