Early Afternoon Ride, Taro

The cool weather means that I can ride in the early afternoon.  Late spring and summers in the high desert are usually plenty hot by 10 or 11 AM, so if I want to ride, I have to go early or wait until after around 5pm.  El Nino has brought a series of storms and cool weather through this spring though.

Taro, my 18 y/o Arabian gelding has had a few years of leisure while I rode Jo and the two youngsters.  I've decided he needs to go back to work.  Well, it's just nice to be on an "old soul" some times.  I'm just getting too old to put up with the youngsters and while Jo can be a pleasure to ride, it usually takes several spring rides to get her back in the pleasure range.

Every spring, Jo decides that she just can't quite trust me to keep us safe.  She will question every stump and every noise.  OMG, EVERY spring we go through this.  By mid summer she gives it up and lets me make the decisions without question, but getting there is a real pain in the arse.

Any way, today I decided to test out boot combinations on Taro.  I don't need boots if we stay off the gravel roads, but I never know for sure, so need to find a combination that he's comfortable with.  Since he hasn't been out in a while and I had the boots on him, I stuck to a flatland ride.

We did a 10 mile loop.  Ah, the old man doesn't enjoy going out the way he did when he was young.  Well, maybe if I get some conditioning on him he'll start to enjoy it more.  It was a nice ride though, saw a couple coyotes and the weather really was perfect.

Much prefer the coyotes to the badgers that I ran into last week.  That was scary as hell!  They were coming through the manzanita and because I didn't have a good view of them, I thought it was a couple raccoons.  I hollered at them and they kept coming.  That was the first clue that they weren't raccoons.  When they got on the road, about 40 feet in front of us, they turned and waddled up the hill.  Dumb me, I hollered at them again.  They looked at each other, turned around and charged us!

I was on Jo and she was not at all amused by badgers charging down the hill at her.  Can't say I blame her!  She spun and headed down the hill.  When I got her stopped I could almost hear her thinking, "and you think I'm going to trust you to keep us safe when you put us in a situation where badgers are charging us?  I don't think so!"  Ah, such fun.

No, really, it is fun, I love riding the wilderness near by.