Happy summer days

-

Had a good ride in sector 3 and got some new flying mane pictures on 17 and N trails. The scent of the wildflowers was a delight, and we got surprised by a deer. 🦌 











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Riding English or Western? Which is safer?

-
Image
We had another trail accident this week, the fourth this season, that required an ambulance. All four accidents involved solo riders in English tack. Our club facebook posts were all atwitter about the safety of English vs Western tack. As an amateur rider having spent equal amounts of time in both types of tack under similar conditions, I feel reasonably confident in my perspective. Western tack is safer.  The saddle fork on a western saddle (also on an iberian, australian, and some endurance saddles) blocks a certain amount of the centrifugal force that comes with a sharp spook, hard buck, abrupt turn or stumbling horse. The stirrup leathers provide more stability and it is more difficult to get your foot caught in the stirrup during a fall. However, the bulk and heft of a western saddle can also make a wreck worse, such as riders getting bucked onto the neck and caught in front of the saddle, horse and rider falling and getting pinned under the saddle, boot stuck in stirrup with...
Read more

Final steps

-
Image
Finished my last 5 hour monster ride today, and am now in the last days of prep and packing. Currently quarantining from my husband that has some undisclosed malaise that appeared today and is testing negative for covid …but maybe food poisoning? 🤷‍♀️  Im feeling pretty good about my prep and figure Im “as good as Im gonna get”. Still anxious though, but more for the general hardship of sleeping without my favourite pillow and of course the other niceties like toilets and showers. Anyhoo. Im also curious about the other riders and how they have prepared or not for this packtrip. And if it even matters. We will know in just a few days, unless the airlines decide to do some funny business like cancelling flights. Nothing surprises me anymore. Meanwhile, the MVP award goes to Q that endured my nonsense, and was still happy to see me every time. He even figured out how to help me out as I practiced scrambling onboard from the ground. He gets a nice 10 day vacation as a reward. Love hi...
Read more

Soul soothing after a rough week

-
Image
I have been knee deep in a heavy workload this last week as we finished up the last Masters presentations, coordinated grading and enabled these bright young professionals to graduate. And in five weeks we start allover again with a new cohort. Much planning and organizing is going on, zoom-style. So its been a rather sparse week for riding. But after a couple of days busy at work I finally had a sliver of time to head to the barn. I tacked up, mounted up, and headed for the trailhead some 100 feet from the mounting block. I can’t express how much joy I took in knowing I had a reliable horse to saunter down the trails without much care in the world (despite the trail accident of 2 days ago). It was so enjoyable that for the first few minutes as I thought through my trail plan, I considered just doing a short quiet walk on the buckle and just chill. Ha ha ha. Five minutes later I was jogging down the trail with some really exceptional lopes where Q is learning to stay in rhythm ...
Read more

The Complexity of Trail Access

-
Image
Annual Trail Rides: 34/200 A century ago, local farmers in our town west of Montreal were tired of the sand left in the spring thaw that clogged the streets and ditches and created floods and ice dams to prevent passing. So the farmers got together with the town and the province to fund a reforestation project which we would later call the "Nursery". The reforestation would cover most of the old sand dunes that had been left behind many millennia ago by a retreating glacier. The old sand dunes were a popular place for local families to go for a picnic, or some fishing in some of the creeks and lakes that popped up from underground springs. Our history books show groups of families with their farmhorses pulling big sleighs or wagons filled with children. But it was time to stop the constant erosion the sand dunes were having on the local farms. So in the 1930s began the massive reforestation project. At the time, the population of this town was under a thousand, as there was o...
Read more

Prague, dark and moody

-
Image
When asked what I thought about Prague I always answered the same thing : dark. My last trip here dates to almost twenty years ago, in a cold November week where I spent most of my time drinking hot mulled wine in the old town square avoiding gypsies. Tales of ghosts, hidden passageways and underground tunnels, the stark period of the iron curtain, torture museums, castle dungeons ... it was all dark. Tyn Church in the iconic town square A view down the Vltava River A view up the Vltava River towards Prague Castle (from Vysehrad Castle) A view down the Vltava River from the Vysehrad Castle. Its a windy sailing day. Fast forward in time and there are some differences but Prague is still moody. Tourists are abundant and things that used to be free are now being charged at every opportunity. We are struggling with all the currency we are handling and their respective conversions (Hungarian forint, Euros, Polish Zlotis, Czech Crowns ... and soon British pounds) ...
Read more