Halloween

This weekend was wonderful. It was exactly the weekend I needed.

Friday was my earned day off. I made up for all those late nights during the week by sleeping in very very late. I rolled right out of bed feeling like a million bucks. Then breakfast, dressed, and out the door to spend the whole day at the barn.

There is nothing like a day of manual labor and riding. You might disagree with me, but try working my sit-in-front-of-a-computer-for-9+-hours-a-day job and you'll appreciate it much more.

I rode 2.5 horses. The .5 being my last ride - interrupted because I had unwittingly chosen a 2-lesson horse.

The first was Tucker, as usual. And it was the usual: ride out the bucking and adolescence until we can get about five minutes of actual work in. We made some progress today, considering I can only ride him about 1x a week. At the very end, we polished the ride off with some nice cantering.

I snuck in some fun, though. Along one of the long sides I stole some sneaky glances around the place to make sure no one was watching. Seeing no one was around, I spurred him into a big gallop. That little pony sure can kick his heels up when you let him. I swear I could hear him say "wheeeee!!!!" as he spun into little rocking-horse bucks in the corners of the arena. Or maybe it was just me...

Next was Zee. I've wanted to work with him for something like a month now, but he was always being used for lessons. He was all mine now. Muahaa! We had an awesome ride, and I learned something new from him. Always always a nice thing.

That evening, I went to a costume party. I missed the "dress-up" memo. I sure did get the "have fun" message, though. So much so that Saturday was a forgotten day. I saw some kids I hadn't seen in several months, and met a whole mess of cool people. And I drank stuff that out of an orange can that was sort of fizzy, malty and yeasty. Delicious!

Sunday was the real fun - games on horseback for halloween! Most everyone had a good time bobbing for apples, playing musical horses (you can bet the horses loved that one), water relaying, and racing with an egg and spoon.

The horses even got a little excited. Those that normally were quite sluggish during lessons suddenly developed a secretariat, eagle-like focus in their eyes and galloped fiercely down the arena. Except Jack, he's always wondering where the carrots are.

Some got a little too excited. Four riders got a nice sand-dusting. Two were dumped off Zee when his over-zealous galloping turned into bucking. The others were over-zealous riders giving into the excitement and not quite remembering how to stop. There was nothing more than bruised egos and lessons learned. Some fall-quotas were met, too - in particular one girl who fell twice in one event. She should be cleared by the fall-gods for a long time.

I even got to play. I rode in the adult bobbing for apples race and ride-a-buck, where you ride bareback with a dollar under your leg. I lost the ride-a-buck, being out of shape, but I cleaned up at the bobbing for apples race.

I rode a palomino quarter horse who's a regular lesson-guy. He's used to taking it slow and loving it. By the time I got on him, he had been through a couple of races and was pretty pumped. Looked like a little barrel pony prancing around. The ringmaster said "go!" and with a little tap of my legs he was off! Before I even had time to think he was on the other side of the arena and I already had to pull him up. Whoaaa there! Then hop off this trembling horse, grab the apple, and hop back on. He went even faster down the other side, and then it was stomp on the super-breaks so he didn't run through the fence. We were on the other side of the arena even before the other riders had gotten back on their horses from chomping their apples.

I'm so sure I scared the crap out of the riding instructors with that stunt, but oh man was it fun!

At the end of it all we had to clean up. I'll say again, nothing like a hard day's manual labor. Both horses and riders earned their sleep that night.

And today, Monday. Well, it wasn't too bad. Nice to have good memories to fuel your week.