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My adventure started, like all adventures, before the actual trip. Last Sunday, 
I saddled up Tanna for a brisk ride in the uncommonly cool morning. After 
mounting, he bucked hard and long, putting large bruises on my inner thighs. 
Then I couldn't stay on any longer so off I flew into the gravel driveway, 
landing largely on my right shin. Tanna was still bucking like a maniac so I 
yelled at him to stop and he did. Well, I couldn't let him get away with 
bucking me off, so I removed his crupper (thinking it was a problem), lunged 
him, and had several false starts before leading him away from his pasture mate 
(penned in the back pasture) to mount up. We completed our training ride with 
no further issues (although my leg was swelling beautifully).

I spent the next 3 days icing my leg and keeping it elevated when possible. I 
was afraid the injury would keep me from going to Hoosier Daddy. I refused to 
go to the doctor for fear she would tell me to stay home and not ride.

Finally I was able to decide I could pack and go to Hoosier Daddy as the 
swelling was minimal.

Friday morning, we loaded up in the rain and were away from home by 11 AM. 
After about 2 or 3 hours of travel, Tanna began to eat his hay and managed to 
eat about half of it before we arrived at ridecamp.

As we neared the camp, we began to see signs for Hoosier Daddy. Part of the 
approach is a somewhat steep hill and pie plates on the side of the road 
encouraged "I think I can, I think I can." Hehehe. Our first glimpse of the 
camp made my jaw drop. A trailer city greeted us. A LOT of trailers. Many, 
many. Way more than I had expected. When we pulled into camp, we were greeted 
cheerily by Edie Keesee, one of the ride managers. She was also talking about 
the huge turnout. We were pointed to our reserved camp site and Edie helped 
guide our trailer into place before disappearing on her next errand.

We spent some time discussing our options for putting up Tanna's metal corral 
around the hitching post that went with our campsite. Tanna does not do well 
tied to anything solid. He needs to be in a metal corral or picketed. If he can 
reach something solid, he will slip his halter. Anyway, so after awhile, Daniel 
put up the corral and I put hay and water out for Tanna.

Then we went a-lookin'. Ride headquarters was under a large pavilion. The vet 
check area was set up across the gravel driveway and at the end of one of the 
barns was the shower area. Showers. Very nice! :-) We greeted Diane Fruth, who 
was doing the check-in for the Saturday horses. Since I wasn't riding until 
Sunday she bade me to come back the next day.

We wandered back towards our trailer and stopped by Teddy Lancaster's Running 
Bear trailer to buy some syringes for a friend. While there we chatted with 
Teddy for awhile until my eye caught some weird horse boots I had never seen 
before. Bosana boots. Made of heavy rubber, they were cut down and looked like 
they wouldn't stay on a hoof. How would these things stay on? Teddy was happy 
to give me a brochure and explain the concept to me. Apparently, there is a 
recessed portion of the hoof in the heel where the back of the shoe slides into 
to keep the boots on. These are not a shoe replacement. More like a shoe pad 
replacement. Weird. Teddy invited me to bring Tanna back the next day for her 
to practice putting the boots on. Ok, sure. We were game to be guinea pigs. 
They just looked so intriguing.

Daniel and I went back to our trailer and finished setting up our camp, met 
Nancy Cox, our next trailer neighbor, and fiddled around until time for the 
ride meeting. Even though I wasn't riding until Sunday, ride meetings are fun 
to see who's there and to get a preview of what I would be doing on Sunday. 
Especially since this was the first ever Hoosier Daddy Ride. Whoo-hoo!

We were a smidgeon late, but quickly sat down and I took notes on the maps that 
I had gotten earlier from the registration table. Pulse 64 everywhere, except 
the finish for the 25s the pulse was 60. Holds of 40 minutes (I thought) and 
CRIs would be taken.

The vets were introduced. Mike Habel, Rae Ann Mayer and a new-to-endurance vet, 
Tamara Marheine. Thank you to all 3 for vetting this ride!

Jerry Fruth was the trail Boss (yes, capital B) and explained the trail 
markings. Every bit of the 50 was marked in orange ribbons and every bit of the 
25 was marked in pink ribbons. Those were just for comforting the rider that 
they were on the right trail. The real directions were on pie plates 
everywhere. Just follow the street, uh, trail signs.  And there were big Xs on 
pie plates on trails that we were not to go down. It sounded like a neat idea, 
but trying to follow the map seemed a bit confusing to me. But I shrugged it 
off because I would get to hear it all again at the next ride meeting.

There were tons of riders! Over 125 horses would hit the trail on Saturday 
between the 50 mile endurance riders, the 25 mile AERC riders and the 25 mile 
competitive riders. What a mass of horse flesh! I was glad I was waiting to 
ride until Sunday, when hopefully the traffic would be lighter.

After the ride meeting, everybody filed up to the table to get their trail 
permits. We were to keep them on us when we were on the trail. I chatted with a 
friend I'd met on a previous ride for quite awhile while Daniel wandered off, 
then came back to get me.

Daniel and I had an electric site, but unfortunately, we were unable to use our 
electricity because we didn't have a converter from the big 30 amp plug to our 
"regular" extension cords. We asked around and finally Terry England had one we 
could borrow. She was parked just a few trailers down from us. We were grateful 
for the loan since we hadn't even thought that the plugs might be different! 
Another thing to get from Wal-mart before our next ride! That plug allowed us 
to have biscuits and gravy for breakfast the next morning as I'd brought along 
a small toaster oven. Those were very yummy! Thanks, Terry! :-)

We headed for our camper and got Tanna out for a walk around camp. There was 
plenty of grass, so we let Tanna eat for awhile while wandering around. 
Finally, I gave him plenty of food, hay, and water and disappeared into our 
camper for bed.

To Be Continued...
April
Nashville, TN


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