Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

August horsenews: Gaiting is where you find it

 Traveller and I have been following the left bank of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Rivers from the Carquinez bridge eastwards as best we can, for more
than 25 miles so far, well beyond the Antioch bridge. It?s a landscape of
industrial megaliths standing isolated on the flats like Hell?s Mont
Saint-Michels; yacht harbors; boarded up and working factories, mills and
chemical plants; slums; parks; homeless encampments; delta wetlands; strewn
litter; the broad river; golden hills; and Mount Diablo.

 Several sets of railroad tracks run between Highway Four and the river,
merging, diverging, some abandoned and some live. On the Burlington Northern
& Santa Fe tracks, the northernmost set, trains of flatcars loaded with huge
objects so heavy they shake the ground when they pass, strings of tank cars
full of chemicals, short Amtrack passenger trains, all barrel past at sixty
miles an hour. My advice is that when one comes you should turn your horse
towards it, and you?ll see why.

 To thread your way for very many miles up the river it is necessary to go
along some of these tracks. Unlike the railroad tracks everywhere else that
I?ve tried, these almost always have a strip alongside with either a beaten
path or where a four-wheeled vehicle has been driven ? as often as not to
dump household garbage. The surface may be crushed-down grass, nice to gait
on, packed or sandy dirt, in some cases studded with nasty railroadbed
gravel, i.e. sharp crushed 2? rock, poking up out of the ground to a height
greater than shoes raise the horse?s sole ? an early ride ended with
Traveller definitely footsore, but after I got a better feel for the footing
I led him over the bad parts and we eliminated that problem.

 The route takes you among boarded up abandoned buildings and burnt-over
empty lots, fine romantic places to ride except for the abandoned people.
(Gaiting after a grassfire is nice: you can see the surface clearly, and it
has a little cushiony layer of ash over the dirt which when kicked up has a
particlar smell you can like.) These may not be Soweto neighborhoods, they
do have electricity and running water, but the comparison does sometimes
come to mind. In Pittsburg an ice cream truck playing the hillbilly classic
?Turkey in the Straw? jingles down the brown- and black-inhabited streets.
You might think that riding a pure-bred professionally-trained $8,000 horse
among the desolate backyards and homeless encampments might be
uncomfortable. But from the time of the first horsemen, horses have always
been the basis of economic and social distinctions.

 On the western end of these rides we got nailed by US Steel security ? the
first guy was an inexperienced young white boy who wanted us to get away
from the tracks immediately, which would have made it impossible to get the
horse back to the trailer, since we were in the middle of the huge Posco
plant. We were saved by his senior, a black guy in a bigger, newer security
vehicle, who told the kid to tell us to just go back the way we?d come, and
then asked me if I minded if he took a picture of us ? ?The guys are never
gonna believe it.?

 Various streams come down from the Oakland Hills south of the river, and
we made rides up those of them we could. Now and again a creekbed saved from
subdivisions by the unbrookable demands of winter deluges is still shaded by
the abandoned remnant of a walnut orchard. Where one such creekbed, unnamed
on the topo maps, met the highway and I had to turn back there was a gap in
a fence through which we surveyed a little green park where an
African-American family was picknicking; a half-dozen children ran across
the grass back to their parents when we appeared. The Janjaweed of the Sudan
are the only horseback raiders still left.

 One of the railroads goes by the Contra Costa fairgrounds in Antioch. That
Saturday there was barrel-racing going on, so we went down get some water
and to watch. It?s an interesting sport ? almost all women riders; some of
the rigs are sponsored by body shops, sheet metal businesses, those kind of
blue collar business that make good money, presumably owned by the husbands
or boyfriends. These girls didn?t strike me as at all interested in men at
the moment, though; just running their horses.

 On the day we started east from Antioch Bridge on a 20 miler, we followed
the live railroad tracks. Traveller was as usual aburst with energy as we
set out, and we heard a train approaching at full speed from behind. He
started gaiting fast, and before I knew it was in a gallop. The train was
gaining, and as it came abreast I lost first one stirrup, then the other. I
clutched him with my thighs so hard that the inside muscles were sore for
four days afterwards. We were shooting down the 12-foot wide alley with the
roadbed bristling with rock on the left and the end stakes of rows of
grapevines on the right, so the standard method of beating a bolt by turning
the horse was impossible. He was racing so fast that it took a while for the
train to pass us ? it felt like we were doing 50, though I know we couldn?t
have been, and looking down at the big sharp chunks of railroad gravel
imbedded in the ground I had time to realize that if I fell off, best case I
?d break something important.

 I had hoped that when the train finally pulled ahead he?d be scared of it
in front of him and stop, but his pace only slackened slightly. Still, he
now had room left in his pea brain to be afraid of something other than the
train. Ahead I saw two slabs of concrete lying flat in the ground jutting
into the track from each side with only a few feet of dirt between then, so
I was ready when he was upon them and shied as he noticed the left one, the
bigger of the two, and when he jogged right and then was shocked by the
right one in confusion his hind legs skidded out from under him and then we
were only going a couple of miles per hour.

 Like I said, I should have pointed him at the train when I heard it
coming. The proof: on the way back when we got to the same spot, between the
vineyard and the embankment, amazingly enough another freight train came
roaring down the track from the same direction as before, so now we started
out facing it. Traveller skittered and jigged sideways and a little back,
and when the rush and thunder passed behind us he gaited very spiritedly the
remaining couple of hundred yards to the trailer.

 In fact he had gaited enthusiastically most of the rest of the ride,
except just before and after the turnaround. When unenthusiastic, he?s
uncomfortable to sit, but I haven?t figure out the commonality. He is
enthusiastic on the way out, mostly, and often doesn?t seem particularly
excited at the turnaround the way a horse eager to get on home can be, so it
?s not barnsour ? coming back, if I take a side-trip he doesn?t drag ass
when we suddenly start getting further from home rather than closer. We had
lunch on the bank of San Joaquin, eathing blackberries and watching swallows
catching bugs over the reeds, both Mt. Diablo and the spectacularly
monumental Antioch Bridge, more than a mile and a half long, forming a
backdrop.

 The third Saturday of the month, started out from ?A? Street in Antioch to
Brentwood, more than 10 miles each way, along the abandoned railroad tracks
of the Union Pacific. The only remnant of the pre-sprawl days is a shopping
center named after the quondam Slatten Ranch, complete with Starbucks and
Barnes and Noble. Huge construction sites, 30-40 acres, survey stakes
labeled ?250? owl buffer?; nature reduced to a work order. Little walnut
orchard remnants. An almost LL Bean homeless encampment, two dome tents,
even one of those fold-up camp chairs that have become so popular lately.

 We?ve gone as far east along the river as possible, ending up on the levee
on the west bank of Emerson slough, so next we went into the area south and
west of Highway 4 where it bends south from the river, in the area between
the highway and Mt. Diablo to the south and west Picked up trails, enough
for another 20-mile day, mostly dirt or gravel shoulders of county trails
paved to handle wheelchairs and maintenance vehicles ? finally got a long
stretch of the Contra Costa Canal, plus some of the Mokolumne Aqueduct. Some
of this trail, 8 feet of asphalt and about half the time enough of a dirt or
gravel shoulder to ride on, is called the Anza Trail, irritatingly signed
with a silhouette of the explorer on horseback. At one point the hills
blocked off the subdivisions and we were surrounded by bright yellow grass
glistening in the blazing California sun, just a dot in a sea of light. Most
of this riding is pretty civilized, though. I?m starting to think I?ve seen
enough trailer parks and storage lots with rvs and boats. On the other hand
it?s nice in a hot afternoon in the middle of an August ride to stop off at
the 7-11.

 I?d be glad to take anyone on a ride along any of these routes. The only
criteria are that the horse needs to be shod and the rider needs to be
completely mobile, as there are always dismounts-remounts, leading through
obstacles and over bad ground, and the occasional scramble. It?s easy enough
to find them yourself, though; they all are crossed by many streets.

 Traveller?s got the most amazing control over his gait of any paso I?ve
had. I can eventually get him to follow every rhythm from a perfect
four-four to a total pace. So far we?ve mainly worked on getting the perfect
sobriandando, comfortable for both of us, because I think it?s the gait that
requires the least effort for him to go pretty fast. When he gets tired it
gets rougher; I think to be smooth he has to slide his hinds under and flex
them to hold me up. The other flaw with his sobriandando is that it only
works well on pretty smooth surfaces because he doesn?t adapt his stride to
irregularities. I think the shorter, quicker, more vertical steps of the
paso llano are more useful for irregular surfaces. I can eventually get him
into a paso llano, but I?m working on being able to get it like flipping a
switch. He usually goes into it when he?s startled, which also makes it
fast, so I?m also working on being able to do it slow. He can do all these
gaits ? fast and slow sobriandando, fast and slow paso llano, and every
intermediate. I?m working on being able to summon them at will.

 They say a disproportionate share of a horse?s brain is given over to
controlling their bodies compared to other mammals of similar brain size. I?
d venture that even more of Traveller?s brain is allotted to movement, the
extra being robbed from the part of the brain he uses to interact with his
rider. Maybe it?s a gelding thing, but none of my mares have ever been as
bull-headed or as inclined to shy even after having exposed to so much crazy
stuff.

 The toll of age on the rider: Genghis Khan, who probably spent more waking
hours on his horse than not, fell from his horse while hunting at age 68;
his court urged him to give up the sport. Two years later, at 70, he fell
again, hurting himself so badly his companions suggested he interrupt the
war he was engaged in. Finally, at 72, he was killed by a last riding
accident while on a hunt.

 I forgot to mention discovering a couple of months ago that a route along
the north side of the Santa Rosa Creek has been cleared west from Willowside
Road. Beware of blackberries, but you can make it all the way to where the
Laguna goes under Guerneville Road, and midway there?s the loveliest picnic
spot under willows on a sandy beach by the creek.

 Debbie Bailey and I have been harrassing the county to try to make sure
the trails at the new Riverside Park don?t get paved over. They promise they
?ll only be packed gravel, which is fine with me, but it seems like they?re
doing a heck of a lot more bulldozing than is strictly necessary. I mean you
could drive an Abrams M-1 down most of them now.

Mike Sherrell
Grizzly Analytical (USA)
707 887 2919/fax 707 887 9834
www.grizzlyanalytical.com


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=