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Had a wonderful time at Square Nail at the weekend.

Many thanks to David Jewkes and his band of merry
people for putting on the ride. After I sent out my
note on Ridecamp asking for a contact email for the
RM, David took the time to look up my telephone
number and phone me personally to let me know about
entering the ride. Now that's what I call service!
I also got several emails from NASTR club members
helping me find the downloadable entry and inviting
me up. What a nice bunch of people!

Saturday was blustery (as it always is in NV, even
though they try to pretend it isn't) but nice and warm.
It started out as shirt-sleeves weather and finished
with t-shirt weather.

As is usual with NV rides, it was really fun and laid
back, with plenty of dirt road for making up time,
interspersed with singletrack through the sagebrush.
We still only managed to finish with 20 minutes to
spare (doing the 30 mile LD) despite feeling like
we'd done a good job of moving out.

Some of the trail followed the Rides of March trail
from last year (and, no doubt, this year, although I
didn't go this year) but backwards, and it was fun to
see the trail again, but from a different direction,
a year later, at a different time of day... and when
it wasn't 800 degrees. :)

One day I'll learn how to competently ride on those
whoop-de-doos, but this weekend wasn't it - although
my legs tell me today that I tried hard.

This was Zini's second ride (well, third ride, since
we did two days at DVE) and she handled the whole
camping thing like a pro. During the ride she managed
to not be too crabby to too many riders and played nice
with the other horses we were riding with. She did a
reasonable job of eating and drinking, although she
could do better earlier on.

Perhaps because of the unaccustomed sand, she decided
to let her saddlebred side shine through on Saturday
and spent much more time than usual gaiting cheerfully
along the trail. This meant that her legs were lovely
and tight the next day, despite not icing or wrapping her.

Unfortunately, it also meant that she was completely
whupped at the end of the ride and spent several hours
sleeping (and scaring the heck out of me by wanting to
lie down in the nice soft sugar sand. She never lies down
at home - but then we have mucky, gloppy clay at home, so
this isn't surprising). She doesn't usually spend much
time gaiting, so definitely used a bunch of muscles that
weren't expecting to be used - and paid for it afterwards.

After a few hours, thank goodness, she perked up again
and spent the entire night eating all the goodies we'd
put in front of her to tempt her.

So my lesson from the ride was that I either have to
condition her to gait more (probably not a bad idea
in deep sand), or teach her the cue for "enough already
with the gaiting - what d'you think you are, half-
saddlebred or something??" and get her to trot like a
grown-up - which she does beautifully when she remembers.

I'm also guessing that she'll benefit from more frequent
e-lyting. I only gave her e-lytes in her food and that
apparently wasn't enough. So we're going to get out the
syringes and start with a more regular e-lyting protocol
during the ride. I'm hoping to take her to High Desert
in a couple of weeks where we'll do the LD and with luck
sort out some of this stuff before moving her up to 50s.

All in all, a fun weekend with several lessons learned.

The drive home over 7200' Donner Pass on Sunday was most
interesting, given the fact that the wind was now a howling
gale (causing the whole trailer to judder as we drove along)
and I'm still picking grit out of my mouth and ears from the
dust storm that was whipping across camp. It was snowing
going over the pass <bite nails>, but we got home safely,
only to have our local transformer zapped by lightning
and lose power for 6 hours. Can't complain - at least that
weather didn't hit on Saturday. :)


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Lucy Chaplin Trumbull
elsietee AT foothill DOT net
Repotted english person in the Sierra foothills, California
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