Karen’s Musings & Endurance Ride Stuff

Death Valley Encounter
Day 2, P2P Day & 22,000 miles!
by Karen Chaton

Karen on Chief and Kayla on Gem

The second day would be the biggest test of the ride for me. The last multiday I had attended in October I had to rest for two days before being able to do a second day, out of the 5 day ride. This time I was determined to give it my best shot no matter how hard it was going to be.

Fortunately the night before I discovered that I could use those “little hotties hand warmers” on my sore muscles. So while I slept they did their job and kept my sore muscles warm and loosened up. What a great pain reliever that was! When I got up, they were still warm–working well past the 8 hours that the packaging says they’ll last.

Again I was fortunate enough to have plenty of help getting ready. One of the hardest things to do sometimes is to learn to accept help or even ask for help when you need it. Especially when you are used to being so independent and doing everything yourself. I knew that if I wanted to ride every day that I was going to need to rely on help in order to make it happen. So I did and it was great having help – I could get used to it!

As soon as Chief’s blanket came off he realized that he was going again. I think he was kind of smug about the whole thing. He likes to go and went back to eating as rapidly as possible upon the realization that he had another day of work ahead. I started out walking on foot so that I could get myself good and warmed up. Sue opted to take the day off so I headed out on my own this morning. I waited for most of the riders to leave and when I saw a nice clear opening I left and we had a nice peaceful and quiet start. After walking for several minutes I mounted up and we were on our way! It was a perfect ride start and I alternated walking in the sand with trotting in the firmer sections through the winding wash.

Before too long, Kayla and her pretty chestnut gelding Gemmy caught up to us. Kayla was a junior when I sponsored her on most of the 2001 XP. She was the only rider to ride the entire 2000 miles of the trip. I tried to tell her that I wasn’t going to be going fast and if I was slowing her down I wouldn’t be offended if she went on ahead. She was pretty funny with her response –we know each other too well – she replied “if you want to get rid of me just say so”. LOL It turned out that Gem and Chief paced well together and we ended up riding together for the rest of the day.

We had the best time, laughing, smiling and rejoicing over the sheer pleasure of getting to ride our wonderful horses on such a beautiful day. It was even warmer today and the trail was such fun. I soon forgot about feeling tired or sore and the euphoria of really being a team with Chief took over and I don’t think I stopped grinning all day long! This is when I really felt like my old self.

As we made our way down the long and winding wash we rode off and on a bit with Chris Herron. On this day his mare Impress Splash made it to 5,000 miles. It’s always an Impressive thing to have a horse reach that kind of mileage in their careers. I remember when Chris started out in this sport and I have to say that he has come a long way – learned a lot and succeeded at what I consider to be one of the most rewarding parts of the sport of endurance riding. Pretty cool.

We did a nice big loop and made our way back to camp for our hour hold and lunch vet check. My husband and dad had stayed there waiting for us. We rearranged our plans a bit, in typical XP rider fashion. Since Kayla and I were riding together we sent my second horse Bo off with her grandparents and they then were able to move to the next camp in Ballarat. This kept all of our extra horses from having to be moved twice – it is a lot of unnecessary work to set up stuff for extra horses just for a couple of hours if you have to move again after that. Dave was then to go to the finish line in Trona and pick up Kayla and myself after we finished. From there we would haul to Ballarat, where John and Dolly (Kayla’s grandparents) were saving a spot for us.

My dad drove over to the finish line in his car and brought back Dave R. and Kassandra who moved their rigs over during lunch. This way they could move their rigs themselves and not have to pay somebody. Dad was also able to help Annie get some of their equipment running and did a few other things to help out.

Lunch went by quickly and we both vetted through without any issues. Today I was riding Chief in Renegades on all four feet that had no pads in them. On the first day he had pads in the fronts. I wanted to see if I could tell a difference, and I could not. He felt sound, even and comfortable on all surfaces either way so I may not bother gluing pads in from now on.  I’ve been riding him on training rides barefoot more often and his feet have really gotten tough (this is ride season # 5 for Chief without using nailed on shoes!)  One of the things I like best about these Renegade hoof boots is that Chief seems to move so well in them and really likes to canter more–the way the boots flex and rotate really allows his joints to move freely and that may have been part of what was contributing to his better than normal pulse recoveries.

The footing continued to be wonderful though we did have an occasional section of rocks. (note the photo of Ralph prying a rock out of his horses hind shoe) Gem and Chief continued to pace along well together in a nice relaxed manner. It was so easy and this is when I feel like I could ride forever. We were in for a treat with some new trail replacing the previous years’ trail going towards Trona which was really a lot of fun to ride as it was a singletrack windy trail. Much better than the long straight road we had previously. On this part of the day we rode past railroad cars and through some tunnels and past a lot of toy haulers, ATV’s, motorcycles and the like. Everybody was really friendly and polite that we encountered.

The year before I rode another horse on the 2nd day so Chief had not gone this way before. It was new trail actually for both of us and even though Chief had no idea where he was going he was sure happy about just going which really made my day! I love point to point rides! There isn’t anything much better than to make a new mileage milestone (22,000!) and have such an enjoyable and pretty much perfect ride on your horse all in the same day. The company I spent it with wasn’t half bad either, the only problem with Kayla is that she never complains. That’s the only complaint I had all day! What a perfect day.

Dave and Joe (Kayla’s boyfriend) were waiting for us at the finish line.  Joe had run on foot from the lunch check to the finish line and along the way left writing in the sand – messages for Kayla.  Did anybody else notice the Kayla messages?  We both vetted through and got the horses tack off while they ate. We gave them a few minutes to do that while we rested and refueled ourselves a little bit. Then we loaded them up into the trailer and left for the 40 mile trip to the next camp in Ballarat.

We pulled into camp just as it was getting dark and parked in a spot next to the Lakso’s and unloaded the horses and all of Kayla’s tack and soon had our camp set up. They had taken good care of Bo and said he was a very good boy. He and Chief were happy to get reacquainted.

I was feeling pretty good about how well Chief was doing and thought that I would ride him again the third day and possibly the fourth. I love riding him all of the days of a multiday.

Then….I spent some time later that evening talking with Dave Rabe who convinced me that I really should ride Bo the next day. I did bring Bo to the ride for a reason. It is a lot of work to take care of two horses and I wouldn’t have brought him if I hadn’t really intended to ride him – so after a little more thought I decided that I would indeed ride Bo the next day. I knew alternating would have been better but because of the milestone I made that day I had really wanted to ride Chief.

I quickly showered, got cleaned up and headed over to Sue’s trailer where she was fixing a lasagna dinner for us. This turned out to be quite an event. Have you ever seen what the equivalent of exploding lasagna looks like all over the inside of a trailer? When Sue went to take the lasagna out of the microwave which was high up the container collapsed and that began a series of events that ultimately led to us having Annie feed us dinner! As the pan collapsed we heard a screech out of Sue….then as if in slow motion myself, Dave and my dad watched as the dish somersaulted around and around sending pieces of cheese, pasta and sauce flying and bouncing on (and off of) the counter, the wall and finally partially landing in the trash below. Our lasagna dinner had flown and landed with explosive speed everywhere leaving not one inch of counter, wall or floor uncontaminated – it looked like we were in an Alien movie with the lasagna looking similar to exploding innards. Fortunately we all had a really good laugh over it.

What a day. I can’t remember the last time I laughed and had such a good time. It had been awhile. Before bed I gave Chief a big hug and whispered among other things, ‘thank you’ in his ear. He loves when I spend quiet time with him like that and will even stop eating to listen to what I have to say. I wish he would listen so well when I’M ON HIS BACK!!

Yeah, it was hard.  I knew it would be, but it was worth it.

To be continued…

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