the long ride fiasco

Yesterday I showed you the long ride. Now let me tell you about the most recent long ride. Whew! Are you ready for this? There aren't many pictures for this part, so if you need some, just go back to yesterday's post.

Let me give you a little background info here. The long ride is an option. You do NOT have to take it. We had only 4 people who wanted to do it.

When I create groups, I try to keep families together, but Wednesday is a day they often split. In yesterday's case, I had a mother/daughter and a father/daughter who were going on the long ride. I took the rest of the family - mother/daughter/son - and put them with a mother/daughter who were leaving today.

When a family leaves on Wednesday, they do a short ride in the morning, are back by noon, and can get on the road soon thereafter. The daughter is 8 years old.

Of the mother/daughter/son trio, the son is 11 and the mother has arthritis in her hips and shoulders. By the way, when riding horses, you use your hips as your back's shock absorbers and your shoulders are used when you need to muscle your horse around.

Ok, so you've got the picture of this short group? An arthritic mom, 2 young children, and 2 people who need to be back by noon.

Well, you see, I did a poor job of communicating and their wrangler did a poor job of using common sense.

He took them on the long ride! Yes, you read correctly, he took this group on the long ride!

Let me remind you.

2.5 hours out.

And extremely steep.

Apparently there were screams, tears, and a near unscheduled dismount.

But alas, everyone made it safely to the trailhead, from which they called back to the ranch.

There was NO WAY IN HECK those riders were going to ride back.

Around 1:30 (note: that's an hour and a half after noon!), I drove the suburban up to the trailhead and picked up the unlucky 5. We had two extra staff who could ride back a couple of horses, but that left 3 horses without riders.

Dan told them just to secure everything and let them follow home. Not even ponied to the saddle horn. Everything was all well and good until the 3 decided to take the old trail, which is now fenced off.

So the boys came back with the horses they were on, but without the 3 stragglers.

Dan in all his cool, calmness, said wait 30 minutes. And don't you know! Those 3 came walking up with the last of the long riders.

Dan knew they wouldn't miss supper!

And for all of our mistakes, Dan took pity on us. Can you believe that? Most bosses would be scolding us to high heaven and Dan, well, Dan had us eat waaaaaaay out back where we could complain about our day and even brought us two six-packs of beer for our troubles!

If you ask me, you just can't ask for a much nicer place to work than that!