DC Ride - Tuesday

Yeah, I know. I haven't been posting. Whatever. End of the semester. I know you guys like to read this, and you do complain when I'm not being funny. You get to laugh. I'm the one who has to fucking work here.

IN ANY EVENT

Tuesday on the DC Ride really begins with how they wake us up. They cart around a stage and some sound equipment to each camp. Most of the time, it just plays really depressing country western songs. I know, all country western is depressing. This is the worst of the worst in that regard. It's enough to make sane men want to kill themselves. I still have no idea why they do this.

The sound equipment comes in handy in the mornings. They wake us up on Tuesday by playing the sound of a steam engine (complete with whistles) that really does sound like it's coming right through camp. Then they play reveille. An announcer comes on and tells us to "drop our cocks and grab our socks," then lists the schedule for the next couple of hours: eat breakfast, break down camp, then saddle up. We leave at 7:00 AM. They wake us up at 5:00 AM for this. Time to get cracking. The first task for the Greenies in the morning is to go and get coffee. Of course, our batboy forgot the fucking coffee pots, so we had to borrow one from another camp. Strike one for Tommy. The Greenies got coffee, didn't get a fire going, and the coffee got cold. Which makes for a bunch of upset old guys. One of them, Mike, likes to yell about things going wrong. Which he did...very colorfully. Some guy yelling at the top of his lungs about how the coffee situation is "motherfucking unacceptable" gets old after about 5 minutes.

One everyone is up and fed, it's time to pack a lunch. They have sandwiches prepped and ready for you, along with apples, oranges, chips and other stuff for snacks. You take all you can fit in your saddlebags, really. It's going to be a long, long day. Lunch is at 11:30. That's four and a half hours of riding to get your ass hurting. Tuesdays are usually eventful days. A lot of stuff that can go wrong does. Fortunately, not so many bad things happened to me. There were enough though to make it interesting. Once we get all saddled up, it's a lot of hurry up and wait. Our camp usually likes to leave last, that way we don't have a whole bunch of pushy bastards trying to get us to speed up. Finding the trail isn't hard, and we actually fell behind during the day. More on that later. While we were waiting, I learned something crucial about my horse: he does not like waiting. At all. He likes to toss his head and try and follow every single person trying to leave. This means I am in a constant battle with this animal just to keep him in place. He also likes to headbutt other horses' asses if they aren't going fast enough. I swear, this horse must be from New Jersey.

Usually Tuesdays are A LOT of climbing. There are two ways to get to Cooper's Canyon: along the river, or over the mountains. Usually, they choose a combination of these for the trail. This year, we were pretty fortunate, as they chose mostly river routes for the day. This is much easier on the horses and the riders. However, riding along the river raises problems. One of the main problems comes in the form of rolling horses. Horses get hot. They're doing most of the work here. Taking a dip in the water usually feels good. However, they like to do this whether you're on them or not. An 800 pound animal rolling on you is usually a bad thing. Fortunately, there are easy ways to figure out if a horse is going to roll in the water.
1. He stops (this doesn't help if you're stopping to let him drink).
2. He starts to paw the water with one of his hooves.
3. He starts to go down.

My first year, my horse almost rolled on me. I managed to jump off, getting from the horse in the middle of the pond to the bank in one shot (it was about 6 feet...not bad for a white guy). As such, I pay an inordinate amount of attention now. My current horse (mr. bad attitude), tried to roll me a few times. Three times in the river, once in the sand. I still have no idea why he thought the sand would be a good idea. The easy way to prevent a horse from going down is to kick them with all your might and yank up on the reins with all your might at the same time. Usually they get the memo. However, this resulted in a hilarious twist in one part of the river: my right rein snapped off. He was trying to toss his head and I was trying to pull him out of the river at the same time. Of course, the rein snaps, he spooks, and I go careening off the trail into some trees. Once I realized what happened, I pulled back on the one rein to try and stop him. This just spun him around in circles for a minute or so until he realized what I was trying to do. We ended up securing the rein back on with zip ties (a gentlemen was kind enough to stop and help us. Go team). This resulted in my brother, dad and I being at the back of the bus. We were dead last in the trail with some wranglers and the medical crew. They're good guys though. It fell on me to find the trail. My dad thought it would be a good idea...sort of a baptism by fire. I found our way back, just as our fellow campers were taking a piss stop.

DC Piss Stop Etiquette 101: At least two people stop with you, and if it isn't safe, the people riding behind you stop and wait. This is because one guy in our camp decided to stop by himself one year. People just kept riding buy, and no one was there to hold his horse. His horse tried to play catch-up....right as he was getting back on. Three cracked ribs and a helicopter ride later, we don't let people do that anymore.

We continue riding once we catch up. Bad Greenie (we have also started calling him "Cowboy Dick") wasn't paying attention to his horse in the river. Guess what happens? Yup-horse rolls on him. No injury, but it sure was a wake up call. This was literally the horse's last shot to do this. We exited the river 50 feet after that spot. Time to climb. We spend another two hours or so climbing to the spot where we're going to have lunch. This spot was conveniently lacking in trees to tie our horses to in the back, but we made due. I also cut up the apple I got for lunch to give to my horse. He was ecstatic. This was when we finally started to come to our "understanding" that I wasn't torturing him. Topito was pretty cool the rest of the day, if not still impatient.

Once lunch is over, we climb a bit more, then it's all downhill into Cooper's Canyon. This. Takes. For. Ever. At this point, if weren't riding the days before Monday, your ass, knees, and hips hurt like nothing else on this Earth. The pain isn't really anything possible to describe. The hour we get for lunch is good to stretch, but you still have another 4 hours to go. Fun stuff.

Right before Coopers, there is a beer stop. I forgot to write about this on Monday. There are certain points where troughs are set up for the horses so they can get water. Conveniently, they also drive out some beer, water, and gatorade for the riders there too. A lot of people grab beer. Most days, my dad and I grab gatorade. However, Tuesday's beer stop was literally a half hour from camp, so we got beer. I found out another thing that spooks my horse: cracking a beer can.

Once you're in camp, you get to do the best thing in the world: get off the horse. It feels so good. Our camp sits in the shade of the biggest cottonwood tree I have ever seen. We eat, and do lots and lots and lots of drinking. Wednesday is the day in camp, so we can do whatever the hell we want. They also don't wake us up, so we can stay up as long as we want. Unfortunately, the wind really kicked up, making everything freezing (about 34 degrees). So we went to bed early.

Next up: pranks, guns, horse races, duck races, and more drinking.