Bill and Juanita, owners of Allenspark Lodge B&B, are living their dream...

running a successful business and riding as often as possible.



Saturday, January 30, 2010

Joust No Darn Fun.

Bad decisions make good stories.

About a year and a half ago, our daughter, her fiance, Juanita and I went out for a ride in the national forest across the highway from us (I love that the lodge is within a couple hundred yards of twenty plus hours of trails).  Beautiful day for a ride, the horses were feeling good and so were we.

Now, for the last few years, I would occasionally grab a stick or limb while riding and carry it like a "lance".  Ranger was never amused, but would put up with it for a couple minutes.  On this particular trail ride as we were walking along the trail, I passed the best-lance-ever beside the trail.  It was about twenty feet off the trail in the middle of a small, pine-needle covered opening in the trees.  "Woo hoo!" I chortled as I jumped off my horse and ran for this long, straight, natural lance.  Great, about fifteen feet of straight stick!  I grabbed my new stick and climbed back onto Ranger.

Ranger and I have reached an understanding over the years. He understands that he can buck hard enough to send me skyward, and I understand that it hurts like crazy when the trip is over.  This arrangement works out pretty well, though I think Ranger is happier with it than I am.

I had just seated myself on my little mustang, when he took serious offense to the new situation. ***"DROP IT BILL"***    "Wait, Ranger this is a really great..."    ***"NO NO NO NO OFF OFF OFF OFF"***..  I have a very clear memory of thinking how stupid I was going to feel trying to explain to the EMT's why I had fifteen feet of stick jammed into me.  I threw the stick away about the third bounce.  Ranger continued *** "OFF OFF OFF OFF"***.  So, I did.

I had made a world class three point landing (both heels and my butt) in the pine needle covered clearing, and was still holding a rein.  At the end of this particular rein was a bug-eyed, lock-jawed, pissed off little mustang.  And, just off to my right, still on the trail were three horses, with three riders and all six had the same open mouthed expression-"Swiss cheese feces! What was that!" (It's a G rated blog, I can't say holy sh*t).

I stood up, dusted myself off, and climbed back onto my horse, without my stick.  I think I'll pass on any future jousting tournaments I might be invited to.

No pictures, thankfully.

Bill

7 comments:

  1. I still have tears running down my face, just remembering this "jousting practice". I was amazed our other three horses stood there calmly watching, like they were scoring judges, or something.
    Juanita

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  2. RockCrawlinChef thought Washoe was going to join in. Have to tell you, though, since there were no mid-air acrobatics, your score was low. Ranger, upper 40s; you stuck him out pretty well, so we'll say mid-30s. Overall score: mid-70s.

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  3. Maybe my next book should be "Riding With My Parents". :)

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  4. GunDiva- You could call it "ER horsemanship"
    Bill

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  5. I've had your blog bookmarked as one to catch up on for awhile now. I think that one line "swiss cheese feces" has made spending the evening catching up on it worthwhile.

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  6. I totally think this should be part of the book. And it merits either a redo for a photo op, or an artist's rendering from a particular talented jousting dude :)

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  7. And yes... swiss cheese feces is CLASSIC

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