Road ride

Heather and I rode 14.2 miles today. Great ride. Met her at Mission and rode south to Stateline, over to Beet and back around. Nice weather.

No ride

Didn't ride today. Picked up manure for a couple of hours and then decided I was too tired and it was too windy to ride alone. Wimped out.

Solo ride

Two weeks ago I was out of town. Last weekend I was sick and the weather was sooo windy I decided not to ride. Today I had no excuse. Mid-50s weather and sunny, it just doesn't get any nicer! I had my hesitations about riding by myself on the road when Sinwaan had a bit of time off. I thought about going to Bennington Lake but that is a long way to haul when you only average 6 mpg. So I took Sinwaan over to Heather's and rode behind the water treatment center. It was beautiful.

In the beginning we had a really good spook at a Mallard, but after that Sinwaan would just stop and look and then the craetures would appear - we first saw a small herd of three white tailed deer bounding away. Then three wild turkeys. Then three more deer. Then a herd of 8 deer. Then a raptor flew overhead. Sinwaan was really feeling good and once we had warmed up and gone about a mile he wanted to canter. Forget trotting, that was too slow for him. As long as he behaved himself I let him go. It was really glorious.

We rode for about an hour and 15 minutes, enough for him to work up a good sweat with all that racing around. We finished our ride with a steady trot all around the trees, it only took 15 minutes so it was probably not more than a mile or two. On our walk to cool out a red-winged blackbird flew right across in front of us and I got a good look at him. So pretty.