May 18

Tonight we had a break in the rain so Matt agreed to let me go out and ride on a week night. I took the motorcycle out so I called him upon my arrival to let him know I got that far safely.

I had not made it out yesterday to check on Sinwaan's rump so tonight I was really pleased to see that the hair is growing back in really fast - that MRT is amazing! He probably has about 50% of his hair back already in 3 days time.

Tacking up didn't take long and we headed out as soon as possible. I turned on the GPS but did not check the time on my phone. I figured we could get in our 8 miles with the amount of daylight we had left. I wanted to double-check Google Maps against my GPS reading on the milage anyway.

The ride was fairly uneventful. I had to push Sinwaan a little at the start but there was no bad behavior. I tried to pay attention to where the sun was in relation to our position on the road, changing sides when I saw traffic and realized they probably couldn't see me. Heading west towards home is when Sinwaan really likes to move out, and this time we were riding right into the sun. I think because of the time of day Sinwaan couldn't see as well and therefore had a couple of little spook-in-place moments so I was on my toes. We had a couple of nice gallops on the way home and within two miles he was going along really nicely on a loose rein.

We pulled into home just as it was getting dark. I could see well enough to untack, check hooves, and apply more MRT. I had a chat with Cindy and then called Matt to let him know I was done and heading home. During the ride my GPS had shut off three times, I think perhaps because of cloud cover? I don't know how long it took me to notice so I lost time on that and some milage. The milage it told me was a little over 7 1/2 miles so I figure the 8 mile estimate is accurate. My time was 1:20 so I think I may have lost about 10 minutes with the malfunctions. All told, a great ride!