Monday, March 2, 2009

2/27/09 Lesson & More Tires

A cold front blew in Saturday about 12:00am, so I woke to some blustery winds & cooler temperatures. I strongly considered cancelling the lesson, changing lesson location back to the house, a wide variety of things. I decided mid-morning to just buck-up and get my things in order. I'd put a lot of coordinating and effort into the trip for the day... I wasn't cancelling.

A friend came along, who we'll nickname "R", since I have a feeling he'll be in more blogs coming soon. We gathered both horses, and headed out. The wind tried flipping the trailer to and fro', but I held on.

Les met us at the arena, warmed Romeo up, and tied him to the trailer. I saddled Ransom up, and Jenn arrived just as I was getting ready to lunge him. Ransom took a long hard look at the arena boogers (including some roping steers), and I said to him during his warmup lunge, "Hey, Buddy. You're the center of attention. Everybody is here watching you, so I hope you're doing your best." He was...

I hopped on for a decent walk/trot lunge lesson. Ransom was fighting the wind, so he was fast coming out away from the wind direction, and slow going into it. I did a little sitting, but it was difficult to get into his rhythm. I paid no attention to how long we rode, but it's worth mentioning we started the lunge lesson headed left - Ransom's bad direction. When we switched direction to the right, and I realized the hard part was over, I was pretty relieved. I got two little canter spurts in, headed right. They weren't pretty, but hey, accomplished anyways.

Took the line off, and walked him out around the roping box end of the arena. Ransom took a long hard look at both the snack booth (white cement block building), and the heading/heeling boxes. When I reversed him in, facing the boxes, he backed up sharp a few steps. Not a big deal, but it did startle me. I felt his back tense right before he did it, and there wasn't much to stop him. I was pretty nervous, he was a bit nervous, but we got through it. They probably weren't similar, but the lunge lesson felt just as long as the walk-out. Once Ransom was totally settled, and I was totally settled, we called the lesson good, and I hopped off right at the boxes.

Trip home was, well, not near as pleasant as the trip there. Wind blew the truck & trailer ALL OVER the highway. I had white knuckles on the wheel a few times, realizing that, with Romeo, Ransom, and "R", I had three precious loads of cargo to take home carefully. Holy pooh! Not at all nerve-wracking, really... :S

We got back to the house, unloaded, unwrapped, and unblanketed both boys, walking back to the truck, HOLY CRAP! Passenger's side front tire is nearly flat. No WONDER that trip was so hard getting home!!!

Tire unfortunately not repairable. That means, in about four months, I've replaced two tires on the truck. Two more to go, which I will complete in about two weeks when the work bonus arrives.

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