My editor, Patrick, read this through for me and says it gets better as you go along, so hopefully readers will get that far. 

Patrick also said that it reads like I was having a miserable time. Nooo! Not! I was having a great time, it might just not have sounded that way, what with being bruised, exhausted and frozen for most of the four days. You don't understand. That's fun. Honest it is. Just remember that when you're reading my story, OK?

Well, here we are, over a week after DVE, and my legs still feel kinda weird - covered in rough, dry skin from constant abrasion, battering, and friction. I was expecting to feel a bit crumpled around the edges after four days of riding, but wasn't expecting to feel that way within the first 20 miles or so. In actuality, as the days went on, the pain lessened and either my legs went numb from constant insult, or I just loosened up.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

• The original plan was for Patrick to come down to DVE with me and ride at least one LD. That went out the window when he sprained his ankle, but in any case wasn't able to get the time off work. 
• The next plan involved travelling down with a friend (and staying in her plush living-quarter trailer), but that didn't work out when she wasn't confident that her horse was ready for a multi-day. 
• Next came a plan involving two more friends who asked me to haul their two horses down there so they could pleasure-ride and we would all stay in their toasty RV (and they'd move my rig for me). But that didn't work out when a long-lost relative showed up.

So in the end, Roo and I went down on our own, which worked out fine - I kind of like the freedom of working to my own schedule.

Over Christmas, the weather had been wet, which ruled out my preferred scenic hwy-395 route. So instead the day after Christmas I found myself on the ever-dull hwy-99. 

The drive to Ridgecrest took a little over 9 hours - about 450 miles and went more or less without incident, if you don't count my nearly falling asleep around Chowchilla (a quick detour to Starbucks solved that problem), followed by noticing the freeway alert system warning me that "hwy-58 east was closed". Mild angst ensued, as I tried to figure out how else to get to my destination without using Tehachapi Pass. 

As it turned out, by the time I got that far south, the pass was open again. It had been closed due to high winds - and once I got down the other side, it was still pretty blustery (saw some upside down things that shouldn't have been upside down), so I crawled north on hwy-14 at 40 mph, not willing to risk anything to my newly-returned put-back-together truck.

Roo and I spent the night at Jackie Bumgardner's place in Ridgecrest which was a greatly appreciated - Roo got to spend his last night of freedom in a pen to wander and stretch his legs after the long journey down. 

Once we'd set up, we took a short practice ride up the nearby canyon to make sure all the horses' legs were still properly attached, and to dry out any feet ready for the application of Hoof-It pour-in pads which Brenda, Nick and I were using. 

In the brisk temperatures, the horses were very cheerful indeed, and Judy was a little apprehensive - she was borrowing a horse from Jackie B - Fadwah's Star - and Star had a very big, very bouncy stride. Star also has an odd-shaped back, so Judy was having to ride in one of Jackie's saddles which wasn't quite working for her anatomy.

By the time we'd vetted through and got around to pouring Roo's Hoof-It pads, it was almost dark and very cold. Like the first pancake in a batch, when I poured in his left foot, I didn't mix up quite enough material and wasn't quite happy with the resulting pad. OTOH, mixing up the right foot, I got a bit carried away with the quantities, as I was to discover the following day. 

The Hoof-It pour in pad mixture takes a long while to set up in the cold temperatures, so the use of a duct-tape covering on the underside of the foot was very necessary when you plop the foot down after you and the horse grow tired of holding the foot up, waiting for the pad to harden.

One thing I did discover to my delight - ride manager, Dave Nicholson had an internet dish set up, so I was able to piggy-back onto his wireless network and send email and small pics home - just as well, since curiously, we didn't have cell phone coverage at ridecamp.