Hi Sweetheart,
Whew! No surprise, it’s been way to busy over this past weekend to even write one word that wasn’t absolutely essential to the ride! Early mornings, late nights, tons of problem-solving along the way, hard to even recap everything we had to do! Thursday worked out very well, camp host Steve did an excellent job of parking all the trailers, seemed like there was plenty of room for everyone, and of course, Dupuis is such a fabulous facility with its 30 paddocks and 36 stalls, so no problems there. The ride meeting went well, but I forgot to give James of the SFWMD a chance to talk, so now he’s going to tease me about that forever! Once we got everyone out on the shuttles and moving trailers (convoy got off just 12 minutes late, which I thought was pretty good for our first morning,) and Jeff arrived at 8:15 as requested, and we quickly loaded up Flash and headed out to the halfway point so I could get in front of the pack. Only had to put up a couple extra markers, the trail looked really good. Everyone made it to camp just fine and in reasonable time, and they did a pretty good job parking the trailers with only a couple in the wrong place, but it’s a good lesson learned, and we even discovered we have enough room for quite a few more! No one got too lost (except for Augie’s group, again, he took them off the trail by a mile and a half, through water so deep the horses were swimming, exactly why I marked the trail as I did, to avoid that!). Nevertheless they were back in camp in plenty of time, and I headed back to Dupuis, where I did a bunch of paperwork in preparation for tomorrow’s ride. When I arrived back in Corbett on Saturday, the first crisis of many crises during the day was that four horses got loose in the night, and were nowhere to be found. Not sure why they would wander away from a grassy area filled with other horses and lots of hay laying around to go on a walkabout out in the swamp, but that’s what they did! They called the sheriff, who showed up a bit later, and they ended up getting some air support (helicopters) to come look for them. While that was going on, the rest of the trailer convoy got out at about the same time as yesterday, when one got stuck (a girl had a small trailer whose back bumper got caught in a bit of a dip, and instead of gunning it to get out, slowed down which made it get more stuck.) Several people had already come out to her rescue, and one of the Evergladies whose horse was missing brought her bigger truck over and got it out quickly enough for her to rejoin the convoy. I finally headed out on the trail, but only 15 minutes before 8:00, so it wasn’t long before two speedy endurance girls caught up to me and passed, which, of course, made Flash think we were in a race, so I had to fight with him for the rest of the way. I put up a few markings, but the FTA trail is really well marked, so there wasn’t much to do, thank goodness. I kept getting texts and calls about sightings of the missing horses, so they were getting tracked down, fortunately. Apparently there was an incident of horses escaping during another event some years back, and they were never found, so it was a relief to hear they had been spotted. Then I got a call from one of the folks in the Miami group, one of their horses was colicking, laying down and evidently in serious trouble. They were only three miles in, but despite instructions from Anita to turn around and go back to camp so we could pick them up, they didn’t want to go back through that section of Cypress swamp and insisted on keeping going, even though it was another 11 miles! Crazy! When I finally reached the Beeline (with Flash still trying to catch the two horses in front of us), we arranged to get my trailer, which was the emergency trailer) back out into Corbett to recover two of the four lost horses (the girls they belonged to had another two-horse trailer for the other two), so Jeff headed over there to pick them up and take them to Riverbend. Then I called James so we could unlock a gate at the Beeline so we could take another trailer driven by Scott into the park as far back into the woods and as close to the trail as possible. He was at another event, but he drove up and joined us in getting the trailer back as far as we could. Of course, it took hours for the group to reach them. They finally managed to reach the trailer and get them out. Meanwhile, the rest of the group decided it was too late to ride the rest of the way and they all wanted to get out at the Beeline, so we had Jeff and Scott and another trailer mustered at the Beeline by the time they got there, and they were all taken out at that point, which was probably good because it would have been dark by the time they got to camp if they had tried to ride it. Phew, what a day! I finally headed back to camp with a near empty fuel tank, so I stopped in Indiantown for diesel as the sun was going down, then got back to camp and did all the paperwork for tomorrow’s ride. Then I started getting calls from Anita about the guy with the sick horse, who at first didn’t want a vet, then the horse went down in camp again so they brought out the vet, then they apparently didn’t do what the vet told them, including taking him to the PBG animal hospital, and it got worse, and then apparently a lot of heated words were exchanged, and in the end, Anita called to cops to force him to leave and take his sick horse with him, she didn’t want it dying there, and when they tried to get him up the owner was all, “don’t touch my horse”, but finally, they got him in the trailer. One of the other riders offered to drive him there because apparently when he got back to camp he had three beers and a shot of whisky, so not in any shape to drive, and off they went. Unfortunately, despite Anita’s insistence they not come back to camp, the rider brought them back, but Anita was home by then, probably a good thing. But the horse was doing better, which was the most important thing. So naturally with all the phone calls, it was another late night for me! Then Sunday rolled around pretty quick but without the drive down into Corbett, it seemed like a breeze of a day, from a riding perspective, but then we had lots of rain in the forecast, and we did get some rain, though it cleared up in the afternoon. But that’s why I hav a slicker! The guy with the sick horse avoided Anita, and somehow they managed to slip into the convoy and do the ride, despite being thrown out the night before. Later in the day at the end event, though, he apparently came over and apologized profusely to Anita, and I guess that meant something, but he’s still banned from future rides for disobeying a Ride Manager’s orders, so we won’t be seeing him again. Pretty soon it was all over, Awards Certificates and raffle prizes given away, everybody packed up and leaving. I took my volunteer Kathleen back to her car and drove around Riverbend, the only manure not scattered was where the Miami folks had been parked, which seems to be the case with a lot of them. Anyway, I got back to camp, and found a bunch of the OTL riders had come back here as suggested, so I spent a little time with them, and checked all the stalls for cleanliness, found two in the big barn dirty, though not the one I had expected, surprisingly. Finally made it back home, too tired to do much of anything, so I made a bowl of popcorn and watched a little TV, which I fell asleep through, and was in bed by a little after 9:00. So overall, it went well despite all the challenges. We had nearly triple the riders on Friday and Saturday from previous rides, put a lot more money in the coffers because we charged more, and almost everyone was saying they had a great time and would do it again next year. So it looks like a success, and that next year it will be growing, so we’ll have to fix some of the issues we had this year so that it runs more smoothly next year. We certainly learned a lot! Went to be with a sore throat and the beginning of a cold sore, so I made it a point to stay in bed as much as possible today. I did have a Flex-boot fitting this morning with Lindy, I’m trying to find an alternative to the Cavallos on Flash since the last ones rubbed his bulbs too much, and Lindy said I could have a trail pair for the Cracker Ride, which I thought was very generous. That took nearly an hour, and afterward I got back into bed and was reading, then napping, until well into the afternoon, when I got up and stayed in my recliner watching TV most of the afternoon. Did a little social media, but really, mostly just tried to rest today. I have a busy week getting ready for the Cracker Ride, so it’s good that I have a recovery day. Been a long time coming, glad it all worked out, but ready to get another good night’s sleep tonight! Good night, my dear! Love you!
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