Joerg's first ride on Baasha

Today was SO COOL - my man wanted to go Geocaching again on the riding trails! I was excited all day long, and at 1:30 I pulled up to his school and there he was standing there: ) We drove to the barn, he read the newspaper while I tacked up. Then we had a wonderful afternoon/evening together following the trail of a complex multicache. (This means your GPS doesn't point you at the Final, it points you to the first of many stations where you must look for something particular to find the coordinates for the next station, and so on.) It was so fun to find little film cannisters in places I've been a hundred times, but never knew. Some contained poems which made puzzles we had to solve.

At one point the forest service came and told us, "No horses allowed on this trail!" and I said, "There was no sign!" Then we saw many others using that trail with horses, but I jumped off, perhaps *leading* a horse is OK? An old man leading a misbehaving thorouhgbred stopped to talk to us a while. He had a whip in one hand and I kind of wished he'd use it, the way that horse was pushing him around, refusing to stand still. No manners at all, he was fighting with the horse the whole time we spoke. I covered Baasha's eyes so he wouldn't remember how to be that naughty. Later I told my man that horses should never make people move, they should respect our space. Although Baasha can be very naughty when he doesn't want to stand still, he shouldn't bump into me and push me around physically. Anyway, enough philosophy.

Another lady on a big white Spanish horse came by, and she asked, "Is it OK if I canter up this hill?" I kept saying, "It's ok, no problem" but she wanted to be very sure. She then turned her horse down another trail, and went galloping up. I thought it was odd, cuz she wasn't anywhere near us at the time, but she wanted to be sure that my horse, even at a distance, being led, would be OK with another horse blasting up a hill. Polite huh?

Finally I got my man to take a rest and let Baasha carry him up some hills, and he looked so comfortable up there, so at home. I struggled to keep up, as Baasha power walked up the hills. I even grabbed his tail for help when I got tired. Joerg said, "Baasha's comfortable - he's much less bouncy than Princess." I said, "Have you ever ridden Baasha before?" "No, it's my first time." "Omygosh, well, hey, you look great! I'm so happy you're riding him!" I held his hand as he rode, even though I was on foot. Then we got very romantic and mushy and I won't talk about that.