Deadman50

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Alison A. Farrin alison@innovativepension.com
Here I was, proud of myself for actually writing a ride story while it was still fresh .....and my e-mail completely screws up and sends the next three days of posts to email limbo.  So, what the heck, I'm posting this anyway as a guest, days late, but still on a high from how fun this ride was!Ride Management does NOT deserve any flack for trying to keep the horses sound and the LD riders better educated.  Count me in as another one ready to send in my ride entry for next year today.

Alison Farrin


Congratulations to ride management for putting on a great ride in some positively beautiful country!  I haven't done a ride story in quite awhile, and I am successfully avoiding working by writing this one!

The trip to Deadman was to be our longest venture ever in terms of distance from home - I figured close to six hours of hauling time.  Now, for those of you who routinely haul 7 or more hours to a ride and are chortiling at my description of long, let me remind (or refresh) your memory.  I am the ridecamper with the truck that always broke whenever my hubby didn't drive with me to the ride.  It was a good truck.  It just wasn't up to hauling a heavy two horse trailer and a 3500 pound camper.  So, everytime I started out to a ride on my own, hubby usually had to come rescue me.  This came to a head in June of 1999, as we were packing to leave for Mt Laguna.  Hubby turned over the engine one more time to check everything.  Something shorted and all the wiring from the alternator to the gauge to the battery burned up in one fell swoop.  This ride, I didn't even get out of the driveway!  Terry Woolley got a couple of extra vet secretaries for the ride the next day and I got my husband's promise to order a new truck.

We ordered the new truck; a 2000 model Dodge with the new six speed transmission, the first week in July. I volunteered the entire 1999 ride season as the truck finally arrived as a Thanksgiving present, the six speed having ended up on backorder for several months. Deadman was my third ride on my own with the new truck and I am still suffering a bit from long distance "itis".  Thought I left enough time to get everything ready and be out the door by 9:30 AM on Friday, but Murphy stepped in.  Seems the new truck needs those spiffy valve stems that stick through the wheels from the inside dual wheel to the outside.  Without them, putting air in the inside tires requires REMOVING the outside wheel.  Good thing we have a two ton jack.  Also missing was loading help from son Kris, who was frantically trying to finish daughter Lisa's computer.  Our half way rest stop was to be my mother's house, where Lisa is living as she goes to college at Cal Poly, as well as desperately waiting for her rebuilt computer.  So, we only left two hours behind schedule.  Having said all that, the trip itself was a piece of cake.  My 82 year old mom got a big kick out of two horses eating the grass on her front lawn and two little boys got to pet the horsies as I explained to their mom what endurance horses were.  I do love the fact that both horses jump on and off the trailer like they love the ride.

Made it to New Cuyama by 5:00 PM.  Pull into camp and the nice gentlemen at the gate explains that there are four spots left, none of which really look big enough.  The last spot is okay and the man in the rig behind me with just one horse and I decide that if he pulls way off to the left and I pull way to the right, there is room in the middle for the horses.  It works, and Kris and I make a new friend as Bob introduces himself.  Turns out we are from opposite ends of the state, as we have driven north from San Diego and he has driven south from Carmel Valley.  We all vet in with no surprises, although CD's back is showing some scurfing from when I sored his back at the last ride, riding in my riding buddy's saddle.  I'm back to my old "cost a $120 brand new Libertyville special" dressage saddle that seems to fit every horse I put it on.  I mean, I bought this saddle so I would have a real, live, dressage saddle to take a dressage lesson in, say, once every six months or so.  At this point it has at least 1000 training miles and 1/2 dozen 25 and 50 mile rides on it. We will not mention what kind of money I have spent on endurance saddles that are not fitting my horses again.

We attend the ride meeting together and come away scared to death as the ride manager and the vets tell us that there are some really difficult spots out there on the trail and we have to be really careful if we want to get our horses through this in one piece.  Between us, Bob and I decide that none of our horses have ever taken a lame step, and if we are just really careful, we will be okay.  Walk the rocky spots, right?!

The night is not cold, for which I am grateful, as the camper heater is not working.  The alarm clock is still in hubby's suitcase from his last business trip, so starting about 5:00AM, I wake up every 15 minutes.  Finally give it up and get up at 5:45, figuring I now have two hours and fifteen minutes to get two horses ready and its not even dark outside.  One of the things ride management forgot to mention at the ride meeting was that I didn't have to worry, as they set the wake up music blaring at 6:00 AM.  Oh, well, I get two cups of coffee.  Bob and I both plan to ride our own ride, have no intention of trying for first place, just want to finish in good time.  So we decide to start together and see how it goes.  How it goes, is that we get to the start at a perfect 3 minutes before the start time.  They call go.  We turn to ride in that direction, and Kris, (the JUNIOR - helmets are required - JUNIOR) realizes he is not wearing his.  We wait for 10 minutes while he runs back to get it.  In the meantime, Ceders, who had been relatively calm, decides that if all the other horses get to leave ahead of him, he should demonstrate piaffe, passage, capriole and canter buck for the remaining spectators.  After being nearly tossed several times (I'm riding in the D^&^%*^ dressage saddle), I decide to trot the first mile with me on the ground running.  Works out ok to settle him down, except for the one wheel and turn where he managed to deliver a swift kick to my thigh.  He's settled, I'm lame, its time to ride.  We move out into a nice trot interspersed with slow canter onto some of the nicest trails in the prettiest country I have seen in Southern California.  Put this ride on your calendar for next year people!  IT WAS MARVELOUS!  Ride management has water in all the right spots.  They have routed us though several beautiful meadows where the wildflowers were blooming profusely!  Then we did some single track through really pretty juniper and manzanita.  On top of the hills the views were stupendous.  Everyone wa
 for a camera.  We did hit a few rocky spots that made good walk breaks and I did have to get off and lead Gydion through the stream crossing, but 99% of this trail was just beautiful.  Oh, yeah, the two downhills off the ridges were the get off and slide down kind.  But they were fun!  Took a little less than 2.5 hours to do the 16 mile loop 1.  Back to camp, the vet had asked for saddles off at the vet check with a half hour total hold.  Knew we'd never make it out of there in half an hour.  Took us more like an hour.  But, nobody was hurrying.  Loop two went even faster.  We walked up the one steep hill and trotted and cantered the rest.  More wildflowers.  More scenic vistas.  More cows.  Okay, alot more cows.  Bob's horse didn't like the cows on the left and Ceders didn't like the sound of the pump on the windmill from the right, so the two of them got reeeall close for a couple hundred feet.  Came back in on the road we drove in on.  That road is a lot smoother on a horse than driving in the truck.  Came in, got the horses a good long drink and they were pulsed down.  Bob jokingly asked what place we were in, as we had, of course started dead last.  Someone said there were only six riders in ahead of us.  Honest folks, we weren't racing, but had somehow moved from 27th thru 30th to 7th thru 9th.  I was glad to know that we had managed to keep a steady 7+ mph pace without compromising our horses in the least bit.  We are all really ready to do 50's at this point.  However, Kris is using the endurance riding as off-campus physical education (wouldn't you rather ride than do push-ups?) and to do this in our school district, you actually have to be competitive in the sport.  So, he has a fighting chance at the Junior limited distance mileage award if we keep doing LD through June.

My guess is that SLOPOST raised between $8,000 and $9,000 from the ride as they included a silent auction and raffle with the awards dinner.  Hopefully that puts them much closer to the funds they need to close escrow on the portion of trail they have purchased and intend to give to the national forest.  Kudos to ride management for a first ride very well done!  The trail marking was great.  Even the cows couldn't eat all the arrows on the ground, although they were doing a good job of chowing down the flags!

Becky Hackworth, we missed you!

Alison Farrin and Junior Kris Farrin and our two silly but good boys, Caer Donn (Ceders) and Gydion
Innovative Pension Strategy & Design
alison@innovativepension.com
858-451-9594 x 107