Yeehaw!.. well more or less ;)

Today was quite an exciting day. It started off fairly ho-hum with some lawn mowing and car washing, but quickly ramped up when I donned a pair of wranglers (YES.. REALLY.. and in 100 degree weather none the less) and went for a little bit of a horse ride! I am not what you would call an “experienced rider” by any means, having only ridden three or four times in my life, so it was a bit of an adventure (and Kendra got a few good laughs on a number of occasions). None the less, it was quite a lot of fun, especially the whole cantering thing which is as fast as I've ever gone on a horse before.
The horse I rode is named Trail. His primary joys in life seem to consist of eating weeds (he needs a bumper sticker which says I BRAKE FOR PLANTS) and leisure. Partly because of this, and probably partly because of my lack of experience, he got a bit uppity about the whole riding business on occasion and did some little jump things which I guess are called "crow-hops". These were a little scary, but quite exciting, and other than this he was very nice, if a bit lacking in the enthusiasm department. It quickly became obvious to me that I need to learn how to sit a horse properly however. Certain bones in my less than amply-padded-butt seem to have taken their fair share of beating, strange muscles in my legs are sore, and on a couple of occasions (usually during that trotting part) I seriously wondered how real cowboys manage to further the species.... A couple of times I did sort of get into the rhythm and things went much more smoothly, so I suspect that practice is probably a key factor here. Anyway, Kendra was nice enough to get photographic evidence of this adventure (see above), so here is a really big THANKS to her for that, and for an exciting afternoon! :)