Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Well, there I go stirring up trouble again.

As far as we're concerned Big Bear was a success.  More on that in a 
second.

You must remember that exactly one month prior to Big Bear was the last 
Swanton 100.  Because of the cancelation of Tevis one heck of a lot of 
people went to Swanton instead.  Not too many horses can do Swanton and 
then do another 100 a month later.  Also, Kat restricts the number of 
entrants in her rides to 20, so she was not expecting too many riders.  
That in the end only one of the entrants was able to make it wasn't 
really a big deal.  Made it a heck of a lot easier on everyone 
concerned :-)

Now back to why Big Bear was a success.  The spots where Kat thought 
there might be trouble weren't any trouble at all.  This ride was very 
time dependent.  There were only 8 miles of road in the route where you 
could make up time if you fell behind.  That doesn't leave much room 
for error.  The girls were able to keep to the time schedule for their 
38 miles.  However, it was decided that if there is a repeat of the 
ride next year the trail should be rerouted to eliminate the first loop 
that had a real live and for true cliff scene in order to include more 
trail where the horses could really stretch out and put some mileage 
behind them (especially since the Forest Service reopened the fire 
closed portion of the trail a week prior to the ride).  That should get 
Julie Herrera to sign up!  Everyone had a good time.  No horses were 
treated.  All the volunteers said they'd help again next year.  We only 
had one water trough stolen (we decided to leave the trough with water 
for the riders that were putting up the glow sticks, but apparently 
someone drove by thinking it was abandoned and took it - or so we 
assumed).  Most of all, I didn't screw anything up!  Trust me, I'm sure 
Kat will chime in eventually, Big Bear was a success.

You must also remember that the face of AERC is changing (and not for 
the better in my opinion).  People stopped wanting to do 100's a long 
time ago and the 50 miler took precedence.  Now people don't want to do 
50's and are claiming 25's are endurance miles too (bah).  That pretty 
much leaves those people wanting to do 100's as scarce as hens teeth.  
So when you get a ride manager who feels anything less then 100 miles 
isn't endurance and doesn't fuss around with providing anything less, 
the fact that she is willing to hold the ride for just one rider, you 
truly have a success.

Tori


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