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[RC] Old Dominion - The Ride as told by Super (Part 1) - Stagg_NewmanThe start: I was happy Stagg had arranged for me to ride with Charlie, who is a good guy. We had camped together at the Pan Ams but did not ride together. I told Stagg I did NOT want any of this B.S. of doing 70 miles alone over this rock pile they call the Old Dominion like we did in 1999. I wanted company like in in 2001 only all the way. Since Charlie was to be my buddy for the ride, I decided to be nice early in the ride (well at least relatively nice) and more or less make Stagg think I was listening and willing to go out at a reasonable pace. Of course at OD we do the first 1/2 mile or so on a paved road behind Henry's pace car. Stagg sings Kum Ba Ya to try to calm me. Boy does he not know how to carry a tune. Calming - Hah! Then we start the climb up Hickerson hollow. Like usual we were near the front after doing the first 1200 foot climb at a slow but steady pace, in fact slower than usual. When we get to the top of the mountain the course is very inviting to fly down the mountain and I am ready to do that. But Stagg won't let me. He keeps mumbling (he does mumble a lot) about some guy named Matthew MacKay Smith saying "Never hurry, never tarry." So now I no longer even fight him (well not much) while all of these other horses come flying by us thinking they are going to make good time early. So of course most of the horses in the ride passed us before we got to McCoy's Ford (12 miles) out. Of course we always an lose an additional minute or so 'cause Stagg has to pee so often. But's it's fun doing circles around him while he tries to maintain his composure. Crossing the Shenandoah River is the early morning light is really cool in more ways the one. This year is was cooler than normal cause the water was up to my belly due to the rains! And the milk jugs to mark the crossing had been swept away!! But I was smart enough to get Stagg across the river without getting in trouble unlike the horse who gave its rider a good bath. Then it was my turn to pee in front of the vets at the fly by. Nice color, good volume of course. Most of the other horses were now ahead of Charlie and me. Charlie and I kept up a good steady pace going up Morgan's Trail (Stagg said Col. Morgan cut that at the direction of G. Washington in case the colonial army had to retreat from the British - I said Col. Morgan cut trails for mules not horses). We passed all of the other horses going up the mountain and across the ridge line as I am pretty good at dancing along the rocks and Charlie stayed right with me. Of course I did not tell Stagg we had passed all of the other horses and he can be clueless at times. Stagg and Sue came into the first vet check (25 miles) in just under 3 hours. They looked around and asked where all of the other horses were. Charlie and I just laughed as we knew we were leading even though they did not. Sue and Stagg checked our pulses. They should not have bothered. We knew we were already down. During the check Stagg made his first mistake. He was too busy feeding his face and running his mouth. He did not check the map for the next loop even though I thought I had trained him to always do that. But he's damn hard to train. Cheryl (Stagg's wife and my crew) told Stagg that he went out the way he came in but Stagg asked the out-timer which way to go who pointed to a set of ribbons in the OD color pattern going out in a different direction. I smelled trouble.
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