Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Fast forward almost 2 weeks to Wednesday, 3 days before the ride.

Lynne Glazer and I went down to Wildomar for our appointments with 
hairstylist extraordinaire Julie Herrera.  While there Julie got a 
phone call and was overheard giving directions to her house from Rancho 
Cucamonga.

Melissa from Telluride, Colorado was coming all the way out here to do 
her first 100, and she was going to become a member of Julie's team 
(sorry Melissa I don't remember your last name).  She was bringing her 
Paso, Cabo, out for his first 100 as well.  She had also been driving 
through one of the nastiest storms we had all year on Tuesday (which 
isn't saying much since we only got 2 1/2 inches of rain - but the 
winds were Hell) and was looking forward to stopping.

We were still there when she arrived and we all got cozy in Julie's 
salon.  Before you know it she was telling us her 'life story', 
including how her hair came to be the rather unusual shades of 
red/orange.  It's not my place to tell you her life story, but suffice 
it to say we found her fascinating, funny, charming, engaging, and all 
around totally cool.  Her horse is cute too.

We left Julie and Melissa and headed home to our own horses.

I had planned on working Friday, but decided at the last minute to not 
bother.  Good thing too, because my Friday was extremely busy and I 
just barely made it to the ride meeting.  I had been using my truck as 
a temporary tackroom since moving Taffy up to Chris Herron's Bar-H 
ranch (only in CA is a few acres called a ranch), and had only moved my 
tack into the newly constructed building a week before.  There was 
still a lot of garbage in it, though, not to mention filled with hair, 
sweat and dirt.  I finished removing all the junk from the truck and 
took it to the car wash.  Yes, I had my truck washed and waxed the day 
before I was going to be driving it up and down dirt roads.  Then there 
was the grocery shopping I had to do.  Couldn't just shop for a few 
things for myself.  One has to anticipate the unexpected at endurance 
rides and bring extra provisions of all sorts.  That took awhile.  Then 
I had to prepare the house for my husband to be by himself for at least 
24 hours - poor man is helpless without me.  Lastly, it being the last 
of the month and the price of stamps rising on Monday, I decided to pay 
the bills and get them to the Post Office.  That just always takes 
forever because my hand has a hard time writing all those numbers.

I finally headed out to base camp.  Normally a 30 minute trip from my 
house (with 15 of those minutes just getting me to the freeway), on 
this day it took nearly 1 1/2 hours because it was rush hour and Friday 
all at the same time.  I left my house early in order to gab with 
people, but it took so much time to get there I barely made it before 
the meeting began.  Normal ride meeting (yes, Julie, the ride starts at 
5 AM) with the following exception.  I was no longer needed as a 
shuttle driver because the forest was open to all.  The rain we had on 
Tuesday was enough to keep the park open, and since all the crew people 
had 4x4's they were going to drive themselves up.  With gas prices the 
way they are I was more than just a little pleased, but dismayed that I 
no longer had an actual job.  That ended quickly when Kat added that I 
still needed to drive her down to the bottom of Harding Truck Trail so 
she could drag ride that section back up to the vetting area and the 
rest of the ride home.

Since I didn't have to be at base camp at the crack of dawn to begin 
shuttling people up the hill, Lynne and I agreed to meet for a hot 
breakfast at 7 AM before we went to our respective places for the day.  
Lynne to take pictures and then sit at an intersection to point the way 
for the riders.  Me to vet check 2, 3 and 4.  I got home after the ride 
meeting and found that my husband did indeed pull our camping gear down 
from the rafters when he got home from work, so I loaded up the truck 
(with his help) with everything except our tent and went to bed.

Tori


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