American Pastime

We had to ride past the stadium to get to Duncan and Sons, the old timer tack shop downtown. I do believe they finally had to close their doors, the last saddle shop in the city: ( That day, we arrived with our horses past business hours, but the owner came out anyway, and critized my tack for not being perfectly clean. HM! I asked him if he still gets any business with the invention of the automobile, and he said they have a contract with the Seattle Mounted Police. Nice.

What gets me is that Baasha looks half-asleep in many of these photos. And I'm sure he'd never seen an industrial carpet cleaner before - you know the kind where the vaccuum is in a van on the street, and a large hose comes out and runs up the side of a building?

I can't count how many times people said, "Can you do that?" (ride a horse downtown) and I'd just shrug and say, "We'll see!" This pic is from Westlake Center, Jenn's waiting for me as I stood in like at the espresso shop there (big espresso chain, starts with S, I'm afraid to admit). There were some carriage horses parked there and they were SO CURIOUS about our little horses! We talked to those people a long time. People just wanted to talk horses with us, everywhere we went!

Baasha didn't have any patience for "Don't Walk" signs (we used the sidewalks cuz the streets - scary!). He'd paw big stripes on the concrete at every light. This being surrounded by large numbers of people on every street corner, also waiting for the light. I was very glad he didn't decide to pschiz out at those time when he was being pressed in upon by so many people.

My friend Jenn had put a horsey diaper on her Arab, cuz she didn't want him pooping on the sidewalk. I said that's just not dignified, I'm not putting a diaper on my full grown horse. My idea was to just use a plastic grocery sack like people do with dog poop. Well, he pooped on 1st Ave. Not far from the doggie bakery in the pic. I was down on the sidewalk trying to get it in the bag, and got it all over my hands too. Disgusting. I looked real dignified, my friend said.

It was really hard for a horse with shoes to walk on those bumpy cobblestones! And yet this is Pioneer Square, where in days of old the carriage horses came for water. Someone came out of the Underground Tour and took my picture: ) Baasha was chewing his bit impatiently.








This is the historic ferry dock, which is next door to the working one. You can just make out a ferry at the main dock in this pic. Little did Baasha know, he'd be riding one soon!










Leaving Seattle Center on the Children's Museum side.














BTW, there's no way to canter politely thru Myrtle Edwards park (waterfront). You'll give the joggers a fright.

This is an interesting spot that mostly homeless people hang out in. It's a tiny patch of grass at the north end of the market. You can see the new baseball stadium in the background.









International Fountain. (There's a Geocache in one of those benches!)

We stopped for my favorite pizza (Zeke's) and tied our horses to the parking meters. Honest to God, some guy walked by and put his baby up on my horse. *shudder* I was sitting right there eating pizza, he didn't ask or say anything. The Zeke's people came out with baby carrots for the horses, so nice. The Pike Place Market people tried to give him cucumber, but he didn't know what it was.

Going to my office building on Queen Anne was totally surreal and I wish I had those pics to share. Oh well.

I remember Baasha pooped on the Seattle PI's lawn, and I left it cuz I was ticked off about their biased newsreporting at the time.


(I must say I don't recommend that people do what I did here. Thinking about it, there were so many opportunities for things to go wrong, many involving lawsuits. It was a childhood dream of mine, so I finally did it.)