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Oh Paul, thanks for that wonderful story about Sue! I think we all miss her greatly.

"Press on. Nothing can take the place of persistence," Calvin Coolidge

Chris

BayRab Acres http://pages.prodigy.net/paus

Lake RegionSWA http://lakeregionswa.fws1.com

 

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From: "Paul Sidio" <Paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [RC] Recruited? Heck I Was Darned Near Drafted!
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:02:52 -0600

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.

 

Paul N. Sidio

Spokane MO

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