RE: [RC] Oklahoma Hospitality More on The MSNM - Paul Sidio
Dawn is right. The Mosshammer ladies sure know how
to make to make you feel welcome. Even coming into the Vet Checks, was
more like you had just ridden over to a neighbors for a visit. Kind of
like "Well Hi! Glad you stopped by. Why don't you just climb off your horse and
sit a spell. How 'bout we check your horses heart rate? Need a cool
drink?" Very warm and welcoming. Unlike many folks, they never got
cranky even as it got into the wee hours of the night and early morning. Just
what was in those coozie cups? Oh and speaking of warm and welcoming, the
temperture at 7:00 pm, (ride start) was 100 degrees. By midnight it had
chilled down to a brisk 83 degrees.Brrrr.
One thing about the vet check that was interesting
was that one of the vets smoked.... While doing the check... and when he was
listening to the gut sounds, the lit end of his cigarette would get an inch or
two from the horse's flank. I was a bit nervous about what could happen if
my horse flinched to his left a few inches . It could have been branding
time. But it all went well. Obviously he has done this many times, and
does it well.
One thing Dawn did miss was one of those scary
incidents that become funny stories when everybody survives. While the
ride folks had put out a lot of tubs of water for us, they had also
marked where some ponds were. They warned us the ponds were soft
bottomed, but on the first loop when we got to the first pond, my horse
wanted no part of it. The part that looked dry was like concrete, but
where it looked damp, it just collapsed into a muddy gooey almost
quicksand like mess. One of the junior riders, Marissa?, inadvertantly found
herself entered into the Olympic Event of Equestrian Mud Diving. When
her horse got up to the edge, it fell away , and in an instant
was up to it's belly in sticky mud and floundering around. We
bystanders were yelling helpful advice. "Hang On Marissa!" "Jump off
Marissa!!" ." Be careful Marissa.". As the horse
struggled to turn around to get back to the pond bank, Marissa finally bailed
off. She began swimming strongly for the shore. After enough strokes for
a 400 meter swim, she finally realized that
the water was only a foot or so deep and she stood up and with lots
of squishing noise walked/crawled out. As for her diving off the horse
performance, I would have to give her high marks for originality and spontanity,
but her entry was not very clean. Nor was her exit. The horse got a few
minor cuts and was ok, but later pulled. Marissa was a mess.. Sticky squishy mud
into everthing... But she was cheerful about it and kept on to the vet
check. She won the "Hard Luck Award"
Another thing about this Oklahoma ride were the
hills. You may not think of Oklahoma as having serious hills, but they were
there. East Texas Flatlanders like Dawn may have thought of them as being
mountains, but they were just hills. However, unlike an Ozarks hill that looks
you straight in the eye and says " Here it is. Think you got what it takes to
get to the top?", these Oklahoma hills were sneaky rascals. When you
started up one, they said, " Come on, look at this gentle grade. I'm not
much of a hill . you can fly up me." ( you may not be used to talking hills, but
when you do your first night ride and it is 100 degrees at the start... well
these things happen.) . Then the hill just keeps going and going...
Finally it flattens out and you think it is the top... and son of a gun it
starts up again. I had been practicing
tailing with my horse. It seemed silly to me to do it on such a mild hill, but I
did it anyways. About halfway up, I was done and had to climb back on board.
Some people tried to canter up them They learned better after the first
loop.
The other interesting thing about my first night
ride were the green glowsticks at the trail turns. Did you know that two
green glowsticks set 2 or 3 feet apart and about 4 feet off the ground kind of
resemble the slits of giant cat eyes... like if a pre-historic giant SaberTooth
Tiger was to come back to life and be waiting in the wilds of Oklahoma to pounce
on you? Well I didn't know it either, but my horse pointed it out for
me. The tiny little instinct part in the back of his brain brought
it up to him. So he let me know about it. Speaking of glowsticks,
some people had them on their horses. They didn't bother me until the moon
went down. Then as the dominant light sourse they moved with the horse carrying
them.. BAAACK and FORTHHHHH,. BAAAAAACK and FOOOORTHHHHH...
UUUUP and DOWWWWWN.. This can cause vertigo to those not used to it.
... It did.... It was like a visit to Six Flags at Pushamataha Oklahoma.
Lucy Estabrook had three on her horse. We finished together, (she was 2nd,
I was 3rd) and at the finish line, I thought my horse was walking
backwards. It was just vertigo.
Lucy kind of was sandbagging though. All
through the last two loops she went on and on about how her horse was going way
faster than normal and would slow down any minute now. He looked great and
traveled really well, with a great attitude, but she kept going on like he was
on his last legs. We did the last loop 10 minutes faster than the second loop,
but had lower heart rates at the finish. Then her horse got high vet
score. I was pleased as punch, because two weeks before I had told my wife
that my goal was to finish around 4:00 AM, and we came in at 3:59. Perfect
pace.
Dawn was not quite right about the First place and
BC riders. The eventual winner was a young man out for a romantic moonlight ride
with his girlfiriend. He was someplace back in the pack, and when she pulled ( I
think on the second loop), he must have
decided to hurry up and finish so he could get back to her (
AHHH youngsters). He blew past Lucy and I early in the last loop with a nice
ground covering lope, and we never saw him again until the awards meeting. One
of the problems with a night ride is that we weren't sure if he was riding a
flea bitten grey or a pinto. All I know is he had a red glowstick on it's
tail and as it went past us it went UUUUUUPPPP and DOWNNNNN , BAAAAACK and
FOOORTH.. I couldn't watch it any more. The young mans horse didn't get
BC. They gave it to some old guy from Missouri who loaded 212 pounds on a
little 14.3 horse. They probably gave it to him out of pity for how much weight his tiny skinny
horse had to drag up and down those sneaky hills. Or maybe the vertigo
helped him trot his horse in circles at the BC judging.
So next year, when you wish you were at Tevis, but
only feel up to doing a night time 50, this is the place. As you are
riding late into the setting moon heading for the finish line, you can almost
see yourself someday doing the same thing coming into McCann Stadium.
