[RC] Recruited? Heck I Was Darned Near Drafted! - Paul Sidio
Back in 1998, I was innocently riding my new horse
in the Mark Twain National Forest. He was an Arabian gelding, and I was on my
third saddle from the tack store. He was hard to get fitted.
Suddenly out of the woods burst a helmet
wearing woman at a flying trot. She went past me and then when she noticed I was
with an Arabian, she wheeled around and trotted back to me. When I told her that
I was trying to get a saddle to fit my horse, she jumped off her mare and
started taking off her saddle. " Here, try this one". She said. "It
doesn't have a horn" I replied. She laughed and said I didn't need a horn unless
I was roping a cow.
It fit my horse, and it turned out she had gotten
it from the same tack store as I was trying the saddles from. She told me
her name was Sue Crewes, and that I needed to do endurance. This was the first I
had ever heard of the sport. I told her that I loved trail riding, and liked to
scoot along, but 25 miles was a several day journey, and who would be
crazy enough to go that far in one day? She explained about 50's and 100's and I
just laughed.
She kept calling me up to go trail riding
there, and sometimes her friend, Karen Beason came along too. They told me about
getting off the horse to run down steep hills to reduce leg tendon
wear on a soft horse, and about tailing up steep rocky hills. (It was months
later after I had practiced this many many times that I finally noticed that
they themselves never actually did these things.) They were always helping me
understand the things needed to do endurance riding.
That winter they started cleaning up the trails for
an endurance ride they were having later that spring (Crewes In the Bar K) and
had me come along to help clear limbs and brush off the trails. After several
weeks of this, they insisted that my horse and I were ready for a 25 mile ride.
When I tried to beg off, Sue kept after me. One thing we that do endurance
sometimes forget is how immense the task of going 25-50 miles seems to riders
who have never attempted it.
So when ride day rolled around, Sue made sure I was
there and ready to roll. After that, I was hooked. Without her kindness
and persistance, there is no way I would have ever done this sport. Dang I
miss her.
