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First of all, a woo-hoo!
Guess who is in first place in her fantasy football league???
Yes, I must give a big woo-hoo! to the Mandos Ravens, who are currently sitting in a comfortable first place (as in 93 versus 75 points, which belongs to the second place team). Ha! I wonder how all my football-knowing guys (and my football-knowing sister) feel to be getting thoroughly whooped by me. Ha!
(I am really enjoying this now because it will probably be gone in a few weeks and I'll be back in my accustomed last place :-/)
But for now I am in first place!!! Woohoo! And all thanks to Terrell Owens and Chad Johnson, whom I cannot stand in real life but have learned to like for their extraordinary ability to catch the ball and score touchdowns.
As for my Baltimore Ravens,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
isil_elensar, you are more than welcome to heckle me because your Titans thoroughly whooped my Ravens' collective asses today. :( Yes, I am normally a Titans' fan, but that loyalty is suspended, of course, when they play my Ravens. I am biting my thumb very hard in the Ravens' direction right now.
Okay, enough on football. This was my birthday weekend, and my wonderful husband gave me the most awesome gift: a five-hour moonlight trail ride on horseback, in the Blue Ridge mountains, along the C&O Canal, in Western Maryland.
It has been about four sorry years since I was last on a horse, and I have never ridden for as long as five hours before. So, sitting here right now, it is hard to find a body part that doesn't hurt. My body below the neck feels like it was put through a wringer. My legs hurt, my arms hurt, and my back hurts. I have a new bottle of ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet but....
Now don't go thinking I'm some kind of sick masochist because, I assure you, I am not....
I kind of like it.
Because the summer in Maryland decided to consist of temperatures averaging at 100 degrees F (~40 degrees C) and high humidity, that meant no hiking, no skating, nothing that required sweating. The heat in Maryland was dangerous this summer. So I am really, really out of shape.
It always feels good to me to work my muscles to the point of mild pain that says that they've been worked, like after a two-hour skating practice where I limp out of bed the next morning. Maybe that makes me weird; I don't know. But I am avoiding ibuprofen right now because I really don't like medicine and the aching makes me realize that I worked my lazy body a little, and it feels good.
There is truth, I think, to the saying: What does not kill us makes us stronger.
Horseback riding was awesome. I had some basic riding lessons in my youth, English seat, so it always feels good to get back in the proverbial saddle. (Pun intended ;D) We arrived early at the farm, with time enough to visit all of the horses (about twenty). Bobby and I were assigned a pair of horses named Jack and Cowboy. (I had Jack.) We were told that they were essentially the same horse, except Jack was a bay and Cowboy a chestnut, and Cowboy was bigger. They were both old, slow, and tall. None of those things bothered me.
Jack decided early on to test my mettle by wandering into the ring to graze and resisting my attempts to take him back out to take his place in line. But I insisted, and Jack and I reached an understanding of sorts that lasted for the rest of the evening.
There were almost a dozen of us on the ride, plus two guides. Jack and Cowboy--being old and slow--ended up at the back of the line. We were maybe five minutes on the trail when one of the other horses decided to pass Jack, ran him off the trail, and headed right for a big, whitish bush that looked rather spiky....
This is me, thinking, "That's one rough-looking bush. I hope those aren't thorns."
Drawing closer....
"Ummm...."
Almost there, still off the road....
"Shit! Those are some nasty-looking thorns!"
They were a good quarter-inch long and--thwack!--a half-dozen of them was implanted in my right bicep. Luckily, they didn't go straight in but kind of slid under the skin. I could see the shadow of them, and it didn't really hurt. As we rode along, I pulled them out.
With the result that now it looks like I've been skin-popping on my upper arm, with all these tiny wounds surrounded by bruises.
After the thorn incident, we progressed down the road and to the trail, which moved along the C&O Canal that divides Maryland from West Virginia. The view was beautiful; the song of the water mesmerizing. The trail was flat and easy, and it was a very relaxing ride. I must say, though, that I do not know how people who ride Western do all that sitting trot. I had a dance teacher in college who used to call the little bones in the backside the "sit-bones." Well, upon arriving home last night, I announced to my husband: "I think my sit-bones have been ground to powder."
My sit-bones hate me right now.
The farm where we rode, on the long trail rides, meets the group halfway with dinner. So we stopped halfway through for a nice dinner beside the river. The horses got to chill out and have a bite to eat too, which they seemed to appreciate since, when we reached the picnic spot, no one had arrived yet with the food, so we rode past for a while, and the horses kept trying to turn around and got really irritated, like "What the hell is going on here? It's time to eat!" One guy's horse even bolted with him in the direction of the picnic area; one of our guides' horse decided, a bit past the picnic area, to just stop and refused to go any further.
The sun was setting by the time we started heading back, and if you've ever been hiking in the evening, the forest gets dark at night. By the time we were approaching the farm, it was so dark that it was hard to see the trail. Good thing the horses knew where they were going! The scariest bit was the short ride we had along the road. While crossing, a car came up and you would think the idiot would stop and let the pack of people on horseback cross. No such luck. But we (and the horses) all made it back in one piece.
After that, we had a bonfire and dessert. All in all, it was a wonderful evening and a wonderful birthday present.
Well worth the achy muscles--even the powdered sit-bones!
Needless to say, though, I skipped my skating lessons on Sunday morning, envisioning one of those accidents where one attempts to do a sit spin and actually sits (a.k.a. falls) on one's ass. I think I probably would have sat in the middle of the rink and wept, had that happened. My sit-bones would have revolted and made it hard to forget that indiscretion.
Because the farm is only an hour away from us, we are making plans to return for a shorter ride at the end of October and taking some friends with us. Already, I can't wait! Hopefully, my sit-bones will have forgiven me by then.
Guess who is in first place in her fantasy football league???
Yes, I must give a big woo-hoo! to the Mandos Ravens, who are currently sitting in a comfortable first place (as in 93 versus 75 points, which belongs to the second place team). Ha! I wonder how all my football-knowing guys (and my football-knowing sister) feel to be getting thoroughly whooped by me. Ha!
(I am really enjoying this now because it will probably be gone in a few weeks and I'll be back in my accustomed last place :-/)
But for now I am in first place!!! Woohoo! And all thanks to Terrell Owens and Chad Johnson, whom I cannot stand in real life but have learned to like for their extraordinary ability to catch the ball and score touchdowns.
As for my Baltimore Ravens,
isil_elensar, you are more than welcome to heckle me because your Titans thoroughly whooped my Ravens' collective asses today. :( Yes, I am normally a Titans' fan, but that loyalty is suspended, of course, when they play my Ravens. I am biting my thumb very hard in the Ravens' direction right now.Okay, enough on football. This was my birthday weekend, and my wonderful husband gave me the most awesome gift: a five-hour moonlight trail ride on horseback, in the Blue Ridge mountains, along the C&O Canal, in Western Maryland.
It has been about four sorry years since I was last on a horse, and I have never ridden for as long as five hours before. So, sitting here right now, it is hard to find a body part that doesn't hurt. My body below the neck feels like it was put through a wringer. My legs hurt, my arms hurt, and my back hurts. I have a new bottle of ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet but....
Now don't go thinking I'm some kind of sick masochist because, I assure you, I am not....
I kind of like it.
Because the summer in Maryland decided to consist of temperatures averaging at 100 degrees F (~40 degrees C) and high humidity, that meant no hiking, no skating, nothing that required sweating. The heat in Maryland was dangerous this summer. So I am really, really out of shape.
It always feels good to me to work my muscles to the point of mild pain that says that they've been worked, like after a two-hour skating practice where I limp out of bed the next morning. Maybe that makes me weird; I don't know. But I am avoiding ibuprofen right now because I really don't like medicine and the aching makes me realize that I worked my lazy body a little, and it feels good.
There is truth, I think, to the saying: What does not kill us makes us stronger.
Horseback riding was awesome. I had some basic riding lessons in my youth, English seat, so it always feels good to get back in the proverbial saddle. (Pun intended ;D) We arrived early at the farm, with time enough to visit all of the horses (about twenty). Bobby and I were assigned a pair of horses named Jack and Cowboy. (I had Jack.) We were told that they were essentially the same horse, except Jack was a bay and Cowboy a chestnut, and Cowboy was bigger. They were both old, slow, and tall. None of those things bothered me.
Jack decided early on to test my mettle by wandering into the ring to graze and resisting my attempts to take him back out to take his place in line. But I insisted, and Jack and I reached an understanding of sorts that lasted for the rest of the evening.
There were almost a dozen of us on the ride, plus two guides. Jack and Cowboy--being old and slow--ended up at the back of the line. We were maybe five minutes on the trail when one of the other horses decided to pass Jack, ran him off the trail, and headed right for a big, whitish bush that looked rather spiky....
This is me, thinking, "That's one rough-looking bush. I hope those aren't thorns."
Drawing closer....
"Ummm...."
Almost there, still off the road....
"Shit! Those are some nasty-looking thorns!"
They were a good quarter-inch long and--thwack!--a half-dozen of them was implanted in my right bicep. Luckily, they didn't go straight in but kind of slid under the skin. I could see the shadow of them, and it didn't really hurt. As we rode along, I pulled them out.
With the result that now it looks like I've been skin-popping on my upper arm, with all these tiny wounds surrounded by bruises.
After the thorn incident, we progressed down the road and to the trail, which moved along the C&O Canal that divides Maryland from West Virginia. The view was beautiful; the song of the water mesmerizing. The trail was flat and easy, and it was a very relaxing ride. I must say, though, that I do not know how people who ride Western do all that sitting trot. I had a dance teacher in college who used to call the little bones in the backside the "sit-bones." Well, upon arriving home last night, I announced to my husband: "I think my sit-bones have been ground to powder."
My sit-bones hate me right now.
The farm where we rode, on the long trail rides, meets the group halfway with dinner. So we stopped halfway through for a nice dinner beside the river. The horses got to chill out and have a bite to eat too, which they seemed to appreciate since, when we reached the picnic spot, no one had arrived yet with the food, so we rode past for a while, and the horses kept trying to turn around and got really irritated, like "What the hell is going on here? It's time to eat!" One guy's horse even bolted with him in the direction of the picnic area; one of our guides' horse decided, a bit past the picnic area, to just stop and refused to go any further.
The sun was setting by the time we started heading back, and if you've ever been hiking in the evening, the forest gets dark at night. By the time we were approaching the farm, it was so dark that it was hard to see the trail. Good thing the horses knew where they were going! The scariest bit was the short ride we had along the road. While crossing, a car came up and you would think the idiot would stop and let the pack of people on horseback cross. No such luck. But we (and the horses) all made it back in one piece.
After that, we had a bonfire and dessert. All in all, it was a wonderful evening and a wonderful birthday present.
Well worth the achy muscles--even the powdered sit-bones!
Needless to say, though, I skipped my skating lessons on Sunday morning, envisioning one of those accidents where one attempts to do a sit spin and actually sits (a.k.a. falls) on one's ass. I think I probably would have sat in the middle of the rink and wept, had that happened. My sit-bones would have revolted and made it hard to forget that indiscretion.
Because the farm is only an hour away from us, we are making plans to return for a shorter ride at the end of October and taking some friends with us. Already, I can't wait! Hopefully, my sit-bones will have forgiven me by then.
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