Yesterday (now the day before yesterday) started pretty normal; 15 minutes of morning wake up exercises that take me 30 minutes, oatmeal breakfast, motorcycle ride to Union City for coffee, research the internet for the - "Secret to Internet Success" and go into Bronson to watch the grand kids' ball games.
Then, however, when all of the ball games failed to materialize, I suddenly found myself with time to burn; and so, burn it I did! I turned my motorcycle to the east and headed to Windy Hill Farm to ride my reining horse, Royal Kandy Kid (Kandy, for short).
Kandy has been much neglected over the past two years, but is shaping up well after having recently been shod (no sliders yet, but her first shoes in over two years). As a side note, many thanks to farrier Brad Davis for taking the extra care to "hot shoe" Kandy and really set her up right.
Kandy is a performance reining horse that deserves more than she's gotten over the past four or five years. The fact is that she has pleasantly surprised me by how well she is performing.
Although, without sliders (the specially designed shoes that let reiners drop their "A.." and Slide) she hasn't been able to perform, what is regarded as of one of the two "signature" moves of reiners. But, the other day when I first asked her to "spin" (the second "signature" move of a reiner), she dropped her head, hunkered down and started to spin like a top; I found myself grabbing the saddle horn (a definite "no-no") to keep from being thrown off. Kandy, hadn't forgotten a thing; Rex on the hand, is going to require some "special attention".
On Monday, though we had a decent or maybe even a "great" ride; she changed leads flawlessly, dropped down from a fast circle to a slow without incident, spun like a "whirl-wind" and even wanted to run into a slide (had I allowed her to do so). It was clear that she was remembering the reining pattern and wanted to "GO".
After completing the ride and unsaddling her, I tied her in a vacant stall in order to allow her some "cool down" time before turning her out to pasture, and then proceeded to motorcycle down the road to "Belle Vista" (the nearby golf course) to have a beer and coffee.
While there, I tried to strike up a conversation with the patron sitting beside me at the bar. First I tried talking about the Tiger's woes, but he clearly seemed disinterested; and so, went back to my beer "with my tail between my legs".
Suddenly, however, he made a comment in a dialect that was clearly not just a southern drawl. When I asked where he was from and he responded Australia. Now, his seeming disinterest, made perfect sense "down under" they play cricket, not baseball.
After that, Jack and I, we had an interesting conversation. It turns out that he owns a motorhome manufacturing plant in Angola (didn't even know that Angola had such an animal) and exports them to Australia. This seemed incredible to me. The fact that he could build a motorhome in America and transport that them to Australia (at $35,000 a unit in shipping cost) and make a sizeable profit seemed incredible.
Switching to coffee (after only one beer) the topic changed to motorcycle and Jack commented that rode "crotch rockets" because, "he wasn't old enough to ride a Harley!" - touche, (and ouch) Jack.
After that, his cell phone rang and walked outside to better converse; and I left, as I began - "with my tail between my legs.
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