March 2011

• March 1 - First Free Egg Tuesday!
• March 3 - Snowpack at 128%
• March 5 - AERC Convention
• March 6 - Snakelet
• March 8 - Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami
• March 12- Diesel at $4.35 + Fergus Coggins
• March 13 - Fergus and Lucy Ride the High Trail in the Rain
• March 6-20 - Iditarod
• Wednesday March 16 - Torrential Rains
• March 19 -Rides of March Non-Happening/Snow
• March 21-22 - Legses
• Thursday 24th - Fergus Doesn't Do Rides of March EZ Care Blob
• March 24 - It's OK, I give up...
• March 26th - Soggy Hay
• March 27th - Peddle That Lazy Pone
• March 30th - The Continuing Saga of the Soggy Hay

Back to February • Forward to April

Ride Calendar - so far, so good:

Tuesday March 1 First Free Egg Tuesday! We have lots of hens and hence lots of eggs - far more than we can fit in our mouths, so today I took a basket of them to work to spread the joy.  No eggs were broken in the making of this journey. Big Egg, Little Egg, and Starter Egg...

Thursday March 3
Snowpack at 128%

The Sacramento Bee reports today that the measured snowpack is at 128% - woo!

Had to work Friday, so didn't get up to Reno until Friday evening, but had lots of fun at the convention - as usual, little sleep, much yakking, and inspection of "stuff". Managed to hold myself in check and only came home with two items - a sponge for pft and Fergus (needed) and a "mango" coloured helmet visor for me. I'm trying to pretend that it's a deep yellow, but not quite succeeding. 

Fun hanging out with the EZ Care folk and getting to attend the banquet. 

• Hall of Fame horse: Robin Hood
• Hall of Fame person: Jan Worthington (has ridden over 100 100s! Motto: "never give up")
• Pardners: Karen Issacs and General Jeb Stuart
• Awards to 10,000 mile horses Robin Hood (perfect ten), Granite Chief 

Sunday March 6 Snakelet Found a tiny snakelet in the barn this evening. He was a little dopey from the cold, but warmed up nicely when I brought him indoors to show pft (meaning I had to do some snake juggling to prevent him slithering off).

Pacific Rim is running on overtime - a Magnitude 9 earthquake and resultant tsunami wiped out about 30,000 japanese and obliterated thousands and thousands of buildings. Just incomprehensible, those poor people. :(

Cadbury's Mini-Egg Season is Upon Us!

Saturday March 12
Diesel at $4.35 + Fergus Coggins

Fergus needed a Coggins to go to Rides of March. Uno needed his teeth looked at because his jaw clonks when he eats. Turns out that Uno could use some dentistry, but more likely the jaw noise is caused by TMJ (I can relate - bin there, done that). I'm to bute him for a week to see if it goes away - and then hopefully with the inflammation down, getting the dentistry work done won't make him sore. 

While we were there, they both got their shots done - the vet went with the gentle approach and for once neither Fergus nor Uno objected to being jabbed, so maybe that's the trick?

However, I will have to sell off my first born - had to fill up with diesel on the way home - $4.35. Add that to the $500 I spent on the Coggins n shots... Thinking maybe I should have stuck with gerbils. But they aren't as much fun.

What was worse was coming home and going on autopilot - putting the $136-worth of 4x way shots in the freezer, effectively rendering them useless. <sigh>

Sunday March 13
Fergus and Lucy Ride the High Trail in the Rain

In anticipation of taking Fergus to Rides of March (Uno is on break so can't go, so pft kindly offered Fergus to me), I figured I'd better actually *ride* him, so went out with Leslie for a 15 mile jaunt - Browns Bar, down along the River Road and back along the High Trail. 

This would have been quite good were it not for the pouring rain that we encountered about two thirds of the way into the ride. The trail got pretty slick and I got quite concerned (not knowing how sure-footed and trust-worthy Fergus is).

Fergus did good, but he moves so differently from Uno that I was quite sore after 15 miles. I also concluded that I should probably start the ride alone to let him move out as he needed to (in his fast walk, all he'd do was wind all the other horses up) and then assume he'd settle into something that everyone else could match.

Another fun year of ID watching. Not as dramatic as the Yukon Quest, but interesting stuff all the same. The usual suspects weren't where you'd expect them (Paul Gephardt dropped out around Takotna because of lack of dogs, Mitch Seavey sliced his hand open on a knife and had to withdraw, Lance Mackey's dogs dwindled to a non-competitive team, Martin Buser's early speed deserted him when his dogs feet got sore running without booties). Coming out the other side was John Baker who got it all together at last and won the race. Ramey Smyth gave it his all, but couldn't catch him and came second.

Wednesday March 16 Torrential Rains Blinkin' what a lot of rain all at once!?!
	The culvert under the end of the driveway couldn't cope with the abundance of water, so it overflowed across the bottom of the driveway, taking with it any remaining gravel we had down there.    Across the road, the culvert was going gang-busters - turns out our bin lid was at the bottom of the gush.
	The new gravel down to the barn suffered somewhat - these two 6" deep rivulets weren't there the previous day. At least it didn't divert either into the barn (right) or UNOs space (left).
	Meanwhile, down at the Confluence, the North and Middle Forks of the American River were bulging. This isn't the highest I've seen the rivers, but it's definitely enthusiastic.

Saturday March 19 Rides of March Non-Happening/Snow Got to work on a proposal last week - culminating with working on said-proposal until 2 am on Thursday night, then having to continue at 9:30 am on Friday. So it's just as well that it turned out that I-80 was closed both directions because of the horrendous snow storm and bad accidents.  So no Rides of March for me and Fergus.  Instead we stayed at home, watched the snow come down, and napped away the weekend. According to my body, this is what it needed anyway so maybe it's for the best? Chili being a snow-dog for about  3 seconds before going indoors again

Having been forced to stay at home I did get to finish two pairs of leggins. Last November I bought enough fabric to make about 12 pairs in various colours, but have only just gotten around to actually getting them made.

	"Lookit the new blue double-sided fleecey tights I finally finished last night in time to wear them to work (and look at the accessorized blue/green/brown home-made socks to pull the ensemble together with the shoes and green laces)(alas REI no longer sells green laces so I have to find another supplier for the future)"
	These are my favorite. This is the third pair of this colour I've made - and I have most of another pair done that I can finish up soon./font> (btw, that's Uno's Triple Crown Jacket I'm wearing <proud>)

Thursday March 24th
Fergus Doesn't Do Rides of March EZ Care Blob

The new de-Glueing tool

Thursday March 24th It's OK, I give up... That will be quite enough rain, thank you. This continuous downpour is unnecessary and childish.

Saturday March 26th
Soggy Hay

So what exactly possessed me to get so single-minded that "because I wanted to ride on Sunday, I had to get hay on Saturday" - never mind the rain. I guess I thought the drizzle would stay just that - drizzle. 

But no, then endurance gods had other ideas for me and as soon as we started to load up the hay, the skies opened and it absolutely POURED down.

The result was 20 bales of $14.75 meadowgrass in the truck that was "somewhat damp" - we parked the truck in the barn overnight and were able to unload it into the hay area the next day - albeit carefully stacking the wet bales with their wet sides facing out. The things weighed a *ton* - 132 lb bales!! (2,650 lbs of hay)

The trailer, on the other hand was a sad mess. 28 bales of $15.00 orchard grass/alf - every single bale wet (as the guy was stacking them, the rain poured down, ensuring that each row was wet top and bottom). So 3,140 lbs of sodden hay that was going to mold as quickly as you could blink.

How could I have been so stupid??

As friend Leslie put it: 
"We saw you in the canyon on our way to dinner! My mom said "lookit, there is a crazy person hauling hay in this weather!" I said "mom, it's Lucy!""

Sunday March 27th
Peddle That Lazy Pone

Uno hadn't been out since 20MT, so has been on break for four weeks and I wanted to get him out to make sure his arms and legs were attached ready for NV Derby next weekend.

They were attached, but he wasn't willing to use them - I'd trimmed him before our ride and probably was a bit too judicious with my frog removal (well, they were *sorta* shedding, so I helped). Then riding him barefoot perhaps was the best idea (was my brain just not engaged this weekend??).

The result was five miles of peddling, followed by it starting to rain and me giving up. I'd established that he was fit and well, so it wasn't worth continuing the torture for either of us.

Before the rain started, I managed to uncover the trailer hay to let it air dry a little. The front ones were pretty damp, while the ones on the back (right of photo) will need to be fed first because they got really soggy.

People suggested popping them open and drying them that way, but right now I don't have anywhere dry to lay them out - everything is sodden - the ground is so saturated. And the ones I worry about most are the ones on the very bottom - under the other 20 bales. I think it'll be OK, though - I was encouraged by the drying today.

Right now, they are all bundled up in their tarp wrap again. waiting for more good weather.

Wednesday March 30th
The Continuing Saga of the Soggy Hay

pft and I got home late on Tuesday prepared for action - we spread tarps all over the driveway and unstacked all the bales and laid them on their sides for maximum airing. It's supposed to be dry and sunny all week, so hopefully we'll save them from certain death. Some of them were already starting to mold.

The only problem is rain is due on Saturday, so before I leave for NV Derby on Friday, I need to help pft stack them back up again on the trailer. :(

* * *

They measured the snowpack again on Monday - 172% of normal in the Northern Sierra, 165% in the Central Sierra. Squaw Valley had over 57' of snow this year and will stay open at least until Memorial weekend, and possibly on to 4th July. <gape>