Re: Night Riding/Insects

[rides2far@juno.com (Angela C. McGhee)]

>
><< The only way my horse and I will ever be able to get in enough 
>conditioning
> time is if we spend at least part of our time working at dusk (oh, 
>the
> mosquitoes will have a feast on my body!!) or after dark.

I know it's a little harder to keep your speed up at night, but I've
found that flying insects can be a great training aid.  The average
horsefly can travel at 7mph, and the elite horseflies can top 9mph. 
Before I started doing endurance, I used to use tons of fly repellent. 
Then when I started training, and my horse sweated it all off, I was
concerned, until I realized that it wasn't a problem so long as we kept
moving.

  When the horseflies get really bad in the early summer, I can sometimes
kill two and three in one slap during warmup.  (I generally bat about
800, I like to keep up with my kills to pass time). Since I try to
consider myself a "thinking" rider, I occassionally spare an especially
slow horsefly and simply flip him off of my horse, to keep him in the
gene pool.  If we only let the fast ones survive, we may breed a strain
of "superfly".  If you've got a decent logging road that you can train on
in the dark, I would think that you could stay well ahead of a swarm of
mosquitoes.  

During warm-ups, if the little ear flies happen to attack, you can break
off the leafy part of a tree limb and tuck it in the bridle between the
ears.  That will keep them off for the first 15 minutes of walking, then
you can remove it and quit looking stupid.  Sometimes I ride with a
crop-length switch with the leaves on the end to use as a fly swisher. 
Once Kaboot figured it out, he loves it.  One day I saw one of my ponies
in the yard having a real fit kicking his belly and laying down and
jumping back up.  Went out there and a horsefly had crawled right up in
his sheath.  Saw a friend's horse behaving likewise as we warmed them up,
checked, and same thing.  Something to think about with Summer coming on.
 By the way, the ticks are horrible this year.  Have already been pulling
them from horses.

When I was riding nights a lot, I wore a white helmet, with reflector
stickers on back, and put a couple of reflector stickers on my cantle. 
You can get a package of them from the Nashbar catalog for bikers fairly
cheaply.  Their phone number is 1-800-NASHBAR for a catalog. One warning
about night riding.  Just because a trail was clear yesterday, do not
assume it is clear tonight.  A friend was going at speed up a logging
road one minute, and woke up staring up at the moon some time later. 
Seems a tree had fallen at about her helmet level.  The horse was a mile
or so away, waiting at the trailer..."Oh, you fell off?  When?"

Angie and Kaboot (who looks suave in leafy hats)

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