December 2007

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Sunday - 2 December
Leslie and I Go Exploring

Leslie and I had planned on a good stout ride from Third Gate to Auburn and back, but Leslie couldn't get out early so we ended up doing a shortened version along the River Road, up Browns Bar and back with a few detours off the High Trail exploring into ALT. At the Old Campground, we paused to let Roo and Eagle feast on the grass we found there, and finishing up with another detour along to Green Gate and back.

We managed a little more than 20 miles, with some good fast climbing thrown in. Eagle was "enjoying" the cool weather a little too much so Roo led the way for much of the ride, which he did without stupidity for once. He felt great - strong and forward. He was a little stiff on the downhills - probably from trotting the Powerlines Sally did with him two days before - but all in all, if that's what I've got to go to Death Valley Encounter (DVE) with, I'm pretty content.

Sunday - 9 December
Another lesson... successful for me, not so much for Patrick

If you leave the light on in the manger cupboard in the trailer, the truck battery will go dead <sigh>. New rule: from now on, we unplug the trailer from the truck when it's parked.

Being unsuccessful at getting it jump starting, we ended up luring Jeannette over here to give us lessons in our own arena. This would have been OK had pft not been flustered and had Uno ever seen the arena before, which he hadn't, so he was hyper-uptight about it. And then I ruint everything by emerging from the garage with a chair and startling him into a 180/scoot/buck/slam on brakes, causing pft to fly over his head. In the process of this, he got one foot slightly hung up in a stirrup (wearing the wrong footwear) and tweaked a foot. <double sigh>

pft hobbled into the house and I ended up taking up both lessons, first riding Uno, then Roo. Uno settled down after Jeannette did some groundwork with him - walking into his space to get him to pay attention to her and turn circles to get out of her way. This focused him much better and he did good when I scrambled on (it's like scaling a tall building). Before I got on Roo, Jeannette did the same with him, asking him to step out of her space. He wasn't keen and eventually had a minor melt-down/hissy fit - leaping and rearing. Uno, bless him, just stood there with me on top, ignoring Roo's histrionics. The interesting thing, however, was once I got up on top, Roo was much,  much more receptive and more attentive than usual and therefore much easier to ride with much subtler signals from me.

We did scalloped-edges along the arena - swerving in and out, followed by serpentines and circles. The biggest thing I discovered was that I'd been blocking him the whole time with my leg - trying to bend him around my leg, instead of opening the inside leg to let him step into the space. Ah. Much easier.

To celebrate, I was allowed to graduate to sitting trot, learning how to stay loose and floppy and not lock my elbows and shoulders, while keeping Roo shorter and less choppy. Whoo!

Tuesday - 11 December
Daffodils

A gold star to me!

The trick with buying bulbs is actually getting around to planting them.

Today I was suffering severely from a case of the bleahs (Prozac is back on the menu, but seems to be taking a while to kick in), so forced myself to go out to plant "just one bag" of bulbs. Predictably, this meant that once I got out there, I ended up doing all the bags - over 100 bulbs in total: various types of large and small daffodils, and irises.

Be interesting to see how many of them come up in the spring.

squiffy-log-cabin.jpg (193167 bytes) My squiffy-log-cabin quilt is slowly growing. I'm up to 21 blocks (out of 30). Each block seems to take even longer than usual because I take about 20 minutes selecting each tiny scrap of fabric from my stash. I'm not sure that's how you're supposed to do it, but hopefully by the end I'll have a lot less by way of tiny scraps of material cluttering up my drawers.

This pic shows the current blocks laid out on a tan rug. I plan on using something a bit darker for the sashing, to show up the sorta 3-D effect better.

Monday - 17 December
Spurs

Pft announced to me this morning that I should check on the red rooster's foot as he was limping yesterday. Fearing the worst, I caught him before he went out with the others first thing and flipped him over to inspect his feetses.

Frankly, I'm amazed this chicken can roost at all, bearing in mind most of his toes seem to point in the same direction. I discovered the reason for his gimpiness had a lot to do with his feet being tied together with some string that had gotten tangled in his toes and fluffy foot-feathers. As I was snipping him loose, I got to take a really good look at his spurs. Phew. This chicken has fluffy foot-feathers, so it's hard to see anything under there which is why I never noticed before, but his spurs are about 1.5" long. Not terribly sharp (thank goodness), but impressive nonetheless.

Wednesday - 19 December
Truck Back!

Hurray! We got the truck back after its "mishap" back in October. Yay! It's as good as new.

A bunch of work needs to get done on the trailer before I leave (it's looking a bit battered around the edges). pft has to put the running boards back on the left hand side of the trailer, and put a few more screws in the ceiling, so I don't have to lie in bed looking at where it's sagging.

I already have a fresh, sparkly new bale of alf. ready for the trip (Roo's preferred hay when he's working - I don't care what he eats, so long as he eats lots of it), but have to fetch hay during a weather-window on Friday - I'm taking the trailer to get another 40-50 bales.

I'm suffering somewhat from "crap, I've only ridden once over two weeks ago, so how can Roo possibly be fit?" angst, but I'm trying to ignore it. It's not like I can ride right now, anyway, with thick schleppy mud everywhere (including all over the pone).

Monday - 24 December
Getting Ready for DVE

> How's your preparation going Lucy? All packed? ;) 

Actually, I'm doing pretty good. Thank goodness I've had three days to get things done.

  • It was so lovely yesterday (in the 60s), I managed to give Roo a bath without freezing his butt off, so he's now ensconced in a blankie to keep him clean. 
  • I got 32 bales in (the benefit of having two trucks) and stacked in my barn. I was gratified to notice that they favoured the wheat hay when I gave them a hay bag with that and orchard grass in it - the wheat hay got eaten first and then they grudgingly ate the grass hay second, so at least they like what I'm buying.
  • I repaired the Bobsy Twin's shelter (they were body-slamming the corner post, causing it to move further and further out, which was a little alarming, since that's what the roof sits on).
  • I washed 15 tons of mud off two blankies (one Uno was wearing and decided to roll in the mud; one I'd hung on the rail to dry and *someone* [suspect Jackit] dragged of off and took it for a spin around the paddock and I found it lying in the mud). 
  • I emptied the portapotty.
  • pft put the running boards back on the trailer and put some more screws in the saggy ceiling panels. The special wire thing that we need to reinstall the brake controller in the silver truck has vanished without trace, so pft is currently driving around Sacramento trying to get a replacement. (update: he's got it!)

The hay is in the trailer, the feed is in the trailer, the water tanks are filled. I still need to get Lucy fud, pack all my clothes, load up the trailer with all my wet-weather gear, get 25 lbs of carrots, put shavings down (didn't want to do that while there was still a chance of rain, since they'd just get soaked where the water runs in under the doors on the trailer), pre-load four hay bags, etc...etc...

Wednesday - 26 December
Death Valley Trip

Every year there is a four-day endurance ride down near Death Valley. I managed to go and ride once before with Zini in 2004 when it poured and poured with rain. Zini and I managed to do Day 1 and Day 4 - the short LD rides. This time it was Roo's turn and I was hoping to complete all four days of 50s.