Yesterday Morning....

 A 2-hour trail ride on horseback in the mountains.

That's how I started my day today (actually, that's not entirely true. I started my day with a big bowl of sticky oatmeal and raisins... but who cares about the little details, right?) ;)

When we first started off on our ride, I thought that I was gonna be stuck walking the trail the entire time, as my grandparents are obviously beginners and there was a little girl and her father accompanying us. However, as we were on the trail I kept glancing back and was impressed and amused to see the girl (about 6) purposefully lagging behind and then trotting to catch back up.

I laughed inwardly and smiled at her dad, who for a moment looked embarrassed. I think he was nervous that I might say something to the trail guide.
"I used to do the exact same thing." I told him, trying to reassure him, and then I turned forward and kept quite so as not to draw the trail guides attention to the back of our small group. I wanted the girl to get as much out of this trail ride as she could.

The scenery was great, and the trail was fun, despite having to walk. We got to travel up steep hills and cross shallow creeks. My horse, Wally (aka: Wall Street), was given to me because my grandparents had put me down as an advanced rider. I was expecting him to act up at some point, but the most he did was nip the horse in front of me (my gramma's horse, Trojan) when he wasn't moving fast enough.

Until the end, that is.

I finally got up enough courage to ask the trail guide if I could possibly trot, as the trail was flat here. At first she looked a bit hesitant, as I was in the middle of the group, but then I motioned to the little girl and her father behind me.

"I'm sure they'd love to as well." I stated, glancing back at them and smiling as the little girl looked at her dad and nodded vigorously.

The trail ride agreed, and told us we could wait until they had gone on ahead and then we could catch up.

So I stopped Wally, and my grandparents rode on ahead.

And then Wally started acting up. The other horses had just gone out of sight when Wally began dancing from foot to foot and flicking his head into the air. I tugged on his reins to tell him to wait just a tad longer, but he just got antsier. I glanced back at the two behind me.

"Ready?" I asked. They had just barely nodded yes when I let my reins loose and Wally took off, as I knew he would. I kicked him into a canter right away, and we caught up to the rest of the group in no time.

Man, I wish that was longer...

I heard the little girl behind me, laughing.
"Whoa, Dad! What was that??"
"That was a canter, Sweetie."
"I've never done that before! It was fast!"
"You did really well, Hun."

After a minute of walking, I turned back to them.

"Wanna do it again?" I asked the girl. She suddenly looked shy and I quickly looked to her father, realizing I probably should have asked him in the first place. He looked at me.

"Sure we would." He said with a calm smile.

I pulled back on Wally and once again we waited for the group to go on ahead. Wally continued to dance around as he had before, but I held onto him a bit longer, letting him pull on the reins but not releasing them.

And then he started to rear.

They were more of small hops at first, and I just scolded him and told him to knock it off.
But of course, I don't speak Horse, and he started to rear up over halfway and kept jumping forward at the same time. I was worried about getting the the little girl's horse riled up, so I tried to turn Wally in a sharp circle so that he couldn't rear, but it didn't work. I heard the dad let out a small laugh, and I glanced at them apologetically.

"Looks like we gotta get going." I stated, and faced Wally forward. Apparently that was enough for him, because he leaped forward without my say so. It was a weird gait, though, and he suddenly went from canter to trot to canter again. The sudden changes caught me off guard, and I lost my right stirrup. For a quick moment I was startled, but then I realized that I was overbalanced because I was relying too much on my left stirrup. I didn't know what else to do to get back my center of gravity, so I quickly kicked my left stirrup free in the middle of the canter and focused on staying upright.

Once we caught up with the group again, I calmed Wally down and nudged my feet back into their leather loops, then let my muscles relax as I felt secure again. I heard the girl behind me talking to her father again.

"Dad, did you see the girl in front of us?"
"What?"
"She kicked her feet out of her stirrups when she ran!"
"Oh she did, did she?"
"Are you supposed to do that, Dad?"
"Everyone has their own style of riding, Hun, but I prefer to keep mine in the stirrups."


All I could think of was, yeah, you and me both.

So that is my long story of an event that really only took place in a few minutes, and probably wasn't as exciting as I made it sound...

But it sure was a fun ride!!

We stopped so our trail guide could get a picture of us...

I loved this! Anyone out there get the pun in this?? Please tell me there are some Bananza lovers out there!!

Sunday, June 24th, 2:43 pm