I received these in an email from family. I don’t know who thought of these, but they are clever.
1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was –
–Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, –
–but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .
3. She was only a whisky maker, –
–but he loved her still.
Yesterday (3-2-09) was sunny again, cool (upper 50s, lower 60s), low humidity. Perfect for a horseback ride.
After being 27 F or so the night before, my horse just wanted to walk and graze, mostly. He was sneezing a bit and had a slightly runny nose. He trotted and cantered some, when he wanted to.
It felt good to get out and ride. It was good to be out in nature and in the sun, just me and my horse. Horses, being herd animals, make good “friends” to spend time with: they have good dispositions (generally; there are individual differences, of course), they like social interaction, and they like to run and play.
Hear that? (Video requires QuickTime.) Exactly: nothing. Serene silence…how sweet to the mind and consciousness that was…
1. It was a beautiful day for a horseback ride — upper 50s to lower 60s; sun shine; blue sky — so I availed myself of the opportunity. I went out into some local woods for an hour and a half of constant activity. I let my horse pick the pace, and he chose to trot almost the entire hour and a half, with some cantering and running thrown in. There were times when I pulled him into a walk because of the terrain or overhanging vines. My horse made the choice to walk a few times, too.
2. I saw two deer while I was out. Nice.
3. We rode down a road we’ve never been on before.
We ran back up a dirt road (my horse always runs up this particular road); at one point we had to go under a fallen tree (from Hurricane Ike last September). The video on my cell was set to cut off at 30 seconds, so the video cut off right as we were going under the tree.
Blue sky, sun, high of 60 degrees F, about 44% humidity. And the silence and serenity of the woods.
This is my horse looking at some other horses before we left the place where I stall and went into the woods:
Today I rode bareback (and bitless, as you can tell from the above picture):
It’s been a long time since I rode bareback. Glad I did. It was fun, and I needed it as a measure and reminder of balanced riding. I really needed the practice: I lost my seat a few times! Ugh! (Which is not to say I fell, but to say I didn’t stay glued to a specific part of the horse.) It’s good to feel the horse work, too — something you can’t feel with a saddle between you and horse. I could feel the muscles engage as my horse changed paces and could feel the muscles pull and work as he’d run.
We trotted some (but slowed down to go under the crown of a fallen tree), walked down and through a ravine (but trotted up and out), and cantered along some trails (but not enough). The videos require Quick Time. They were taken with my cell phone; you can tell by the quality of the images: sometimes you can see little squares of color.
This video (Quick Time!) was from riding last summer…I think it was. We went under a wood railroad bridge, then my horse made it straight for some good grazing grass near a creek.
Video The First and The Second. (In the second, the shadow waves. See it?) You need Quick Time Player to see the videos. You can download Quick Time from Apple’s Website.
Listen to the videos. Do you hear that? Exactly: nothing but wind — i.e., nothing but peace and quiet. It was a beautiful day for an afternoon horse back ride in the woods: sunny sky and seventy degrees. We didn’t just walk; we did some trot, canter and run, too.
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