Today brought some ups and downs and interesting quirks. It started out great. Crossbo’s mystery lameness disappeared yesterday and he was feeling sassy today. I decided to play it safe and give him some more time off, but that was no problem because Arthur was also feeling in his prime. With a 2:00 PM hunt, I had lots of time to relax and prepare without rushing. I should have known Murphy’s law would have to kick in sometime.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The first fly in the ointment appeared when I arrived at the meet, in plenty of time, and started tacking up. I put the saddle on Arthur’s back, looked at, and said “Aww SHIT!”<\/p>\n
\nLast week, I decided it was about time for a new pair of stirrup leathers. Since I wasn’t sure what size I needed, I took one off the saddle to measure. That turned out to be a totally unnecessary step, because when I walked into Wise Choice and told Dave<\/a> I needed stirrup leathers, he said “You need 54s, let’s see what I got”. He turned out to have a very nice pair of 54s. (What kind of image does that conjure up?)<\/p>\n \nI decided not to bother putting the new leathers on today, because the old ones still had some life in them. That was kind of stupid, because I had plenty of time, and putting the new ones on wouldn’t have been much more trouble than replacing the old one I took off to measure.<\/p>\n \nI’m sure you can see where this is going. Replaclng the old leather would have been almost trouble as putting the new ones on, IF<\/b> I had done it. But unfortunately, I did neither, and there I was, looking at a saddle with one stirrup.<\/p>\n \nFortunately, the day was saved by a well-prepared member of the Bitch Pack who rummaged through the warehouse of equipment in her trailer and provided me with a spare. So I was saved from the unpleasant choice of either riding lopsided all afternoon (which might not be unusual for me), or giving up and returning home.<\/p>\n \nThings went fairly smoothly for the first hour or so after that, but Murphy wasn’t done yet. As we cantered through some trees, a rider ahead of me went down after testing his helmet’s blunt force impact resistance on one of the trees.<\/p>\n \nThe next hour or so was spent in a minor clusterfuck of locating vehicles and first-aid equipment. Our extremely reliable medical officer (a former ER nurse) who came to the rescue of the fallen rider was also the one who had lent me a stirrup. It would have been pretty damn unchivalrous to ride away, on her stirrup, leaving her to tend to the victim. So I hung around to render whatever assistance I could.<\/p>\n \nWe finally got him strapped to a backboard and hauled him to a road, where we transferred him to the capable hands of Lexington’s Fire\/EMS department. Now I just have to figure out how to explain to my family that I helped save a Republican’s life, and not just any Republican, but one who hosts fund-raising lunches with Karl Rove.<\/p>\n \nAfter getting him shipped off to a hospital, and ponying his horse back to the trailer, there was just one chore left. His car needed to be driven to his farm. Actually, this wasn’t a particularly unpleasant chore, because his farm was not far away, and like his hero, Karl Rove, he drives a Jaguar. At least Republicans can afford nice cars. What do you think? Would anybody mistake me<\/a> for Today brought some ups and downs and interesting quirks. It started out great. Crossbo’s mystery lameness disappeared yesterday and he was feeling sassy today. I decided to play it safe and give him some more time off, but that was no problem because Arthur was also feeling in his prime. With a 2:00 PM hunt,… Continue reading Check out my new wheels<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horseplay","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-1B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nKarl<\/a>? Should I use that picture on one of those online dating sites?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![Dave<\/a> I needed stirrup leathers, he said “You need 54s, let’s see what I got”. He turned out to have a very nice pair of 54s. (What kind of image does that conjure up?)<\/p>\n\nI decided not to bother putting the new leathers on today, because the old ones still had some life in them. That was kind of stupid, because I had plenty of time, and putting the new ones on wouldn’t have been much more trouble than replacing the old one I took off to measure.<\/p>\n\nI’m sure you can see where this is going. Replaclng the old leather would have been almost trouble as putting the new ones on, IF<\/b> I had done it. But unfortunately, I did neither, and there I was, looking at a saddle with one stirrup.<\/p>\n\nFortunately, the day was saved by a well-prepared member of the Bitch Pack who rummaged through the warehouse of equipment in her trailer and provided me with a spare. So I was saved from the unpleasant choice of either riding lopsided all afternoon (which might not be unusual for me), or giving up and returning home.<\/p>\n\nThings went fairly smoothly for the first hour or so after that, but Murphy wasn’t done yet. As we cantered through some trees, a rider ahead of me went down after testing his helmet’s blunt force impact resistance on one of the trees.<\/p>\n\nThe next hour or so was spent in a minor clusterfuck of locating vehicles and first-aid equipment. Our extremely reliable medical officer (a former ER nurse) who came to the rescue of the fallen rider was also the one who had lent me a stirrup. It would have been pretty damn unchivalrous to ride away, on her stirrup, leaving her to tend to the victim. So I hung around to render whatever assistance I could.<\/p>\n\nWe finally got him strapped to a backboard and hauled him to a road, where we transferred him to the capable hands of Lexington’s Fire\/EMS department. Now I just have to figure out how to explain to my family that I helped save a Republican’s life, and not just any Republican, but one who hosts fund-raising lunches with Karl Rove.<\/p>\n\nAfter getting him shipped off to a hospital, and ponying his horse back to the trailer, there was just one chore left. His car needed to be driven to his farm. Actually, this wasn’t a particularly unpleasant chore, because his farm was not far away, and like his hero, Karl Rove, he drives a Jaguar. At least Republicans can afford nice cars. What do you think? Would anybody mistake me<\/a> for\nKarl<\/a>? Should I use that picture on one of those online dating sites?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today brought some ups and downs and interesting quirks. It started out great. Crossbo’s mystery lameness disappeared yesterday and he was feeling sassy today. I decided to play it safe and give him some more time off, but that was no problem because Arthur was also feeling in his prime. With a 2:00 PM hunt,… Continue reading Check out my new wheels<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horseplay","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-1B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/jmatt.net\/rolex\/2002\/Misc\/dave1.jpg\"){kind=link}
![me<\/a> for\n](\"http:\/\/jmatt.net\/blogpix\/jag.jpg\"){kind=link}
![Karl<\/a>? Should I use that picture on one of those online dating sites?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today brought some ups and downs and interesting quirks. It started out great. Crossbo’s mystery lameness disappeared yesterday and he was feeling sassy today. I decided to play it safe and give him some more time off, but that was no problem because Arthur was also feeling in his prime. With a 2:00 PM hunt,… Continue reading Check out my new wheels<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horseplay","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-1B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/jmatt.net\/blogpix\/rove_jag_2.jpg\"){kind=link}