Lately I've been taking out some guest riders. I get bored and put my craigslist ad for trail riding and I usually get some fat ladies who used to ride as kids but are missing horses. Not always fat, but I did have to put a weight limit in my ad after the last one. Dewey has ballerina ankles.
The latest two have been guys, Armenian Bakery Owner and Medi-Vac Helicopter pilot with a side of throat cancer.
I don't usually ride with guys because what if they murder me so I told them to meet me up at the school. The only other dude who came to ride was Travis the Fireman (an actual person) and he was everything you'd expect in a fireman. Tall, polite, sweet and I never saw him again. Although he did talk to Nathan about becoming a fireman.
So I didn't know for sure if the Armenian Bakery dude was a dude because his name was Cartin and isn't that a container? But he was for sure a guy and I took the dogs since I thought that might be a deterrent to murder if he had that on his mind. He paid me his 40 bucks and signed his life away on my waiver and then got on Dewey the most patient guest riding horse there is. Dewey sighed and got to work. Cartin looked short but then once on I had to adjust his stirrups for longer legs. The man is like all head, like his head is like the size of storage locker, and apparently the rest is legs. Fresh Bread makes this kind of person.
The trail is good for Cartin, who is actually a really nice guy once I realized he wasn't in it for the killing. He loves to be outside, he makes his kids camp and fish, and he wanted to ride to "shut down" as he put it. I don't usually shut down on horseback because that sounds like a safety hazard, but he's right that the anxious city me does shut down and the regular life outdoors me opens up and allows breeze and trees and birds and morning light. Cartin was someone I didn't quite know how much to talk - riding with a stranger is sort of like getting a massage, you cringe when your masseuse starts talking, the whole point is to NOT talk. But you're moving through the world on a beast, so you have to have SOME talk or it's weird, so on a date scale, not too much talking, not awkward with silence, maybe not the person you want to spend your whole life with, but as a ride, it was like a solid 5. Just sort of boringly just right.
Then that same week came Drew, who because of his name had no choice BUT to become a helicopter medi-vac pilot, who is a huge animal lover and whose texts were full of Awesomes! Because of the chopper I thought in person would he yell all his conversations? In person, he was like someone you'd meet at an AA meeting - all tatted up, skinny, looks like he lives on coffee, whose voice is scratchy like someone ran over Bette Davis because he had throat cancer - but I can't say one mean thing about Drew because when I meet Drew, I am in instant love. No, man, as riding buddies go, he's the perfect match. First of all, I don't know him, so there's plenty to talk about. He's someone who LOOKS like someone I might be scared of normally, but he's straightforward, smart, kind, whimsical, has a weird job, has a kid my kid's age, thinks rich people who rent his helicopter are wasteful, had an actual LUNG in an ice chest riding shotgun next to him.
Drew's dream is to have a few horses of his own and get a ranch in New Mexico and be in the quiet. Lots of riders come to me that are trying out horses to see if they can do it, and I feel lucky to be here in our busy city to help aim anyone in the direction of riding and wilderness. So Drew and I do a few rides, one in the little trail nearby and one out in the water where I know he will be dying of happiness. My friend Linette says that there's something funny about taking people on trail and only talking to someone about important things when you never have to look them in the eye. That's why I function best on trail, you can say whatever you want, what is said on the trail stays on the trail. You're sort of suspended in mid air with your legs dangling, this causes all sorts of freedom of speech.
Wild wanderings these days on trails I know pretty well. Although the huge winter rains here swelled up the river and when it came back down, it's all changed so now it flows a whole different way. The water trail through the woods I used to ride all the time is now all sand, like it never existed.
But the same river is only a few feet away, doing a different path. That's the one I'm on now.
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