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[RC] March horsenews - Mike SherrellHorses are better than cars
January was dry, so although everything was green, the footing was
firm, so the riding was great. Aided by the GPS, Jean and I made a very nice
loop through vineyards, orchards and fields west of Fairfield. The next
weekend we made another big loop southeast of Winters, mostly through and
alongside walnut orchards, and managed to time it so that we were able to
tie the horses up in the town park in the center of Winters and have lunch
at the coffeehouse across the street.
About the first of March we went up to Henry Curry?s ranch near Klamath
Falls and picked up Verdadura, a very pretty little near-black mare, meant
to be Jean?s second horse. I?ve ridden her maybe half a dozen times, and
kept her in her own paddock to get her to bond to humans, before I turn her
out with some of the herd.
Then Jean crashed the car into a tree, appropriately enough while on
her way to Cotati Large Animal vets to pick up some antiobiotics for
Margareta, powdering her ankle. She?s stuck in bed right now and at best
will not be on horseback again until fall.
Traveller was developing knobs on several vertebrae that lie under the
cantle of the saddle and on long rides the tallest of them in particular was
having the fur rubbed off. So I reassembled a Peruvian work saddle that had
been getting dusty and mildewed on the saddle rack, because it has a wide
open gap between the two sides so that it doesn?t come anywhere near the
spine at any point. I had lost one of the original stirrups, but it turns
out that English stirrups and stirrup leathers work just fine and are a heck
of a lot cheaper than Peruvian stirrups of any kind. English stirrups are
heavy lumps of steel, appropriately called ?irons?, but I found some
featherweight plastic ones on the website of the Old Dairy Saddelry in the
UK, and some $3 nylon stirrup ?leathers?. The whole combo works pretty well.
It actually seems that T gaits more readily and seems happier towards the
end of long rides.
The first day I tried the reconstructed Peruvian saddle was a Saturday
when, since Jean was still in the hospital, I planned to go for a two-day
horsecamping run down the valley, but distracted by the saddle I forgot the
sidepull, and didn?t remember it until an hour into the trip, so back we
went. With half the day shot, I opted to push as far around the canal-creeks
of the west county as I could, fences be damned, and we managed a five hour
run. I do mean run, too, as Traveller was so hot to go that at one point,
when I got off him to probe for a possible passage under the 101 freeway, I
had to stop him from climbing a six foot bank topped by a chain link fence.
While I was checking out another possible passage under the freeway, a
three-channel tunnel that one of the creeks goes through, I was probing the
bottom with a pole to see if it was firm enough to ride Traveller through
when I lost my balance and stepped in. Now Gore-Tex-line boots are great for
keeping water out, but they are just as good at keeping it in, and if they
get wet inside it takes about a week to dry them out. And even if you?re not
in over the tops long enough for them to fill up, I?ve learned that if the
tops of your socks get wet they?ll wick down inside and saturate the boot
lining and you?ll be looking for last season?s rotting old pair to keep you
from slipping in the muck for the week it takes your good ones to dry out.
So I whipped off boots and socks and looked around for a place to hang
out while the socks dried a bit. We were right next to the freeway roar.
Since the pathway was too gravelly for my tender feet, I stuffed the socks
in the top of a saddlebag, tied the bootlaces together and hung them over my
shoulder, and, maneuvering Traveller with iron determination to keep him
from expressing whatever irritation might have crossed his little mind by
his usual method of stepping on my feet, I clambered up and rode down the
creek to a pleasant, sunny spot with plenty of nice grass.
The next weekend Jean was in the rehab facility, so I took Traveller
horsecamping out in the Valley north of Patterson, between I-5 and the San
Joaquin river. The first day we went north and east along canals and through
orchards, headed for a treeline, hit the river and went up it for a little
ways, circumvented a huge turf farm ? the biggest lawn you ever saw ? and
came back along the cursed newish subdivisions on the north side of town.
Spent the evening hours at a Starbucks, then camped out alongside the
Delta-Mendota Canal at the back of an orchard.
Sunday?s ride was nicer, very nice in fact. We went northwest through
the orchards between I-5 and Highway 33, weaving back and forth across the
California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota Canal, through mostly walnut and
almond orchards. We saw almost nobody except when we came near the freeway.
I noticed that Traveller refused to drink the excess irrigation water that
ran out of the orchards, and Traveller has never turned up his nose at even
the most opaque puddles, as long as he can slosh away the scum, so I wonder
how liberally the poison is applied to the trees. I stopped when I found a
place along an irrigation canal where the cement lining had crumbled away
enough that I could get close enough to dip water out for him with the
shower cap.
Now that Jean?s home, I have to tend to her, but we have someone come
in on Sundays. For two weekends we made some big 20-mile loops in the
triangle formed by 80, 505 and 5, between Winters and Davis. The late
winter-early spring greens are lovely, and in late Feb-early March the nut
trees are in blossom. Running alongside the orchards is utterly charming,
although Traveller persists in bowing far away from the beehives stacked
alongside. Once he began snorting and shaking his head, so I think he may
have sniffed one up.
A few of the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/MCSherrell, the
March 11 ones, are from the Patterson trip, although none of the pictures
show any of the beauty of these rides.
Regards,
Mike Sherrell
Grizzly Analytical
707 887 2919; fax 707 887 9834
www.postindustrialhorsemanship.com
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