Chapter 1 - This Week's Adventure; or, Saamson Goes to Egypt
Howdy ya'll -
Saamson isn't really going to Egypt; he's on his way to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), just down the block so to speak. But let me explain:
In case you don't know the story so far, Marcia Smith and horse Saamson were invited to race in the UAE - in the desert outside Abu Dhabi (southeast of Saudi Arabia, northwest of Oman, across the Persian Gulf from Iran). The race is on Feb 7, called the Presidents Cup - 100 miles, international field, prize money & everything. Marcia, Saamson & I are going as guests of Al Wathba Stables.
I will try corresponding somewhat regularly, but no guarantees. There are a lot of folks on this list to receive the story - if you don't wanna be on the list, let me know & I'll take you off no worries. I will try to post every couple or few days, enough to be interesting but not boring I hope.
That all said, here's the story so far: we have been cooking this deal for several months. Various events, minor and major, almost put the kibosh on the plan several times, pretty typical for anything involving travel and/or horses. A few weeks ago this all started looking pretty real, with actual plans being made. The logistics are like this: three US rider/horse teams, including Marcia & Saam, Heather Bergantz & Red, Hal Hall & Bogus are going. The UAE is keen to raise the level of endurance competition, and take it upon themselves to host several pretty high-profile races during their racing season (about Dec to Mar or Apr). The host stable invites a few hot shoe rider-horse teams from various international countries, and put on the race. In case you don't know the horses & riders going in our group, suffice to say they are up to racing at this level.
The horses were papered, passported, tested, shod, trained & generally made ready over the past few weeks. In parallel, lots of fax, cell phone & email time. Lots of paperwork & details, kinda interesting actually. In general, the horses are as ready as can be for depths of winter. They all have hair like a mastodon in the ice age, we will be breaking out the clippers for a body clip as soon as we hit the desert over there (its been high of 80, low 60 - sounds like Palm Springs!). They are as fit as we could do given a few weeks notice, not to mention mud & rain.
We delivered the small herd to UC Davis for quarantine on Saturday night. The ponies were bummed, more poking and then confinement to a small concrete room for the night. Sun AM, early and DARN cold, the three smallish horses and about three tons of gear were loaded on an enormous semi for the trip to San Francisco airport. Then, they got loaded into a cargo pallet that was supposed to look like a horse trailer from an equine perspective. They were not fooled, but got in anyway. Up & into the 747.
Marcia & Heather are traveling with the horses, up in the jump seat area behind the pilots. They will be passing out snacks to the horses, who are likely to be as happy as 2 yr olds who get to fly for 20 hours or so. The schedule is, 10 or 11 hours to Luxembourg, about 10 hours in Luxembourg in the snow, then back on the next plane to Abu Dhabi for another 8 hours or so. If all goes well, they arrive on Tuesday.
The rest of the riders, crew & family are going over in waves - Hal Hall today, me on Wed, Ann Hall & Skip Lightfoot in a week or so. I'll let ya'll know if they made it OK with no or few dramas, then hopefully send the next message with sand between my toes.
Cheers, TJ
Chapter 2 - Travel to Exotic Places on Your Own 747!
Next installment of the travel adventure - Marcia called from the UAE, she and the horses arrived safe and fairly sound, if you don't count jet lag (people) and minor dehydration (horses). The report includes the weather: hot during the day. The stable accommodations: the Al Wathba quarantine facility - an entire barn, paddock & fenced area with only the North Calif. horses in residence. The hotel: Mafraq Hotel, 20 minutes from the stable, nice. The phone connection: stunning. Talking to the Middle East is more clear than talking to Sacramento - aren't fiber optics great.
Apparently the coolest part of the trip (other than the weather during the layover in Luxembourg) was the airplane ride. Other than Heather & Marcia & the pilot & co-pilot, there was no one else on the plane. They basically had the run of a 747-400 long distance cargo plane, up & down the stairs to see the horses, free snacks in the galley, first class-style seats for the gals. Apparently the best part was getting invited up into the cockpit to see the northern lights while flying over the Arctic. Not the usual flight to Europe!
That’s all for now - will send more from over there.
TJ
Chapter 3 - Life in the Desert, Part 1
Sorry about the delay, I have been struggling with email connections over here. Hope this works, let me know if you don't receive the message (ha ha).
I made it to Abu Dhabi, and get to report in person. It is a long way from there to here, via all sorts of cold places like Minneapolis and Amsterdam. It is actually cool here at night, maybe 60 or a bit below, and with a desert breeze a sweatshirt is a useful piece of equipment. Low 70's days, really nice if the wind is not blowing.
OK, about the venue: The American riders are domiciled in the Mafraq Hotel, NICE place, about 20 min from downtown Abu Dhabi and 20 min from the stable. All sorts of folks stay there, lots of European types on holiday, some Middle Eastern or Indian business types as well. We have some of the stable cars for getting around, so we are pretty independent. The drive out to the stable can be pretty exciting, follow the main road to the "Massaref Truck Road", REALLY BIG trucks as far as the eye can see in both directions on a wide two-lane road. You either putt along behind the trucks, or haul ass right down the middle of the road between the lines of trucks, until you meet someone hauling ass the other way, then you get to play chicken. Guess which approach we take.
Take the Al Wathba Palace/prison/camel racetrack exit off the truck road - all sorts of stuff out here. The AL Wathba endurance complex is amazing - imagine a major throughbred training complex in Kentucky, substitute sand for grass & palm trees for everything else, and that is about it. Box stalls for 160 horses, dozens of turnouts, 4 kM training track with grandstand, COMPLETE vet hospital, helicopter pad, dozens on dozens of folks working here, immaculate landscaping & very well tended horses.
We are actually down the hill at the quarantine stable, where all the foreign horses stay - makes both importing & exporting much more straightforward. The quarantine area is maybe 10 acres surrounded by a 12 foot chain link fence, with four 1-acre fenced enclosures within (a small enclosure per country). We are the only ones there yet, although there are supposed to be some European horses coming in for the race. In our 1 acre area is an 8 stall tent barn, really nice portable barn w/ electric & water & a groom in attendance 24 hours (Nor in the days, Abdul Ghanni at night). The horses think this is a swell vacation: lots of attention & carrots, in at night, out in the sand during the day, not too much work (yet). And stuff to look at: Camels.
The camel racetrack is 3 or 4 miles down the road, and there are camel camps all over the place. These are racing camels - imagine the body of a greyhound only 6 feet chest to rump, with legs about two meters long. Seriously. These ain't you garden variety local zoo critters, these things look athletic. They are apparently pretty fast; they can whip the horses in the races of over a few miles. wild trot, fast, bouncy, monstrous knees & hocks & loooooong neck bouncing & big lips flapping. Looks uncomfortable as hell to ride, but they can cook along at 20 miles an hour. Apparently a top racing camel will fetch upwards of $30 million. Anyway, there are all sorts of camel camps, some as plush as our facility some just a fence & tent, everyone rides back & forth miles & miles to the track & to camp & off in the desert on training rides. Our horses just stare & stare at 'em.
Other activities & adventures: we have been to Abu Dhabi a couple of times - really nice city, very modern. Went to the bazaar last night, bought some odds & ends. Gold jewelry is really cheap, there must be 500 shops in one area all competing. We have seen portions of the race course, not all of it yet. Tonight we are going to the President's Cup, a major flat-track race in town. They race both thorobreds & Arabians here, mostly turf races. We are going over to Dubai next week, once to see the area and once for a ride.
OK, well I'll try to be more consistent with the messages. If you didn't get one of the first two let me know & I'll send it. Let me know if you want to come off the list.
Cheers, TJ
Chapter 4 - Life in the Desert, Part 2 - The Color of Sand
In general it is pretty easy to imagine what a desert looks like, but the desert here is not quite what I expected. As someone pointed out, it is all "camel colored". Not much vegetation - strike that, no vegetation unless someone planted it and waters it. Also, pretty flat - a few low ridges, but nothing more, no mountains in the distance.
We have been out on the race course a couple of times. If you know endurance riding in the States, you know that variety is the spice. Endurance race directors generally try to make courses interesting, challenging, colorful, unusual, - over the mountain, across the stream & through the woods, whatever. The course here is more of a race track. The start and finish corridor are a straight line, between two fences, for 4 km (2 ½ miles). Most of the rest of the course involves graded roads in big loops, generally flat & flatter. Imagine a dirt road across a salt flat, smooth & wide enough to drive three cars abreast at 60 mph. Not much sand on the course - the underlying ground is hard (like sandstone), or old salt flat so it is pretty solid. Lots of sand dunes, but they keep the dunes off the track with road graders and D8 tractors. The race will be five loops mostly starting and finishing the same way, so the riders get to go out & back on that long straightaway between 6 and 8 times.
The other unusual feature here is the non-rider participation. In the States, when crewing for a ride you see your horse start, see them come & go from the three or four checkpoints along the way, see them finish. Here, you send them off at the start, dash over to your land cruiser (land rover, humvee, whatever) then give chase off across the desert to follow the race. The only rule is you are not supposed to drive directly on the course or interfere with other riders, otherwise you can pass water to the riders, yell encouragement, etc. etc. - very participatory. Also can be hectic from what I understand - there was a ride here last week, apparently the lead few riders each had an entourage of 20 to 25 cars. No racing in obscurity here.
The 'endurance village' that serves as the start/finish is quite a complex - maybe ten acres fenced. The riders enter through one of half a dozen lanes past a timing booth, move ahead to another booth where pulses are read, then proceed to the vetting area with fifteen 40 yard long trot out lanes on rubber mats. Crewing & horse rest is under big permanent shed roofs (some of the regular riders have changing rooms w/ showers in their crew area). Big catering tent, big press tent, big awards tent, bunch of other big tents. All very spiffy, not like most local US races (generally an open field).
Later this week we are going to Dubai (next Emirate over) to ride in a 50 mile qualifying race. Marcia, Heather & Hal will ride three of the young Al Wathba Stables horses. All the horses here have to complete four "qualifying" rides of gradually increasing distances, at prescribed speed, before they can step up to an "open" race. This will give us a chance to sort out logistics before the big race - should be fun. A different group of horses is heading off to Quatar (different country about 600 miles up the coast). Since the Al Wathba stable is owned by the government (= royal family) they have access to a very large Russian-made Tupolov cargo plane - ex-military, big ramp drops down in the back & you drive your truck on. They are flying up to Quatar, three horses, half a dozen trucks etc. for a 100 km (62 mile) ride.
OK, gotta go, lots to do - more later
TJ
Thursday, May 09, 2002
Saamson's Big Adventure Part 2 - TJ
Chapter 5 - When the Wind Blows, it Gets Really Dusty
We spent most of the last couple of days over in Dubai, participating in a qualifying race that was held in conjunction with an Open (FEI sanctioned) race. The qualifier was 80 Km (50 miles) for young or new-to-endurance horses, the Open was 120 Km. The Dubai endurance village is pretty much out in the desert, about 30 minutes off the highway @ 80 mph. This was the venue for the World Championship ride from 1998.
The weather had been pretty nice around here the past few days, perhaps a bit of wind in the afternoons. Unfortunately the wind decided to get a bit more serious for Wed and Thurs, the day of the race. It is generally flat and sandy ‘round here, so add a steady 20 to 25 mph breeze and the dust blows up in a hurry. Like, smallish sand dunes in the roads, visibility half a mile or less at ground level, sand in every conceivable location and orifice. Character building.
Jen was kind enough to offer three well-prepared horses in need of a qualifying ride for Marcia, Heather & Hal to ride, for some first-hand experience at what the President’s Cup race in a week is going to be like. This qualifying ride mandated a pace between 10 and 16 Km/hr (a steady, medium-speed 6 to 10 mph). Faster or slower than that and they pull you from the ride – so it is not technically a race, and the US riders only needed to track along at a steady rate. Since all of the riders can be followed by a pace car, hitting the target pace is pretty simple.
The pace car business is a hoot. Basically, load up your Land Cruiser with an ice chest and what not, and go anywhere as long as it does not interfere with the horses on the course. Often, the horses are on the firm ground, which means you have to bash over the soft dunes to follow. I managed to get the land cruiser buried to the hubs once, fortunately someone yanked us out. In any event, crewing is very much a participation sport here.
A valuable and character-building experience for the US riders – half-way through the day the wind and dust were getting hectic. The course was a series of big squares, so sooner or later you got to ride straight into it.
Our three horses & riders came through fine, much to Jen’s relief (it looks pretty stressful – six weeks training for three horses, coordinating logistics of a driver and three Sri Lankan grooms, making sure all the right supplies & gear got loaded & hauled & set-up, having the horses shipped over, and hand-holding the tourista Americans – the normal logistics of endurance riding complicated ten-fold). Looks like Jen has some very nice prospects for the next couple of years.
A couple of other adventures – remember the camel race track? We drove on in a couple of mornings ago during training. The track looks like a typical horse racing track, only longer - there are two race courses, 5 and 10 miles (!) long. There is a road parallel to the track just inside the loop, so we invited ourselves in and followed a few sets of camels around. The protocol was: lead your string of camels (two to seven in a bunch) to the track at a walk, trot around about half way to warm up, then send ‘em off in ones or twos at FULL TILT with a jockey back to the start line. The jockeys are kids – look to be maybe 7 to 10 years old, little guys. No way they can control or slow these things – we followed a pair in the car, they were hitting 25 mph for three miles straight and looked like they were cruising! When they get to the end of their run, a guy (camel groom?) jumped out of the chase car and sprinted like mad for a short bit, grabbed the flying camel by the lead line as he blazed by & hung on like crazy till the beast slowed down & they could retrieve the jockey kid. I don’t know what looked like more fun – riding or catching.
Today we stopped by the Sheik’s falcon stable. About 15 birds, various varieties, very well tended – at least three handlers and a vet in attendance. If all goes well, tomorrow we will meet the handlers on the hill in front of the stable, they will be exercising (flying) some of the birds.
Lots to do around here – more later. Cheers, TJ
Chapter 6 – We could get used to this
We are all getting pretty complacent, other than getting a bit tired of the same fare in the hotel restaurant this is a pretty easy gig. The endless blowing dust riddled wind finally quit, and today was stunning. Everyone’s attitude improved, certainly the horses were happier.
Last night we went up to the top of the tallest hill around & met up with the falcon handlers. Off in the distance (about two miles away, line of sight, and maybe 800 feet lower) was a land cruiser just visible. The handler on top of the hill gave a sign on the radio, and the other handler started swinging a lure that looked like the better part of a dead chicken. In about two minutes the falcon came at the lure – approached from below, hugging the side of the hill, an upward strike. The handler with the lure then proceeded to complete what reminded me of a “bullfight” type routine - offering the lure only to snatch it away just before the diving bird struck. They flew about a dozen birds, each was unique in style, stamina, and flair. A German peregrine and some sort of white Russian (Siberian) falcon were the high points, strong, very fast and very creative with their strikes – vertical dive bombs over the side of the hill, low-altitude strafing JUST skimming the flat ground, upwards strikes from out of sight over the lip of the hill. When the birds were starting to slow, the lure was left still on the ground and the bird pounced. The second handler would swoop up the falcon and offer a fresh killed dove from a cooler – which was rapidly devoured as the next falcon exercised.
8 or ten European riders & horses arrived a day ago into the next quarantine barn over – we have had no contact with them (the quarantine rules a pretty strict, we are to keep 100 yds distance between the horses at all times, and are absolutely not supposed to enter their barn). Don’t know where they are staying, so may not get to see them until the race. We don’t yet know who-all from around the Gulf is in the race – many riders from most of the major and minor stables in the UAE, plus some riders from Bahrain, Saudi, Quatar, Egypt and a few others.
The course is set, pretty much what we were expecting – five loops of 37, 37, 36, 32, 18 Km with one 30 and three 40 minute holds, criteria 64, all checks back at camp (for you non-endurance riders, five loops totaling 100 miles, with standard holds and vet criteria). We will scout the vet area in a couple of days when it is all set up. As previously reported, this course is mostly flat, with a few rollers and some sand as the only bits to slow anyone down.
We got a ride on a camel this afternoon, borrowed a few ex-racing camels from a local Sheik’s stable for a couple of laps around the block. The camels were ‘saddled’ in the local camel-racing style, just a blanket rolled up and strapped on behind the hump. You actually straddle the animals hips, behind the hump, and tuck your knees up jockey-style. The little kids and locals who ride sure make it seem easy and comfortable. The get-on is pretty interesting, the camel kneels and you mount up, then a big zig-zag motion upwards as those two-meter-long limbs unfurl. Quite a view from up there, your eyes are about 10 or 11 feet off the ground. Trotting is interesting, sort of a side to side motion and not hard to sit. We didn’t work up to a gallop, just as well. They certainly don’t smell anything like horses – Marcia allowed that we ought to bring home a camel blanket for our dogs – I expect that the dogs would think we had visited with the aliens.
The race date is getting, down to three days, so we are starting to plan strategy & tactics. This will be fun. More later –
TJ
Chapter 7 - Odds & Ends from the Desert
There is a lot to keep track of. First, here is today’s press about the ride:
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=40057
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=40063
and a couple of articles on http://www.khaleejtimes.co.ae/sports.htm
A major recreation here is driving in the desert. EVERYONE has a suv or pickup. Everyone drives like a bat out of hell. There is sand or sand dunes everywhere. Now, for sure you NEED to drive like a bat out of hell in the sand dunes – momentum is everything, and getting stuck is a serious drag (involving lots of digging by hand, deflating the tires to almost flat, and stuffing whatever you can find under the tires. That is, unless you can get a tow from someone with a bigger truck). Still, there is a competitive aspect to going anywhere. Skip & Jeremy & I have embraced this approach wholeheartedly.
In an effort to keep the driving speeds somewhat under control, all of the cars (including our thrashed Toyota corolla rentals) issue this quiet persistent beeping when you drive above 120 Km/hr. Needless to say, if it isn’t beeping we go faster.
The horses are not planning on coming home. In addition to good food, round-the-clock care, more food, warm weather and lots of food, they have been getting massage (from the equine massage specialist) and chiropractic adjustment. Too much like equine Cub Med.
Last night Marcia & I drove into Dubai city to check it out (about 150 Km away up the coast). The gold souq is amazing – a shopping area with shop after shop after shop of gold jewelry – dazzling. We spent an hour or so down by the docks, looking at the “dhow wharfage”. Dhows are wooden boats, maybe 50 to 100 feet long, look like really big rowboats. They ply the trade routes all over the Persian Gulf, carrying just about everything. The wharf are is mayhem (and we were there at 8 PM) – the dhows are parallel-parked for about 4 miles of frontage, and they are generally 4 to six abreast. There are piles and piles and piles of goods, boxes, equipment, stuff tarped over all along the wharf area. Apparently most stuff is loaded on and off by hand, and across three other boats to get to the dhow tied farthest from the wharf. This must be quite a scene on a busy day.
The course is set, we are off to drive it and see the whole thing in sequence. This PM we start setting up crew bays, etc. Looks like the field for the race will be about 60 horses, including some of the top local riders. Things may get hectic for a couple of days, so I may not post anything till after the race on Thurs. You can check the links above, the local papers will at least have the headlines if not full results. Ciao - Tj
Chapter 8 - Race Report from the UAE
Friday morning, the day after the ride. Probably everyone has hit the “Gulf News” or “Khaleej Times” web sites and know that all the Californian riders finished, Heather in 11th, Marcia 14th & Hal 15th. I’ll try to provide some more detail about the past two days.
Wednesday was set-up day. Some of the major stables bring quite a show on the road – a typical set-up is two to three large tents (20 x 40 feet is pretty typical size), a generator, maybe a motorhome or two or a portable building (like a half of a mobile home). Rugs on the floor of the tent, tables & chairs, etc. etc. This is all in addition to what comes for the horses, usually a full pick-up load per horse.
Pre-ride check-in is what you expect at a major ride, lots of officials & clipboards milling around, bits of official paper, everyone watching the horses at the vet inspection and nodding knowingly. The minimum weight that the horses must carry is 75 kilos (about 165 pounds). That is pretty easy for Hal, who weighs about 150 all by himself, plus saddle & tack. Marcia is the smallest US rider; as a result her saddle is full of lead. The saddle weighs about 45 pounds (much to the chagrin of Al Wathba’s Sri Lankan grooms who have been helping us out – they are all ex-jockeys, not real big guys, and used to racing saddles that weigh about 3 pounds). The horses all looked real good at vet-in, and the riders were issued numbered vests to wear during the ride – number on the back, big photo image of HH Sheik Zayed on the front. Not like the polo shirt we usually ride in.
Pre-race set up in the crewing area is quite an effort. Everything is industrial strength. First you set up a portable corral for each horse, complete with shavings and water buckets. Ice in a cooler the size of a coffin for a football lineman. Cases of water – probably 40 cases of 24 bottles of 1.5 liter water bottles. Bales of hay, bags of grain, three trucks, two drivers, five grooms, tack trunks etc. etc. etc. We had access to whatever we needed from Al Wathba stables resources.
As an aside, I did a match race one-on-one against one of Jen Nice’s horses, Al Barraq, on the day before the ride. This idea was cooked up by me and Jen’s publisher (of Endurance World magazine), and sponsored by Sheik Mansoor. I ran, Jen rode 80 Km of the President’s Cup route. The horse had two vet holds totaling 60 minutes, I ran straight through. We finished in 5 hrs 45 minutes – the final straight-away to the finish line is 4 Km in a straight line – I was at the 2 Km mark when Jen hit the top of the 4 Km at a dead gallop, I finished ahead by about 50 meters. Quite a finish for the cameras. We made the front page of the local paper, and got interviewed by the local BBC news radio. There must be a deficit of “local color” stories hereabouts.
Race day, the race start time was 6:30. Wake up call at 4, breakfast at 4:15, at the stable by 5. Pretty calm around the start, about 60 horses in the starting field and plenty of room for milling around. A pretty mellow start just before the sun rose.
Endurance racing in the UAE is certainly a participant event. Anyone with a vehicle can follow the horses along the race course, although 4 wheel drive is a plus in the sand and the taste in cars runs to Land Cruisers, BMW’s and the occasional Hummer. As a result, there were probably at least 250 vehicles and a couple of thousand people following the race along. And not just putting along behind, it is much more fun to blast ahead of the riders or zoom back down the course to see how another horse was doing. At times it was quite a traffic jam - although I didn’t see any wrecks, at least a couple of guys flew out of the back of a moving truck. At one point we came over the top of a sandy hill and spotted something like 20 vehicles stuck in the sand, with a Hummer and an UAE army all-terrain vehicle pulling crews out. It looked like a check point at the Baja 1000 off-road race. Quite a spectacle, and the riders were certainly not bored.
The course was five loops, 37, 37, 36, 32 and 18 Km. Marcia and Heather made it around the first loop in about 2:05, about 8 min behind the lead riders, with Hal a few minutes back of that. As expected, the first vet check was pandemonium & chaos (if you haven’t seen the first vet check at an international endurance race, imagine Christmas shopping at a very crowed mall a day before Christmas, with everyone full of caffeine, in a hurry and heading for the same sale rack, only with spectators and 60 really excited and sweaty endurance horses dancing about). Anyway, we all got through OK.
The second loop was long and flat, and started to spread out the field. Hal Hall’s crew vehicle was one of the rigs parked in the sand up to the door frame, so there were some anxious moments until they got towed out and caught up to Hal. Marcia & Heather came around in about 2:07 or so, with Hal maybe ten minutes back.
The vet holds were short (30 minutes, or 40 minutes with a re-present to the vet), particularly given the amount of time and scrutiny the vets took with each horse. 30 minutes goes by too fast, even with 4 or 5 of us dashing around tending to each horse and rider we could still use an extra 30 minutes per check.
Race day was the hottest, stillest day we have had here. Usually the mornings are still, then the wind picks up by 10:30 AM and some days blows pretty hard. On the day of the race there was only a slight intermittent breeze all day. So, when the riders headed out on loop three at about mid-day, it was feeling a lot more like summer in the desert than winter in Northern California. Plus, the third and fourth loops had more sand and rolling hills than earlier.
All of the horses had some low points on the third loop. Hot, hiking through sand, traveling alone, they were sure this was some sort of cruel and unusual punishment for enjoying the resort life the past couple of weeks. The riders were getting pretty grumpy too (at least Marcia was). Jen & I were following Marcia in a pickup – we cranked up our air conditioner and tried to be cheery, and pour cold water on the horse every mile or so (That is another fun participant activity – drive along the course with your horse & rider in a pickup, with a cooler and ten cases of spring water in the back. Jump out every mile or so, hand a 1.5 liter water bottle to your rider as they trot or gallop by, jump back in the truck, dash ahead and repeat). Jen & I followed Marcia in one truck, Jeremy and Skip chose to ride in the back of another truck piloted by Basheer to tend to Heather, and Ann & the kids rode in Jen’s Land Cruiser with Ruwn and Jamad to chase Hal.
The forth loop included what there was for hills, some short steep rollers for about 6 miles in the middle of the loop. All our US horses did pretty well in the hills – finally something to break up the flat! All of the US riders had been moving up in the placings through the day, as many of the early front runners retired for various reasons. Marcia’s horse Saamson lost a shoe on this loop, fortunately we had an ‘Easyboot’ in the truck with us. Al Wathba’s farrier was able to fashion a new shoe in less than ten minutes when we were back in the vet check, but the delay on the trail cost some time.
The lead horses were just flying. Clearly there is a huge ‘home track’ advantage for the local horses – they certainly know the course, they are adapted to the heat, and train regularly at the high speeds that this type of course allows. The lead horses were heading out on their last lap when we were coming in from the forth – there was a cavalcade of at least 100 vehicles following the front-running pack of four horses. I ran interference for Marcia with the truck, as we swam upstream against the horde. The first riders were returning when Heather was heading out on her last lap, and she had to negotiate the same obstacles. Fortunately there were no head-on horse and vehicle encounters. The first four horses finished in 8:24 to 8:29 riding time – pretty amazing.
All our US horses slowed quite a bit in the last loop, particularly after dark at 6:30 PM as the deep sand stretches were hard to spot, even with a chase vehicle lighting the way with high-beams. The horses all looked fine at the finish, and again early this morning when we turned them out – particularly Saamson, who was pretty fresh – he had obviously been sandbagging during the race. The riders were pleased with their finishes, given the conditions of the day. Particularly Heather and Marcia had top-five or six type performances in mind, but we were all surprised by the heat. In short – pretty hard to take mid-winter horses and race as competitively as possible in a “summertime” race.
Today everyone is feeling happy, tired, and sunburned – pretty typical post race conditions. Personally I am going to have a beer. Thanks for reading - TJ
Chapter 9 - Postscript from the UAE
Four days after the race, and all of the aches & pains have pretty much subsided. The riders were surprisingly thrashed after the ride, something to do with riding in pretty much the same position all day rather than changing about as you would over a more hilly course – I suspect they were all a bit dehydrated as well.
Everyone has shipped out except Skip & I, we are traveling with the horses leaving tomorrow AM. We spent a couple of hours this AM spraying everything – saddles, pads, wraps, tack, etc. etc. with a disinfectant, packing & sealing in shipping trunks under the watchful eye of a couple of international vets. Our total so far is about 300 kilograms, 650+ pounds. Tomorrow the horses load at 8:30 AM after a wash-down with a light acid instructions. Marcia, Heather & Ann Hall provided Skip & I with about 6 pages of instructions for everything imaginable. We fly to Luxembourg, layover there for 24 hrs, then on the Los Angeles. If all goes smoothly at the quarantine barn in LA, the horses could be home as early as Saturday afternoon. If they knew they were leaving I am sure they would try to escape – they are particularly enjoying laying about in the warm sand all day.
Marcia made it all the way home as of Sunday night – sounds like everything was smooth to San Francisco & through Customs, until she went to board the 20 seat, propeller driven shuttle flight for the 45 minute flight to Sacramento, whereupon it sounds like she was durn near strip searched. That’s what you get when you travel via a one-way ticket from the middle east.
Skip & I & Grace Ramsey went shopping in Sharjah last night – we bought stuff, LOTS of stuff. Watching Skip & Grace double-team-barter the sales guys was too much fun. I bought stuff I didn’t need just for the show. The sales guys were left in tears, not of joy. OK, gotta go, last chance for a beer & some sunshine before I fly back to winter.
Cheers, TJ
We spent most of the last couple of days over in Dubai, participating in a qualifying race that was held in conjunction with an Open (FEI sanctioned) race. The qualifier was 80 Km (50 miles) for young or new-to-endurance horses, the Open was 120 Km. The Dubai endurance village is pretty much out in the desert, about 30 minutes off the highway @ 80 mph. This was the venue for the World Championship ride from 1998.
The weather had been pretty nice around here the past few days, perhaps a bit of wind in the afternoons. Unfortunately the wind decided to get a bit more serious for Wed and Thurs, the day of the race. It is generally flat and sandy ‘round here, so add a steady 20 to 25 mph breeze and the dust blows up in a hurry. Like, smallish sand dunes in the roads, visibility half a mile or less at ground level, sand in every conceivable location and orifice. Character building.
Jen was kind enough to offer three well-prepared horses in need of a qualifying ride for Marcia, Heather & Hal to ride, for some first-hand experience at what the President’s Cup race in a week is going to be like. This qualifying ride mandated a pace between 10 and 16 Km/hr (a steady, medium-speed 6 to 10 mph). Faster or slower than that and they pull you from the ride – so it is not technically a race, and the US riders only needed to track along at a steady rate. Since all of the riders can be followed by a pace car, hitting the target pace is pretty simple.
The pace car business is a hoot. Basically, load up your Land Cruiser with an ice chest and what not, and go anywhere as long as it does not interfere with the horses on the course. Often, the horses are on the firm ground, which means you have to bash over the soft dunes to follow. I managed to get the land cruiser buried to the hubs once, fortunately someone yanked us out. In any event, crewing is very much a participation sport here.
A valuable and character-building experience for the US riders – half-way through the day the wind and dust were getting hectic. The course was a series of big squares, so sooner or later you got to ride straight into it.
Our three horses & riders came through fine, much to Jen’s relief (it looks pretty stressful – six weeks training for three horses, coordinating logistics of a driver and three Sri Lankan grooms, making sure all the right supplies & gear got loaded & hauled & set-up, having the horses shipped over, and hand-holding the tourista Americans – the normal logistics of endurance riding complicated ten-fold). Looks like Jen has some very nice prospects for the next couple of years.
A couple of other adventures – remember the camel race track? We drove on in a couple of mornings ago during training. The track looks like a typical horse racing track, only longer - there are two race courses, 5 and 10 miles (!) long. There is a road parallel to the track just inside the loop, so we invited ourselves in and followed a few sets of camels around. The protocol was: lead your string of camels (two to seven in a bunch) to the track at a walk, trot around about half way to warm up, then send ‘em off in ones or twos at FULL TILT with a jockey back to the start line. The jockeys are kids – look to be maybe 7 to 10 years old, little guys. No way they can control or slow these things – we followed a pair in the car, they were hitting 25 mph for three miles straight and looked like they were cruising! When they get to the end of their run, a guy (camel groom?) jumped out of the chase car and sprinted like mad for a short bit, grabbed the flying camel by the lead line as he blazed by & hung on like crazy till the beast slowed down & they could retrieve the jockey kid. I don’t know what looked like more fun – riding or catching.
Today we stopped by the Sheik’s falcon stable. About 15 birds, various varieties, very well tended – at least three handlers and a vet in attendance. If all goes well, tomorrow we will meet the handlers on the hill in front of the stable, they will be exercising (flying) some of the birds.
Lots to do around here – more later. Cheers, TJ
Chapter 6 – We could get used to this
We are all getting pretty complacent, other than getting a bit tired of the same fare in the hotel restaurant this is a pretty easy gig. The endless blowing dust riddled wind finally quit, and today was stunning. Everyone’s attitude improved, certainly the horses were happier.
Last night we went up to the top of the tallest hill around & met up with the falcon handlers. Off in the distance (about two miles away, line of sight, and maybe 800 feet lower) was a land cruiser just visible. The handler on top of the hill gave a sign on the radio, and the other handler started swinging a lure that looked like the better part of a dead chicken. In about two minutes the falcon came at the lure – approached from below, hugging the side of the hill, an upward strike. The handler with the lure then proceeded to complete what reminded me of a “bullfight” type routine - offering the lure only to snatch it away just before the diving bird struck. They flew about a dozen birds, each was unique in style, stamina, and flair. A German peregrine and some sort of white Russian (Siberian) falcon were the high points, strong, very fast and very creative with their strikes – vertical dive bombs over the side of the hill, low-altitude strafing JUST skimming the flat ground, upwards strikes from out of sight over the lip of the hill. When the birds were starting to slow, the lure was left still on the ground and the bird pounced. The second handler would swoop up the falcon and offer a fresh killed dove from a cooler – which was rapidly devoured as the next falcon exercised.
8 or ten European riders & horses arrived a day ago into the next quarantine barn over – we have had no contact with them (the quarantine rules a pretty strict, we are to keep 100 yds distance between the horses at all times, and are absolutely not supposed to enter their barn). Don’t know where they are staying, so may not get to see them until the race. We don’t yet know who-all from around the Gulf is in the race – many riders from most of the major and minor stables in the UAE, plus some riders from Bahrain, Saudi, Quatar, Egypt and a few others.
The course is set, pretty much what we were expecting – five loops of 37, 37, 36, 32, 18 Km with one 30 and three 40 minute holds, criteria 64, all checks back at camp (for you non-endurance riders, five loops totaling 100 miles, with standard holds and vet criteria). We will scout the vet area in a couple of days when it is all set up. As previously reported, this course is mostly flat, with a few rollers and some sand as the only bits to slow anyone down.
We got a ride on a camel this afternoon, borrowed a few ex-racing camels from a local Sheik’s stable for a couple of laps around the block. The camels were ‘saddled’ in the local camel-racing style, just a blanket rolled up and strapped on behind the hump. You actually straddle the animals hips, behind the hump, and tuck your knees up jockey-style. The little kids and locals who ride sure make it seem easy and comfortable. The get-on is pretty interesting, the camel kneels and you mount up, then a big zig-zag motion upwards as those two-meter-long limbs unfurl. Quite a view from up there, your eyes are about 10 or 11 feet off the ground. Trotting is interesting, sort of a side to side motion and not hard to sit. We didn’t work up to a gallop, just as well. They certainly don’t smell anything like horses – Marcia allowed that we ought to bring home a camel blanket for our dogs – I expect that the dogs would think we had visited with the aliens.
The race date is getting, down to three days, so we are starting to plan strategy & tactics. This will be fun. More later –
TJ
Chapter 7 - Odds & Ends from the Desert
There is a lot to keep track of. First, here is today’s press about the ride:
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=40057
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=40063
and a couple of articles on http://www.khaleejtimes.co.ae/sports.htm
A major recreation here is driving in the desert. EVERYONE has a suv or pickup. Everyone drives like a bat out of hell. There is sand or sand dunes everywhere. Now, for sure you NEED to drive like a bat out of hell in the sand dunes – momentum is everything, and getting stuck is a serious drag (involving lots of digging by hand, deflating the tires to almost flat, and stuffing whatever you can find under the tires. That is, unless you can get a tow from someone with a bigger truck). Still, there is a competitive aspect to going anywhere. Skip & Jeremy & I have embraced this approach wholeheartedly.
In an effort to keep the driving speeds somewhat under control, all of the cars (including our thrashed Toyota corolla rentals) issue this quiet persistent beeping when you drive above 120 Km/hr. Needless to say, if it isn’t beeping we go faster.
The horses are not planning on coming home. In addition to good food, round-the-clock care, more food, warm weather and lots of food, they have been getting massage (from the equine massage specialist) and chiropractic adjustment. Too much like equine Cub Med.
Last night Marcia & I drove into Dubai city to check it out (about 150 Km away up the coast). The gold souq is amazing – a shopping area with shop after shop after shop of gold jewelry – dazzling. We spent an hour or so down by the docks, looking at the “dhow wharfage”. Dhows are wooden boats, maybe 50 to 100 feet long, look like really big rowboats. They ply the trade routes all over the Persian Gulf, carrying just about everything. The wharf are is mayhem (and we were there at 8 PM) – the dhows are parallel-parked for about 4 miles of frontage, and they are generally 4 to six abreast. There are piles and piles and piles of goods, boxes, equipment, stuff tarped over all along the wharf area. Apparently most stuff is loaded on and off by hand, and across three other boats to get to the dhow tied farthest from the wharf. This must be quite a scene on a busy day.
The course is set, we are off to drive it and see the whole thing in sequence. This PM we start setting up crew bays, etc. Looks like the field for the race will be about 60 horses, including some of the top local riders. Things may get hectic for a couple of days, so I may not post anything till after the race on Thurs. You can check the links above, the local papers will at least have the headlines if not full results. Ciao - Tj
Chapter 8 - Race Report from the UAE
Friday morning, the day after the ride. Probably everyone has hit the “Gulf News” or “Khaleej Times” web sites and know that all the Californian riders finished, Heather in 11th, Marcia 14th & Hal 15th. I’ll try to provide some more detail about the past two days.
Wednesday was set-up day. Some of the major stables bring quite a show on the road – a typical set-up is two to three large tents (20 x 40 feet is pretty typical size), a generator, maybe a motorhome or two or a portable building (like a half of a mobile home). Rugs on the floor of the tent, tables & chairs, etc. etc. This is all in addition to what comes for the horses, usually a full pick-up load per horse.
Pre-ride check-in is what you expect at a major ride, lots of officials & clipboards milling around, bits of official paper, everyone watching the horses at the vet inspection and nodding knowingly. The minimum weight that the horses must carry is 75 kilos (about 165 pounds). That is pretty easy for Hal, who weighs about 150 all by himself, plus saddle & tack. Marcia is the smallest US rider; as a result her saddle is full of lead. The saddle weighs about 45 pounds (much to the chagrin of Al Wathba’s Sri Lankan grooms who have been helping us out – they are all ex-jockeys, not real big guys, and used to racing saddles that weigh about 3 pounds). The horses all looked real good at vet-in, and the riders were issued numbered vests to wear during the ride – number on the back, big photo image of HH Sheik Zayed on the front. Not like the polo shirt we usually ride in.
Pre-race set up in the crewing area is quite an effort. Everything is industrial strength. First you set up a portable corral for each horse, complete with shavings and water buckets. Ice in a cooler the size of a coffin for a football lineman. Cases of water – probably 40 cases of 24 bottles of 1.5 liter water bottles. Bales of hay, bags of grain, three trucks, two drivers, five grooms, tack trunks etc. etc. etc. We had access to whatever we needed from Al Wathba stables resources.
As an aside, I did a match race one-on-one against one of Jen Nice’s horses, Al Barraq, on the day before the ride. This idea was cooked up by me and Jen’s publisher (of Endurance World magazine), and sponsored by Sheik Mansoor. I ran, Jen rode 80 Km of the President’s Cup route. The horse had two vet holds totaling 60 minutes, I ran straight through. We finished in 5 hrs 45 minutes – the final straight-away to the finish line is 4 Km in a straight line – I was at the 2 Km mark when Jen hit the top of the 4 Km at a dead gallop, I finished ahead by about 50 meters. Quite a finish for the cameras. We made the front page of the local paper, and got interviewed by the local BBC news radio. There must be a deficit of “local color” stories hereabouts.
Race day, the race start time was 6:30. Wake up call at 4, breakfast at 4:15, at the stable by 5. Pretty calm around the start, about 60 horses in the starting field and plenty of room for milling around. A pretty mellow start just before the sun rose.
Endurance racing in the UAE is certainly a participant event. Anyone with a vehicle can follow the horses along the race course, although 4 wheel drive is a plus in the sand and the taste in cars runs to Land Cruisers, BMW’s and the occasional Hummer. As a result, there were probably at least 250 vehicles and a couple of thousand people following the race along. And not just putting along behind, it is much more fun to blast ahead of the riders or zoom back down the course to see how another horse was doing. At times it was quite a traffic jam - although I didn’t see any wrecks, at least a couple of guys flew out of the back of a moving truck. At one point we came over the top of a sandy hill and spotted something like 20 vehicles stuck in the sand, with a Hummer and an UAE army all-terrain vehicle pulling crews out. It looked like a check point at the Baja 1000 off-road race. Quite a spectacle, and the riders were certainly not bored.
The course was five loops, 37, 37, 36, 32 and 18 Km. Marcia and Heather made it around the first loop in about 2:05, about 8 min behind the lead riders, with Hal a few minutes back of that. As expected, the first vet check was pandemonium & chaos (if you haven’t seen the first vet check at an international endurance race, imagine Christmas shopping at a very crowed mall a day before Christmas, with everyone full of caffeine, in a hurry and heading for the same sale rack, only with spectators and 60 really excited and sweaty endurance horses dancing about). Anyway, we all got through OK.
The second loop was long and flat, and started to spread out the field. Hal Hall’s crew vehicle was one of the rigs parked in the sand up to the door frame, so there were some anxious moments until they got towed out and caught up to Hal. Marcia & Heather came around in about 2:07 or so, with Hal maybe ten minutes back.
The vet holds were short (30 minutes, or 40 minutes with a re-present to the vet), particularly given the amount of time and scrutiny the vets took with each horse. 30 minutes goes by too fast, even with 4 or 5 of us dashing around tending to each horse and rider we could still use an extra 30 minutes per check.
Race day was the hottest, stillest day we have had here. Usually the mornings are still, then the wind picks up by 10:30 AM and some days blows pretty hard. On the day of the race there was only a slight intermittent breeze all day. So, when the riders headed out on loop three at about mid-day, it was feeling a lot more like summer in the desert than winter in Northern California. Plus, the third and fourth loops had more sand and rolling hills than earlier.
All of the horses had some low points on the third loop. Hot, hiking through sand, traveling alone, they were sure this was some sort of cruel and unusual punishment for enjoying the resort life the past couple of weeks. The riders were getting pretty grumpy too (at least Marcia was). Jen & I were following Marcia in a pickup – we cranked up our air conditioner and tried to be cheery, and pour cold water on the horse every mile or so (That is another fun participant activity – drive along the course with your horse & rider in a pickup, with a cooler and ten cases of spring water in the back. Jump out every mile or so, hand a 1.5 liter water bottle to your rider as they trot or gallop by, jump back in the truck, dash ahead and repeat). Jen & I followed Marcia in one truck, Jeremy and Skip chose to ride in the back of another truck piloted by Basheer to tend to Heather, and Ann & the kids rode in Jen’s Land Cruiser with Ruwn and Jamad to chase Hal.
The forth loop included what there was for hills, some short steep rollers for about 6 miles in the middle of the loop. All our US horses did pretty well in the hills – finally something to break up the flat! All of the US riders had been moving up in the placings through the day, as many of the early front runners retired for various reasons. Marcia’s horse Saamson lost a shoe on this loop, fortunately we had an ‘Easyboot’ in the truck with us. Al Wathba’s farrier was able to fashion a new shoe in less than ten minutes when we were back in the vet check, but the delay on the trail cost some time.
The lead horses were just flying. Clearly there is a huge ‘home track’ advantage for the local horses – they certainly know the course, they are adapted to the heat, and train regularly at the high speeds that this type of course allows. The lead horses were heading out on their last lap when we were coming in from the forth – there was a cavalcade of at least 100 vehicles following the front-running pack of four horses. I ran interference for Marcia with the truck, as we swam upstream against the horde. The first riders were returning when Heather was heading out on her last lap, and she had to negotiate the same obstacles. Fortunately there were no head-on horse and vehicle encounters. The first four horses finished in 8:24 to 8:29 riding time – pretty amazing.
All our US horses slowed quite a bit in the last loop, particularly after dark at 6:30 PM as the deep sand stretches were hard to spot, even with a chase vehicle lighting the way with high-beams. The horses all looked fine at the finish, and again early this morning when we turned them out – particularly Saamson, who was pretty fresh – he had obviously been sandbagging during the race. The riders were pleased with their finishes, given the conditions of the day. Particularly Heather and Marcia had top-five or six type performances in mind, but we were all surprised by the heat. In short – pretty hard to take mid-winter horses and race as competitively as possible in a “summertime” race.
Today everyone is feeling happy, tired, and sunburned – pretty typical post race conditions. Personally I am going to have a beer. Thanks for reading - TJ
Chapter 9 - Postscript from the UAE
Four days after the race, and all of the aches & pains have pretty much subsided. The riders were surprisingly thrashed after the ride, something to do with riding in pretty much the same position all day rather than changing about as you would over a more hilly course – I suspect they were all a bit dehydrated as well.
Everyone has shipped out except Skip & I, we are traveling with the horses leaving tomorrow AM. We spent a couple of hours this AM spraying everything – saddles, pads, wraps, tack, etc. etc. with a disinfectant, packing & sealing in shipping trunks under the watchful eye of a couple of international vets. Our total so far is about 300 kilograms, 650+ pounds. Tomorrow the horses load at 8:30 AM after a wash-down with a light acid instructions. Marcia, Heather & Ann Hall provided Skip & I with about 6 pages of instructions for everything imaginable. We fly to Luxembourg, layover there for 24 hrs, then on the Los Angeles. If all goes smoothly at the quarantine barn in LA, the horses could be home as early as Saturday afternoon. If they knew they were leaving I am sure they would try to escape – they are particularly enjoying laying about in the warm sand all day.
Marcia made it all the way home as of Sunday night – sounds like everything was smooth to San Francisco & through Customs, until she went to board the 20 seat, propeller driven shuttle flight for the 45 minute flight to Sacramento, whereupon it sounds like she was durn near strip searched. That’s what you get when you travel via a one-way ticket from the middle east.
Skip & I & Grace Ramsey went shopping in Sharjah last night – we bought stuff, LOTS of stuff. Watching Skip & Grace double-team-barter the sales guys was too much fun. I bought stuff I didn’t need just for the show. The sales guys were left in tears, not of joy. OK, gotta go, last chance for a beer & some sunshine before I fly back to winter.
Cheers, TJ
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
Death Valley Encounter 2001 - Nick Warhol
It just wouldn't be Christmas without going to the Death Valley Encounter. That's the way it feels for Judy and I, since we have trundled ourselves down there to the Dez every year since 1993 except one. What's so special about the ride, you ask? I'm glad you asked. There are a few reasons that come to mind: great riding in the desert, some of the most unbelievable scenery in the world, a well organized ride, and some really great people who head down there to share the experience. Ride manager Jackie Bumgardner puts a lot of work into the DVE to make sure it comes off without a hitch. There are always little hitches in every ride, but considering the work involved in putting on this monster, I consider it a really well run event. Those people who have never ridden down here don't realize what kind of effort it takes to just supply water for the horses. Believe me, there is not a whole lot of natural water out there in the desert; every ounce has to be trucked in and placed strategically on the 4-day trail. One empty water trough could ruin a ride for someone. (er, ahh, we won't mention empty water troughs, right, Warpaint?) I'm happy to report, once again, that the trail was well marked, the weather was impeccable, there was always water where it needed to be, and plenty of it.
Who were we riding? I was thrilled to be mounted once again on the one and only Zayante, the horse who, before this ride, had 9,655 AERC miles. How many horses do you know that have made it to ten thousand endurance miles? Not many, let me tell you. I started riding Zay two years ago at this ride, when my horse was injured. Since then, Zay has taken me through 1,100 miles of multi-day rides. Yeah, I'd say he's fun to ride. It's hard to describe him. He's got this business-like attitude towards endurance that keeps him happy and excited to go down the trail, mile after mile after mile. He's incredibly strong, he's energetic, he's smooth, and he's always looking happily ahead down the trail with ears forward. Someone described him very appropriately as the Energizer bunny. The fact that he's brilliant white in color with a really pretty face certainly helps. Okay, he has some minor flaws: he jigs on occasion, he spooks at stuff sometimes, and he has this classic sneer that he uses on just about every other horse on the ride. Big deal. I'll take ten more horses just like him, thank you.
Judy left Warpaint, the spotted wonder, at home again this year, due to a nagging sore foot. It's too bad, since Judy and Warpaint have the most miles together as a rider and horse at the DVE: 800 miles. He's getting up there in years, and we sure hope he can make it back next year for 200 more. Judy brought our new horse, Wabi, down for his second ever ride. He's the guy we bought to replace the early retired Shatta, but he's been a bit of a lazy bones in his conditioning rides. Judy was going to do a limited distance ride on him on the first day to see how he'd respond.
Our eight-hour drive down from the Bay Area with Wabi went well, as usual. As long as there is food in front of Wabi, the sky could be falling and he wouldn't care. After stopping for a horse break at Lost Hills on I-5, we arrived at Jackie's house on Tuesday evening and set up camp in the back. The weather was cold, but not as cold as it has been in the past. I calculate how cold it is based on things that freeze. Frozen horse water buckets, pretty cold. Frozen water buckets and frozen garden hose, really cold. Frozen water buckets, garden hose, and water in the trailer- BRRRR! All of the above have happened down here. Based on my incredibly accurate cold rating scale, it was pretty balmy. We spent a relaxed morning in Ridgecrest getting gas, groceries, and Judy's required Latte, then after loading up Zayante, we headed out to the start of the ride at Valley Wells, just north of the scenic and ever delightful Trona, California. Why go to Belize or Fiji for a vacation, when you could spend a week in Trona for much less money? (those who know the place will now shake their heads.) Judy and I went out for a ride to warm up the boys- Wabi was far from being a slow poke. In fact, he was moving right along in his relaxed sort of manner. Judy was so happy with how he felt after our 30-minute ride, she said she could leave now and still be happy. Hmmmm. We prepped everything for the ride, had a nice dinner, (Turkey Burritos, I think,) and went to the ride meeting, where Judy started helping Jackie with the rider registrations and changes. Know how to make a ride manager crazy? Have them manage a multi-day. I bet three-quarters of the riders in the event made at least one change of rider, horse, distance, laundry, who knows what else. Jackie just takes it in stride as she tippity taps everything into the computer.
Our friend Rebecca Jankovich had not shown up yet; we were a little worried, since this was the maiden voyage of her new trailer. Did I say trailer? I mean rolling palace! She pulls into camp in this giant, I mean big, Silverlight living quarters trailer, all of five days old. This baby is plush! They were still trying to figure out what went where, and what all those little switches did as the sun went down.
The first day started out with nice weather- cool, but not cold, with a nice cloud cover. Judy and I rode out of camp together a few minutes after the 7 am start. Zay was just bopping along in his normal manner, sneering at everyone in the ride. Wabi was on the gas! He was jigging a little, and wanted to go faster. This is good! Well, maybe not so great, but I'd rather have him be in a little bit of a hurry than standing still. The ride cruises over to the outskirts of Trona, past a few garbage dumps and some junkyards. Very scenic, and lots of stuff to spook at. The trail heads up into a nice, long sandwash that takes the riders up a long canyon at the base of the mountains. We were riding along with Ken Cook and his tough little Rocky horse, just enjoying the morning, when we spotted a wild horse, way up on the side of the mountains. We could barely see it, but it was cool, watching it work its way through the really nasty rocks, way, way up on the top of the ridge. Then in a few minutes we saw a rider, on foot, following the horse! Uh oh. Not so much a wild horse, it seems. I could not believe where that horse was going. He was going up, away from the trail, as high on the mountain as he could climb. We watched it climb away, with the rider following on foot, stunned that the horse would choose to go up there. It looked like a person could not walk through that stuff. At the bottom of the wash there were people waiting for the horse to come down, but it could not get down the back of that mountain. The rider eventually caught up to the horse, when it could go no further, and made it back to the trail. A few minutes later we hit the LD vet check, where Wabi was at 56. It was a pulse and go, so we trotted along through the perfect desert for the remainder of the loop into lunch, where Judy was done with the ride.
Wabi had done great! This was his second ride ever, and he had done exactly what Judy wanted- just have fun and not get him tired. Zay and I spent our hour eating, and after lunch we headed back out with Rebecca, her sister Emmaline, and Gary Webb on his backup horse George. Since Judy claims my SR saddle when she rides Wabi, I used another saddle for the first 25 miles. I switched back to my SR at lunch, and when I swung up into the seat, I felt right back at home. You forget how wonderful your saddle is until you don't ride in it for a while. Up and over the Slate mountain range, with a long walk off the horse down the back side. From the top, you look North up the valley and see where the finish is, in Ballarat, but it looks like it is still 25 miles away. After a walk down rocky road number one, we mounted up and trotted the next 90 minutes or so, all the way up the valley. The footing was perfect due to recent rains. No dust, just loam. What could be better? We finished in great shape, our horses looking perfect. Day one completed, Zayante mileage is now 9,705 miles.
Judy wasn't riding day two, so while she slept in, I got up and going on the big climb. This ride just goes up and down a single hill, then some trotting. The single hill is 8,000 some odd feet in elevation, however. You just go straight up the mountain, to the top of the world. Along the way you have to go through the rushing water on the rocky road. Where does this water come from? Where does it go? Who knows? Along the climb we passed many old mines and abandoned mine camps. Not really ghost towns, but still neat, nonetheless. It's a long, long, very rocky climb up this hill, mostly at a walk. Once you get almost to the top, there is a mile or so of really nice trotting through the pinon pines. We kept telling Rebecca about the view from the top, and about the super neat mountain meadow, but there would be no views today. We hit the clouds with a mile or so to go from the top. Zero visibility, no view, and of course the mandatory rain started falling. That wasn't so bad, until we got to the top, where the wind started. Okay, now it is cold. We got off and led the horses up the last half-mile or so, not only to help the horses over the rocks, but to help keep warm. Normally we would spend a while at the tippy-top where Sparrow has the water, (you have to see it to believe it that he gets his truck up there), but this time it was a quick chance for the horse to drink, then it was down, down and right now. Poor Sparrow was in his cab, with the engine running and heater going. That looked pretty tempting. We were able to see the meadow a little bit through the mist and rain, but it is much more of an incredible sight in the sunshine. No dawdling up here- we blasted across the freezing meadow and started back down the mountain. It's fun trotting slowly down from the summit for a while, but not when you hit the rocks. I just get off and walk. I led Zayante about seven miles down that mountain on foot, from just below the bathtub/water stop, all the way to lunch.
It was sort of spitting rain in the valley- I have been to Death Valley a bunch of times, and have never seen any rain down here. A quick lunch, a change into dry shoes, and after drinking many cokes, it's off on the last loop- a sixteen mile round trip to the Indian Ranch for water. Nice, easy trotting on a road the whole way. We got into the finish as the sun was getting low in the sky, and were treated to an unbelievable sunset. There were layers of sun and colors on the mountain range across the valley. Purples, reds and oranges, even some blue. It was all you could do to not just stop and stare at the beauty. Except I had to EAT! I was really hungry, and as I walked past the timers, the smell of the tamale pie /casserole stuff that was being server for dinner sent me into a feeding frenzy. Once officially stuffed, I felt much better. Another 50 miles, another ride award bowl, and now Zay has 9, 755 miles.
Day three is a weird day. It is not hard, yet not easy. It is not scenic, yet it has some beautiful trails. It has some great footing, and the worst footing on the entire ride. It is boring, yet really fun. Go figure. I've decided I like the day, especially in conditions like this. The weather was perfect- a little cold, with cloud cover stretching across the valley. This is one of the point-to-point days, where base camp moves to Panamint Springs. Judy was riding Jackie's mare, Holly, on the last two 50's, so we had to arrange for our rig to be moved. We left Wabi and Jackie's other horse Odyssey, (Jackie always has more horses around) tied to the trailer and headed down the trail. We had a little mix-up in the truck-moving schedule, and our rig ended up being left behind.
Good buddy Ken Cook came to our rescue when he was one of the last ones heading out of camp and saw the two horses still standing there. Since he wasn't riding the third day, Judy had asked him the night before to keep an eye on the horses. He decided to play it safe and take the horses with him rather than leave them there. He shuffled things around, loaded 'em up in his trailer, and headed over to Panamint Springs. He tied them up to his trailer, kept food and water in front of them, (no small feat with Wabi) and saw to their every need all day. Thanks, Ken. We now have a new nickname for Ken- he is officially known as "Ken Cook, friend of Wabi." Meanwhile, Judy and I were cruising along down the trail at a nice, slow pace. For some reason, we both got really hungry about an hour after the start. Not much to chew on out here. Suddenly Judy yelps excitedly- she is riding Jackie's horse with Jackie's saddle, and has been digging through the tack. She comes up with a can of fruit juice! We pound it down, wishing there were more cans. Then a few miles later, I look down on the trail and see something red. Is it a mirage? Am I getting dizzy? Will I pass out? No, it's a bag of red licorice sticks! I leap off the horse and scoop up the prize. No, I don't care who dropped it, it's mine! I'll return the ziplock bag if they want. We feast on the chewy, red delight. Yummy! That took the edge off. Thanks so much, whoever dropped it. This took us to the water stop at the highway crossing, where we stopped for water, and crossed the highway.
From this point it is a couple of miles to the really nasty rock road, so we crossed the road and walked. And walked. And walked. And walked some more, all the way from the highway to the end of the nasty rocky road. It was probably only about seven or eight miles, but it seems like fifteen. I have solved Jackie's day three dilemma. Every year people complain about the rocky road. So she moved the trail to the rocky sandwash from hell. People complained about that. So back to the rocky road. More complaints. Here's what can happen next year- you can take your pick! Don't like the rocky road? Take the wash. Don't like that? Take the road. Simple. Besides, the road is better, especially if you are on foot. After a couple of hours on foot, we hopped back on and headed to the highway. I rode along with Steve, my new friend from New Hampshire, who was riding Jackie's horse Rowdy, who was for sale. Steve did all four LD days on Rowdy, and Rebecca's significant other, Warren, bought him! (Not Steve, the horse!) Congratulations, Warren, you have a nice horse there. Warren's first, too. We missed Alex at the highway crossing, since he always has candy there for the riders. The water was there, but no sweets for us. The long, uphill haul to the lunch vet check seemed easier this year, since the weather was so cool. There's some deep sand, so we took it real easy. It was getting chilly as we got to lunch, where we ate everything we packed, and still wanted more. Holly looked great, but Zay looked a little strange at the vet check. Not bad, just strange. He tends to stiffen up a bit after standing around, but he looked okay for the vet.
We started the last leg of the long day as the temperature dropped. I borrowed a jacket from Steve, since in my haste at the start I forgot to pick mine up. Down a 4-mile wash that is half walk, half trot, then across the highway again to the big trot. Ride to the bottom of the valley, turn left, then trot 10 miles to the finish. We got to the camp just before the sun went down. Zayante looked okay at the finish, again, strange, but okay. Charlie the vet said let's take a look at him in the morning. Another long day in the desert done, 50 more miles, now Zayante has 9,805 miles. I went and retrieved Wabi from Ken, who was going to have to bill me for all the hay Wabi ate. It was nice to have him back, now he could continue to eat us out of house and home. Thanks again, Ken.
Day four, the last day. I was up early to warm Zayante up- no worries. He looked just fine. Same as always. Great! For some reason, Judy and I got started late, and didn't leave camp until about 7:30. It was neat to be all-alone out there, until we caught Trilby, as well as some other riders after a while. The long climb up to the top of the pass was way colder than I thought it would be. Down the other side, and we get dumped in to the worlds coolest wash. This baby is as wide as a ten-lane freeway and just as flat. Great stuff, and great trotting. We stopped at the super hidden water spring, then saw the dead burro a moment later. Yuck! This guy was recently expired, since the buzzards and critters had only eaten his middle section. Kind of sad, but kind of fascinating at the same time. That's nature in action, though.
More fast trotting brings us to the end of the wash all too soon, then we head up along an old paved road to the bottom of the Darwin climb. A short walk up a pass, then down the other side takes us into the town of Darwin. What a strange place. People live here, but you never see them. Ever. You feel like they are watching you from their houses, but you never see anyone. It's the twilight zone! Rebecca joined Judy and I, since her sister and Steve were doing the LD rides that circle back to camp from Darwin.
A quick water stop and we head for the best part of the ride- the absolutely beautiful romp up the valley, up through the Joshua trees, through two passes, all very trot-able and the best scenery on the ride. At the top you see the mountains in the distance that line the highway 395 valley- they are huge, and covered with snow. The White Mountains, or the Sierra? I don't know, but they are awesome.
Another hour of trotting takes us to lunch, where we are near the back of the pack. It is usually really cold and windy at this check, but this year it was much nicer than in the past. You just sit up there and look at those mountains. All too soon its time to leave. We vet the horses, (Zay looks just fine,) and continue back on the same trail. That's okay with me, since we get to go back through those passes again.
We trotted all the way from the top of the last pass down into Darwin. A drink of water, and back through the bizarre little town. What's this! It's a resident, and he waves and smiles! That was a first. Maybe he was really a tourist. We climb back up the pass, down the other side, and slowly make our way to the dead burro wash. There he was again. (where would he go?) The end of the wash- now its just a long walk up, and a longer walk down the other side. We reach the bottom of the grade just as the sun is setting. Its only about 3 miles now, trotting on a nice road in the dark. We get to the highway, where I go behind, since Zayante is blazing white in color. I got to play reflector, since we had to go the last mile or so on the shoulder of the highway. We walk into the finish just before six pm, for our final completion.
Zay vets fine- he looks like he did on day one. We headed for the campers, where we had planned a fancy group dinner, rather than the banquet. Their menu- beef. Our menu- my home made Cioppino, (2 Crabs, four kinds of fish, 2 kinds of scallops, mussels, prawns), Warren's pork tenderloin roast, with apples and potatoes in a wonderful sauce, an appetizer plate that would have been at home at a 5 star restaurant, three kinds of wine, fresh French bread, salads, Brie, smoked salmon- you get the idea. For desert we had Steve's famous banana/ice cream special recipe flambé with rum. Eating like this is part of hanging around with Rebecca and Warren. This is good stuff. The awards meeting came next, where we got more bowls, and got to hear Jackie tell us that this year had the most horses do all four days, and the rides had the lowest pull rates ever. Way to go, everyone. I just made sure Jackie orders the DVE 4-day horse and rider sweatshirts in any color but Green- I already have one of those with my and Zayante's name on it. A third next year? I sure hope so.
We hung around Ridgecrest for an extra day after the ride, so we could relax, and Judy could take Wabi for a ride. I ran back (?) to Paniment Springs in Jackie's truck to pick up the big red trailer, since the truck that towed it out there blew its transmission. Hah! Last year that was me, not this year. On New years day evening, a group of folks that were still around all went to dinner at a strange little restaurant called The Homestead, I think. Jackie, Alex, Dave the Duck, his wife Anne, daughter Calina, Judith Ogus, Becky Glazer, Robert and Melissa Ribley, Judy and I all had a really fun feast on everything from Swordfish to petite filet mignon. We must have spent two hours just yacking. It was a great way to top of a great week.
Four more perfect days of riding, Wabi did great, no problems, and Zayante now has 9,855 miles. I'm really excited about that horse getting to ten thousand miles, which won't be long now. He's a special animal, and I'm proud to be part of his endurance career. Thanks, Jackie, for putting me in touch with this remarkable horse.
Zayante's biggest fan,
Nick Warhol
Hayward, Ca
Who were we riding? I was thrilled to be mounted once again on the one and only Zayante, the horse who, before this ride, had 9,655 AERC miles. How many horses do you know that have made it to ten thousand endurance miles? Not many, let me tell you. I started riding Zay two years ago at this ride, when my horse was injured. Since then, Zay has taken me through 1,100 miles of multi-day rides. Yeah, I'd say he's fun to ride. It's hard to describe him. He's got this business-like attitude towards endurance that keeps him happy and excited to go down the trail, mile after mile after mile. He's incredibly strong, he's energetic, he's smooth, and he's always looking happily ahead down the trail with ears forward. Someone described him very appropriately as the Energizer bunny. The fact that he's brilliant white in color with a really pretty face certainly helps. Okay, he has some minor flaws: he jigs on occasion, he spooks at stuff sometimes, and he has this classic sneer that he uses on just about every other horse on the ride. Big deal. I'll take ten more horses just like him, thank you.
Judy left Warpaint, the spotted wonder, at home again this year, due to a nagging sore foot. It's too bad, since Judy and Warpaint have the most miles together as a rider and horse at the DVE: 800 miles. He's getting up there in years, and we sure hope he can make it back next year for 200 more. Judy brought our new horse, Wabi, down for his second ever ride. He's the guy we bought to replace the early retired Shatta, but he's been a bit of a lazy bones in his conditioning rides. Judy was going to do a limited distance ride on him on the first day to see how he'd respond.
Our eight-hour drive down from the Bay Area with Wabi went well, as usual. As long as there is food in front of Wabi, the sky could be falling and he wouldn't care. After stopping for a horse break at Lost Hills on I-5, we arrived at Jackie's house on Tuesday evening and set up camp in the back. The weather was cold, but not as cold as it has been in the past. I calculate how cold it is based on things that freeze. Frozen horse water buckets, pretty cold. Frozen water buckets and frozen garden hose, really cold. Frozen water buckets, garden hose, and water in the trailer- BRRRR! All of the above have happened down here. Based on my incredibly accurate cold rating scale, it was pretty balmy. We spent a relaxed morning in Ridgecrest getting gas, groceries, and Judy's required Latte, then after loading up Zayante, we headed out to the start of the ride at Valley Wells, just north of the scenic and ever delightful Trona, California. Why go to Belize or Fiji for a vacation, when you could spend a week in Trona for much less money? (those who know the place will now shake their heads.) Judy and I went out for a ride to warm up the boys- Wabi was far from being a slow poke. In fact, he was moving right along in his relaxed sort of manner. Judy was so happy with how he felt after our 30-minute ride, she said she could leave now and still be happy. Hmmmm. We prepped everything for the ride, had a nice dinner, (Turkey Burritos, I think,) and went to the ride meeting, where Judy started helping Jackie with the rider registrations and changes. Know how to make a ride manager crazy? Have them manage a multi-day. I bet three-quarters of the riders in the event made at least one change of rider, horse, distance, laundry, who knows what else. Jackie just takes it in stride as she tippity taps everything into the computer.
Our friend Rebecca Jankovich had not shown up yet; we were a little worried, since this was the maiden voyage of her new trailer. Did I say trailer? I mean rolling palace! She pulls into camp in this giant, I mean big, Silverlight living quarters trailer, all of five days old. This baby is plush! They were still trying to figure out what went where, and what all those little switches did as the sun went down.
The first day started out with nice weather- cool, but not cold, with a nice cloud cover. Judy and I rode out of camp together a few minutes after the 7 am start. Zay was just bopping along in his normal manner, sneering at everyone in the ride. Wabi was on the gas! He was jigging a little, and wanted to go faster. This is good! Well, maybe not so great, but I'd rather have him be in a little bit of a hurry than standing still. The ride cruises over to the outskirts of Trona, past a few garbage dumps and some junkyards. Very scenic, and lots of stuff to spook at. The trail heads up into a nice, long sandwash that takes the riders up a long canyon at the base of the mountains. We were riding along with Ken Cook and his tough little Rocky horse, just enjoying the morning, when we spotted a wild horse, way up on the side of the mountains. We could barely see it, but it was cool, watching it work its way through the really nasty rocks, way, way up on the top of the ridge. Then in a few minutes we saw a rider, on foot, following the horse! Uh oh. Not so much a wild horse, it seems. I could not believe where that horse was going. He was going up, away from the trail, as high on the mountain as he could climb. We watched it climb away, with the rider following on foot, stunned that the horse would choose to go up there. It looked like a person could not walk through that stuff. At the bottom of the wash there were people waiting for the horse to come down, but it could not get down the back of that mountain. The rider eventually caught up to the horse, when it could go no further, and made it back to the trail. A few minutes later we hit the LD vet check, where Wabi was at 56. It was a pulse and go, so we trotted along through the perfect desert for the remainder of the loop into lunch, where Judy was done with the ride.
Wabi had done great! This was his second ride ever, and he had done exactly what Judy wanted- just have fun and not get him tired. Zay and I spent our hour eating, and after lunch we headed back out with Rebecca, her sister Emmaline, and Gary Webb on his backup horse George. Since Judy claims my SR saddle when she rides Wabi, I used another saddle for the first 25 miles. I switched back to my SR at lunch, and when I swung up into the seat, I felt right back at home. You forget how wonderful your saddle is until you don't ride in it for a while. Up and over the Slate mountain range, with a long walk off the horse down the back side. From the top, you look North up the valley and see where the finish is, in Ballarat, but it looks like it is still 25 miles away. After a walk down rocky road number one, we mounted up and trotted the next 90 minutes or so, all the way up the valley. The footing was perfect due to recent rains. No dust, just loam. What could be better? We finished in great shape, our horses looking perfect. Day one completed, Zayante mileage is now 9,705 miles.
Judy wasn't riding day two, so while she slept in, I got up and going on the big climb. This ride just goes up and down a single hill, then some trotting. The single hill is 8,000 some odd feet in elevation, however. You just go straight up the mountain, to the top of the world. Along the way you have to go through the rushing water on the rocky road. Where does this water come from? Where does it go? Who knows? Along the climb we passed many old mines and abandoned mine camps. Not really ghost towns, but still neat, nonetheless. It's a long, long, very rocky climb up this hill, mostly at a walk. Once you get almost to the top, there is a mile or so of really nice trotting through the pinon pines. We kept telling Rebecca about the view from the top, and about the super neat mountain meadow, but there would be no views today. We hit the clouds with a mile or so to go from the top. Zero visibility, no view, and of course the mandatory rain started falling. That wasn't so bad, until we got to the top, where the wind started. Okay, now it is cold. We got off and led the horses up the last half-mile or so, not only to help the horses over the rocks, but to help keep warm. Normally we would spend a while at the tippy-top where Sparrow has the water, (you have to see it to believe it that he gets his truck up there), but this time it was a quick chance for the horse to drink, then it was down, down and right now. Poor Sparrow was in his cab, with the engine running and heater going. That looked pretty tempting. We were able to see the meadow a little bit through the mist and rain, but it is much more of an incredible sight in the sunshine. No dawdling up here- we blasted across the freezing meadow and started back down the mountain. It's fun trotting slowly down from the summit for a while, but not when you hit the rocks. I just get off and walk. I led Zayante about seven miles down that mountain on foot, from just below the bathtub/water stop, all the way to lunch.
It was sort of spitting rain in the valley- I have been to Death Valley a bunch of times, and have never seen any rain down here. A quick lunch, a change into dry shoes, and after drinking many cokes, it's off on the last loop- a sixteen mile round trip to the Indian Ranch for water. Nice, easy trotting on a road the whole way. We got into the finish as the sun was getting low in the sky, and were treated to an unbelievable sunset. There were layers of sun and colors on the mountain range across the valley. Purples, reds and oranges, even some blue. It was all you could do to not just stop and stare at the beauty. Except I had to EAT! I was really hungry, and as I walked past the timers, the smell of the tamale pie /casserole stuff that was being server for dinner sent me into a feeding frenzy. Once officially stuffed, I felt much better. Another 50 miles, another ride award bowl, and now Zay has 9, 755 miles.
Day three is a weird day. It is not hard, yet not easy. It is not scenic, yet it has some beautiful trails. It has some great footing, and the worst footing on the entire ride. It is boring, yet really fun. Go figure. I've decided I like the day, especially in conditions like this. The weather was perfect- a little cold, with cloud cover stretching across the valley. This is one of the point-to-point days, where base camp moves to Panamint Springs. Judy was riding Jackie's mare, Holly, on the last two 50's, so we had to arrange for our rig to be moved. We left Wabi and Jackie's other horse Odyssey, (Jackie always has more horses around) tied to the trailer and headed down the trail. We had a little mix-up in the truck-moving schedule, and our rig ended up being left behind.
Good buddy Ken Cook came to our rescue when he was one of the last ones heading out of camp and saw the two horses still standing there. Since he wasn't riding the third day, Judy had asked him the night before to keep an eye on the horses. He decided to play it safe and take the horses with him rather than leave them there. He shuffled things around, loaded 'em up in his trailer, and headed over to Panamint Springs. He tied them up to his trailer, kept food and water in front of them, (no small feat with Wabi) and saw to their every need all day. Thanks, Ken. We now have a new nickname for Ken- he is officially known as "Ken Cook, friend of Wabi." Meanwhile, Judy and I were cruising along down the trail at a nice, slow pace. For some reason, we both got really hungry about an hour after the start. Not much to chew on out here. Suddenly Judy yelps excitedly- she is riding Jackie's horse with Jackie's saddle, and has been digging through the tack. She comes up with a can of fruit juice! We pound it down, wishing there were more cans. Then a few miles later, I look down on the trail and see something red. Is it a mirage? Am I getting dizzy? Will I pass out? No, it's a bag of red licorice sticks! I leap off the horse and scoop up the prize. No, I don't care who dropped it, it's mine! I'll return the ziplock bag if they want. We feast on the chewy, red delight. Yummy! That took the edge off. Thanks so much, whoever dropped it. This took us to the water stop at the highway crossing, where we stopped for water, and crossed the highway.
From this point it is a couple of miles to the really nasty rock road, so we crossed the road and walked. And walked. And walked. And walked some more, all the way from the highway to the end of the nasty rocky road. It was probably only about seven or eight miles, but it seems like fifteen. I have solved Jackie's day three dilemma. Every year people complain about the rocky road. So she moved the trail to the rocky sandwash from hell. People complained about that. So back to the rocky road. More complaints. Here's what can happen next year- you can take your pick! Don't like the rocky road? Take the wash. Don't like that? Take the road. Simple. Besides, the road is better, especially if you are on foot. After a couple of hours on foot, we hopped back on and headed to the highway. I rode along with Steve, my new friend from New Hampshire, who was riding Jackie's horse Rowdy, who was for sale. Steve did all four LD days on Rowdy, and Rebecca's significant other, Warren, bought him! (Not Steve, the horse!) Congratulations, Warren, you have a nice horse there. Warren's first, too. We missed Alex at the highway crossing, since he always has candy there for the riders. The water was there, but no sweets for us. The long, uphill haul to the lunch vet check seemed easier this year, since the weather was so cool. There's some deep sand, so we took it real easy. It was getting chilly as we got to lunch, where we ate everything we packed, and still wanted more. Holly looked great, but Zay looked a little strange at the vet check. Not bad, just strange. He tends to stiffen up a bit after standing around, but he looked okay for the vet.
We started the last leg of the long day as the temperature dropped. I borrowed a jacket from Steve, since in my haste at the start I forgot to pick mine up. Down a 4-mile wash that is half walk, half trot, then across the highway again to the big trot. Ride to the bottom of the valley, turn left, then trot 10 miles to the finish. We got to the camp just before the sun went down. Zayante looked okay at the finish, again, strange, but okay. Charlie the vet said let's take a look at him in the morning. Another long day in the desert done, 50 more miles, now Zayante has 9,805 miles. I went and retrieved Wabi from Ken, who was going to have to bill me for all the hay Wabi ate. It was nice to have him back, now he could continue to eat us out of house and home. Thanks again, Ken.
Day four, the last day. I was up early to warm Zayante up- no worries. He looked just fine. Same as always. Great! For some reason, Judy and I got started late, and didn't leave camp until about 7:30. It was neat to be all-alone out there, until we caught Trilby, as well as some other riders after a while. The long climb up to the top of the pass was way colder than I thought it would be. Down the other side, and we get dumped in to the worlds coolest wash. This baby is as wide as a ten-lane freeway and just as flat. Great stuff, and great trotting. We stopped at the super hidden water spring, then saw the dead burro a moment later. Yuck! This guy was recently expired, since the buzzards and critters had only eaten his middle section. Kind of sad, but kind of fascinating at the same time. That's nature in action, though.
More fast trotting brings us to the end of the wash all too soon, then we head up along an old paved road to the bottom of the Darwin climb. A short walk up a pass, then down the other side takes us into the town of Darwin. What a strange place. People live here, but you never see them. Ever. You feel like they are watching you from their houses, but you never see anyone. It's the twilight zone! Rebecca joined Judy and I, since her sister and Steve were doing the LD rides that circle back to camp from Darwin.
A quick water stop and we head for the best part of the ride- the absolutely beautiful romp up the valley, up through the Joshua trees, through two passes, all very trot-able and the best scenery on the ride. At the top you see the mountains in the distance that line the highway 395 valley- they are huge, and covered with snow. The White Mountains, or the Sierra? I don't know, but they are awesome.
Another hour of trotting takes us to lunch, where we are near the back of the pack. It is usually really cold and windy at this check, but this year it was much nicer than in the past. You just sit up there and look at those mountains. All too soon its time to leave. We vet the horses, (Zay looks just fine,) and continue back on the same trail. That's okay with me, since we get to go back through those passes again.
We trotted all the way from the top of the last pass down into Darwin. A drink of water, and back through the bizarre little town. What's this! It's a resident, and he waves and smiles! That was a first. Maybe he was really a tourist. We climb back up the pass, down the other side, and slowly make our way to the dead burro wash. There he was again. (where would he go?) The end of the wash- now its just a long walk up, and a longer walk down the other side. We reach the bottom of the grade just as the sun is setting. Its only about 3 miles now, trotting on a nice road in the dark. We get to the highway, where I go behind, since Zayante is blazing white in color. I got to play reflector, since we had to go the last mile or so on the shoulder of the highway. We walk into the finish just before six pm, for our final completion.
Zay vets fine- he looks like he did on day one. We headed for the campers, where we had planned a fancy group dinner, rather than the banquet. Their menu- beef. Our menu- my home made Cioppino, (2 Crabs, four kinds of fish, 2 kinds of scallops, mussels, prawns), Warren's pork tenderloin roast, with apples and potatoes in a wonderful sauce, an appetizer plate that would have been at home at a 5 star restaurant, three kinds of wine, fresh French bread, salads, Brie, smoked salmon- you get the idea. For desert we had Steve's famous banana/ice cream special recipe flambé with rum. Eating like this is part of hanging around with Rebecca and Warren. This is good stuff. The awards meeting came next, where we got more bowls, and got to hear Jackie tell us that this year had the most horses do all four days, and the rides had the lowest pull rates ever. Way to go, everyone. I just made sure Jackie orders the DVE 4-day horse and rider sweatshirts in any color but Green- I already have one of those with my and Zayante's name on it. A third next year? I sure hope so.
We hung around Ridgecrest for an extra day after the ride, so we could relax, and Judy could take Wabi for a ride. I ran back (?) to Paniment Springs in Jackie's truck to pick up the big red trailer, since the truck that towed it out there blew its transmission. Hah! Last year that was me, not this year. On New years day evening, a group of folks that were still around all went to dinner at a strange little restaurant called The Homestead, I think. Jackie, Alex, Dave the Duck, his wife Anne, daughter Calina, Judith Ogus, Becky Glazer, Robert and Melissa Ribley, Judy and I all had a really fun feast on everything from Swordfish to petite filet mignon. We must have spent two hours just yacking. It was a great way to top of a great week.
Four more perfect days of riding, Wabi did great, no problems, and Zayante now has 9,855 miles. I'm really excited about that horse getting to ten thousand miles, which won't be long now. He's a special animal, and I'm proud to be part of his endurance career. Thanks, Jackie, for putting me in touch with this remarkable horse.
Zayante's biggest fan,
Nick Warhol
Hayward, Ca
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
My first LD - Do I need a crew? - Q & A
Question: "Is it necesarry to have a crew if only riding 25 miles and only planning on riding to finish this first time out?"
Question: "How are the P&R stops different than CTR's. I remember reading once that the stops were half an hour or so."
Angie's answer:
No. Don't be shy asking some other crew person who doesn't have a rider in right then to hold your horse while you run to the porto-john. They're usually bored anyway and I've never met anyone who wasn't just very cheerful about helping if you'll act appreciative and ask them "with your hat in your hand" instead of demanding help. Usually they'll jump in and help in other ways once they see that you need help. There's no better crew than an endurance rider who doesn't get to ride that day. They have a lot of nervous energy to burn off. >g<
From what little experience I have with CT, they make a much greater effort to bring the horse in at an extremely low pulse and don't use water to bring the pulse down. At an endurance ride you pretty much keep up your average speed till the vet check is in sight, then just sort of ease in the last 100 yards or so. It's O.K. to hop off and loosen the girth and drop the bit and walk in on foot if you think the pulse is a little up. When you get to the check you will give Nancy your card and she gives you an arrival time. You have 30 minutes from that time to meet 64 (at the 1/2 way check, 60 at the finish). That's *all* that number is for, disqualification if you don't recover. Next you go to your crewing area. For my crewing area I have 2 sponge buckets full of water with loose sponges, a muck bucket for drinking water, a saddle rack, a pan of beet pulp with carrots and apples in it, and hay. Try to keep him out of the food when you first arrive because eating will keep the pulse up (it's best to hide the pan behind the saddle rack). THIS is the race. You yank your tack, slop some water on that horse and then take his pulse. As soon as he's 64 get him to the P&R area. When you enter the P&R area and they take that time, THAT'S when your 30 minute hold starts. Is that clear as mud? >g<
Angie
Tina's answer:
Jennifer, Hello...I haven't been to Leatherwood but I think the checks are in camp. That makes it pretty easy to crew for yourself - esp. on a conservatively ridden 25. Since you've done CTR and already have an idea of what it's like to come in off the trail and get your horse ready to present you won't have any problem. Not sure how different the vet checks are since I've not done CTR but I can tell you basically what will happen at a ride check:
-you'll come in from the trail and get an in-time on your card - you now have 30 minutes to get your horse down to parameters (usually 64bpm but sometimes 60 depending on the conditions - the vet staff will tell you that at the ride meeting). The less time you take the sooner your hold time starts.
-you'll untack/sponge/whatever your horse. If you're riding conservatively (and even if you're not but your horse is in great shape) he'll be down by now or within another minute or two. He can (and should be) eat/drink while you're doing this.
-you'll take horse and vet card to the P/R area where his pulse will be taken. If he's down, someone will yell "Time on Number XX". You like to hear those words :) Your hold time (will be anywhere from 20 - 45 minutes set by the vet staff depending on the conditions - probably will be 20 - 40 minutes)
-You'll get in the line (if there is one) to have your horse vetted. If there's a long line you might want to bring several carrots or a flake of hay for your horse to eat while in line - at a few rides (and again, I've never been to Leatherwood so have no idea what happens there) you'll spend your hold time in line but that's not too common.
-You'll get to the vet where your horse will pass with flying colors :) and you can go back to your crew area where your horse can eat, you can potty, you can eat, you tack back up if needed, etc...
Depending on the camp set-up (and again I've not been to this ride) you'll either set up a little "station" with maybe a saddle rack, sponge bucket, feed tub, sponges, cooler/sheet depending on weather, hay and any other things you want to have handy or you can just crew from your trailer. If the vet check area is a good ways from the trailers you'll definitely want to set up a little station.
This kind of check is called a gate into a hold and is the norm in the SE (at all AERC rides??) for vet checks.
Hope this helps,
Tina
Question: "How are the P&R stops different than CTR's. I remember reading once that the stops were half an hour or so."
Angie's answer:
No. Don't be shy asking some other crew person who doesn't have a rider in right then to hold your horse while you run to the porto-john. They're usually bored anyway and I've never met anyone who wasn't just very cheerful about helping if you'll act appreciative and ask them "with your hat in your hand" instead of demanding help. Usually they'll jump in and help in other ways once they see that you need help. There's no better crew than an endurance rider who doesn't get to ride that day. They have a lot of nervous energy to burn off. >g<
From what little experience I have with CT, they make a much greater effort to bring the horse in at an extremely low pulse and don't use water to bring the pulse down. At an endurance ride you pretty much keep up your average speed till the vet check is in sight, then just sort of ease in the last 100 yards or so. It's O.K. to hop off and loosen the girth and drop the bit and walk in on foot if you think the pulse is a little up. When you get to the check you will give Nancy your card and she gives you an arrival time. You have 30 minutes from that time to meet 64 (at the 1/2 way check, 60 at the finish). That's *all* that number is for, disqualification if you don't recover. Next you go to your crewing area. For my crewing area I have 2 sponge buckets full of water with loose sponges, a muck bucket for drinking water, a saddle rack, a pan of beet pulp with carrots and apples in it, and hay. Try to keep him out of the food when you first arrive because eating will keep the pulse up (it's best to hide the pan behind the saddle rack). THIS is the race. You yank your tack, slop some water on that horse and then take his pulse. As soon as he's 64 get him to the P&R area. When you enter the P&R area and they take that time, THAT'S when your 30 minute hold starts. Is that clear as mud? >g<
Angie
Tina's answer:
Jennifer, Hello...I haven't been to Leatherwood but I think the checks are in camp. That makes it pretty easy to crew for yourself - esp. on a conservatively ridden 25. Since you've done CTR and already have an idea of what it's like to come in off the trail and get your horse ready to present you won't have any problem. Not sure how different the vet checks are since I've not done CTR but I can tell you basically what will happen at a ride check:
-you'll come in from the trail and get an in-time on your card - you now have 30 minutes to get your horse down to parameters (usually 64bpm but sometimes 60 depending on the conditions - the vet staff will tell you that at the ride meeting). The less time you take the sooner your hold time starts.
-you'll untack/sponge/whatever your horse. If you're riding conservatively (and even if you're not but your horse is in great shape) he'll be down by now or within another minute or two. He can (and should be) eat/drink while you're doing this.
-you'll take horse and vet card to the P/R area where his pulse will be taken. If he's down, someone will yell "Time on Number XX". You like to hear those words :) Your hold time (will be anywhere from 20 - 45 minutes set by the vet staff depending on the conditions - probably will be 20 - 40 minutes)
-You'll get in the line (if there is one) to have your horse vetted. If there's a long line you might want to bring several carrots or a flake of hay for your horse to eat while in line - at a few rides (and again, I've never been to Leatherwood so have no idea what happens there) you'll spend your hold time in line but that's not too common.
-You'll get to the vet where your horse will pass with flying colors :) and you can go back to your crew area where your horse can eat, you can potty, you can eat, you tack back up if needed, etc...
Depending on the camp set-up (and again I've not been to this ride) you'll either set up a little "station" with maybe a saddle rack, sponge bucket, feed tub, sponges, cooler/sheet depending on weather, hay and any other things you want to have handy or you can just crew from your trailer. If the vet check area is a good ways from the trailers you'll definitely want to set up a little station.
This kind of check is called a gate into a hold and is the norm in the SE (at all AERC rides??) for vet checks.
Hope this helps,
Tina
Sunday, December 16, 2001
Gauteng, South Africa - 100 mile Event - Irene Murphy
I don’t know what gave me the idea to respond to a posting on the local endurance discussion list regarding an endurance race in South Africa, but I did. Four weeks late, my father and I were standing in the JFK airport waiting for our flight to be called.
It is approximately a 15-hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg, or J-burg as we came to know it. We arrived to extremely blustery weather, cold and rain. My first thoughts on arrival were that I did not bring enough bad-weather clothing for this trip! Buses shuttled us from the parked 747-400 series to the international terminal and customs. It was easy to enter and few questions were asked. The airport was newer ,deceptively large and crowded. Multiple levels held check-in and arriving passenger gates. Large glass windows interspersed between shops gave a good view of outside the terminal where palm trees were being battered by the blustering rain and wind.
We met one of our hosts at the airport. Cindy Budler and her family had offered us accommodations for the first part of our stay. Cindy’s son had made up a stenciled sign with my name on it to help us find her at the airport. The J-burg airport was crowded, guards, armed with AK-47s stood at regular intervals throughout the terminal.
It was a one-hour drive, skirting around J-burg for us to arrive at Cindy’s farm. (There was not really a good way to go from the airport to Cindy`s farm. There was either a north or south route around Johannesburg.) In South Africa, and most of the African continent, people drive on the left-hand side of the street. This takes a little adjustment to get used to because, not only does traffic run in that manner but people and horses also move to the left when approaching another walker or rider. It made for some interesting situations and gave one way to identify a fellow traveler when people would do the right-left jig when you approached. The only time we would lapse back to the more ingrained habits was when leaving either a store or gas station. The lines were on the wrong side! .
The Budler farm was located 15 min. outside of Magliesdorp, a small, one gas station town. The town consisted of one street, with shops located on either side of the street. The essentials were there, a small bed-and-breakfast, grocery store, school, tack shop, post office and liquor store. Kids, in school uniforms, walked on the sides of the street.
Some differences that we noted up front was that it seemed everyone smokes. Since smokers seem to be a smaller and smaller part of the population in the US it took a bit of adjusting. There also did not seem to be the big separation of smokers/non-smokers in restaurants and public places. Some did have different seating sections but it did not seem to be as big of a problem in South Africa in general. One observation that we saw while driving was that all the gas stations provided full service. Rather than having to pump gas or check oil you simply instructed the attendant what to do so. The service attendants were all black.
Cindy had about 13 horses on her property. Some were loaned to her for various reasons and some were her own. She was not going to ride in the up-coming race so she was beginning the immunizations for African horse sickness. We had the chance to meet with the broodmares in the pasture and two geldings in a field of their own. None of the horses wore fly masks and the insects were swarming their eyes. We learned that one very large problem was ticks and each horse and dog was treated regularly for ticks. Lyme disease did not seem to be a threat in South Africa. The horses were quite thin and the stalls were dark and relatively dirty. Hay nets hung in each stall holding just little bits of hay. Most of the horses had long coats and were quite dirty. Cindy described how the winter had been tough on many breeders. We talked and compared what we fed our horses. They used a type of grass hay and avoided Lucerne or alfalfa as we call it in the US. They did not supplement with grain or pellets as many people in the US do. They also did not blanket their horses, instead allowing them to endure the elements.
We went to a roadside shopping area to look around. It was very similar to the shopping that we had seen in Mexico, the booths were all set up on tables or sometimes the ground. The booths covered an entire corner and were in front of a restaurant. Both sides of the corner had shops. A canvas tent protected the items and the vendors from the sun. Each vendor would offer some type of deal to the shoppers and people walking by so it made it difficult to pick any one item for closer examination without being hounded by vendors. Separate from the vendors were men trying to hand out flyers looking for money or political support. They would target the men more than the women for constant hounding. We did find one booth where the vendors were less pushy and bargained for a hermatite and fresh pearl necklace and a rhino carved in a stone similar to jade. They went for R120 and R110 respectively or $16.90 and $15.50.
On Tuesday, we left early in the morning to drive to Machadadorp. A friend of a friend of Cindy’s had offered to let us use their cottage there. It was about a 4-hour drive to Machadadorp and we drove through Pretoria on the way. The expressway (N4 that we took) had four lanes, two in most directions. Additional lanes were added near the larger cities, which in this case was Pretoria. The pavement was smooth with few potholes. People frequently could be seen crossing the expressways and well-worn paths led up to one side, through the median and out the other especially near the squatter camps. The expressways were set up similar to the rest of the world, service stations, accessible only from the expressways, were on both sides. The stations would have gas and a convenience store as well as restrooms which were large and clean, gift and souvenir shops. A large tent, shading the vehicles underneath, covered some parking spaces. In some cases there were also restaurants and some local tourist attraction like trout hatcheries. It was at one of these service stations that we met up with our contact for the night’s lodgings. We got directions and proceeded to drive to the cottage.
It had gotten cooler when we got to the cottage. We lit the braai and put potatoes on to begin cooking. It started raining so we had to move under the edge of the roof to protect the braai from the rain. I also had a chance to open a South African wine and try my first one. It was a bottle that Cindy had received as a gift but neither her nor Andre drank red wine so it had only sat in their cupboards. The wine had a very distinct taste, fruity, not too many tannins. The cows were coming into the pens and we saw a variety of types with several calves playing together. They were noisy and constantly called to each other. The calves were more interested in playing and ran in between the older more placid cows. The sunset was one of the more amazing we had seen. The trees at the west end of the property were a little more stark and a bright red sun shone through the branches. None of the surrounding clouds lit up or provided any other color beyond the sinking red ball.
Wednesday morning we were able to visit one large breeding farm belonging to the Foyers. We were enticed to visit by being offered to see them feed the broodmares. We hurried to arrive but the weather was not exactly on our side. The clouds had descended and shrouded the countryside in a thick fog. Visibility was very low and the temperature had dropped considerably. We rushed to fill the car with petrol, since we had used it all the previous day driving and headed toward their farm calling once to confirm directions.
They had over 150 horses on their farm. Several bands of broodmares and young horses dotted the countryside. We drove down a long dirt driveway and parked next to a brick three-car garage. Each of the spaces was filled. To our right horses were trotting in two different round pens, a large boned bay horse led two grays in the circles. They were moving at a good clip around the pen and being encouraged by black workers. It had turned considerably colder when we arrived at their farm and a strong wind blew across the open plateau. There were no hills or trees to stop the wind as it swept over the plateau where the farm was situated.
Immediately in front of us were several multi-acre pastures. The closest housed many broodmares and year-old horses. Pens with interlocking wooden partitions were on one side of the pasture offering an area to separate the horses for feeding. Several of the young horses had learned how easy it was to get into the partitioned areas and at the food. All the horses had thick, winter coats and were shaggy and dirty. Many had prominent bones, which they attributed again to a hard winter. The next pasture over housed the broodmares that had foals at their side. Few of the foals were over a month or two old and moved around very awkwardly. Several had found an ideal place to keep warm, cuddling down into the hay. A small stream ran through the pasture providing some water. In a further pasture a younger band of horses ran playing having just been released to go romp for the day.
The Foyers most notable feature in their breeding program was the combining of the South African Boerpoerd with the Arabian. They had been very successful with that combination and were doing well in endurance racing. They had also brought a stallion from Nairobi and were seeing some promising results. We drove back to J-burg Wednesday morning since we were to get to see the horses that day. We had a 2:00 appointment to meet with the owners of the horses. We arrived at the de Wet house after driving through several incorrect portions of the city since we were unsure of where the house was located.
Two driveways led to the de Wet house. Outside a large fence encircled the house and yard. Each of the houses on that street were surrounded by high fences. The gate was remote controlled allowing the occupants to let people in from inside. The house was a dark red with a type of shingled roof. A sidewalk, leading from the longer of the two driveways, allowed access to the front door once the occupants opened that gate. We drove in the first gate which led past the house into an open patio area. The back and right sides were additional parking spaces for cars. Cars and trucks in various states were parked haphazardly throughout the patio. Black workers and kids appeared and disappeared constantly. There was little grass area to play on and some flowers planted as if by accident in some areas.
One of the other international riders, Andrea from the UK, had arrived that morning. She joined us to visit the horses and later for the tour. She was still suffering from a bit of jet lag. She was very quiet throughout the tour and we teased her saying we were just waiting for her to fall asleep. Plans changed somewhat and we had just a brief chance to see the horses. We unloaded our luggage at the de Wet house with some assistance from their help and took off. Only one horse was close by so that we could go visit, that was Nazlet. She was a smaller, bay, mare with some endurance experience having finished 2, 100-mile races previously. One a younger bay that was just beginning a race career that Ami was riding in the 80km race, another a bay gelding with a long hollow back but a very long phenomenal trot that Tjaart was planning to ride in the 160km (100mile) with us.
Our tour of the city began on a small koppe with a water tower. The homes surround the water tower were quite large and protected by large fences with barbed wire protecting the top. We had to travel several narrow drives to reach the top. Our guide, Johannes, showed us the general layout of the city. The area we were on was a more upscale residential area, as we descended the hill the home values gradually decreased and the security lessened until we arrived at the old Sophiaville that was a very run-down slum like area. The names of the towns were being changed as a result of the apartheid regime ending. It made conversation and telling directions quite interesting because in some cases people would use the old name of the city and many tried to use the new names as well. The streets were not crowded and there was little traffic. For comparison, the houses at the top of the hill ranged from 700,000 to 1,000,000 R ($100,000 to $140,000) We drove through a very ‘yuppie’ area filmed with coffee shops, Internet cafes and art shops as well as a squatter area. One area of significance was where the buildings, that had previously housed the Indian population had been bulldozed. During the apartheid years, the blacks had been segregated. People began to point out that Indians also fell under the definition of black and pushing for them to be removed as well. The buildings were bulldozed and the Indians fell under the rule of segregation as well. This area was one that Gahndi had come to and protested.
There are 11 official languages of South Africa including English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa which is pronounced with a clicking sound for the ‘xh’ beginning the word. The clicking sound had even given rise to a special song called the “click song” because the white man could not pronounce that sound. (The song was sung to brides on their wedding day.) Others are tribal languages and one being a combination of a variety of languages.
A restoration project was underway in the city of Johannesburg. Johannes was a part of that project and had very interesting perspective. Each area was being rebuilt with contributions from businesses. A guard, wearing a yellow beret, stood at the intersection providing a reference point in case someone was walking and needed directions or help. There did not seem to be many people walking on the streets. Most of the traffic was black. On the streets where the restoration project was underway banners advertised this a being a part of the project.
No hotels could be seen in the downtown area all had moved to a separate, newer, Johannesburg located separately from the old city. The downtown area was being converted to a museum, old buildings, filled with squatters located across the street. If one looked carefully you could see the signs which designated certain stores as either white or black. People in business clothes walked next to ladies in tribal dress carrying large barrels balanced on their heads. It was an area filled with dramatic contrasts and struggles. Crime is a large problem, evidenced by the high security surrounding the more residential areas. Armed guards, fences and barbed wire, were abundant.
We traveled through the city central and exited on another hill looking back towards our starting point. We got an overview of the area that we had traveled and a better perspective of the lay-out of the city.
The remainder of the group met up at the restaurant, named Carnivore. This restaurant was mentioned in several of the travel books that we had read before our trip plus had been recommended by a gentleman we had sat next to on the plane we looked forward to an enjoyable dinner. The entrance to the restaurant was a long sidewalk spanning a small pond. Thatched roofs covered the sidewalk so we were protected from the now sporadic rain. Dim lights and torches lit the way. A long series of steps led to the main floor of the restaurant. We were taken to our seats on a patio filled with people. A large braai with slabs of meat on skewers surrounding the braai were smoking filling the room. Black waiters and busboys walked quickly from table to braai. There was a guest book with signatures from all over the world.
We were seated on the patio and ordered drinks. Dad, Andrea, Ani-li and Cindy ordered a local drink that was a shot of vodka with honey. Rain began to fall which made the patio quite noisy. Talk with the group became impossible. Then, the lights began to flicker on and off eventually remaining off. The remainder of the dinner was held in darkness. This did not put a damper on the evening but just the opposite, it seemed to remove tension from the group and everyone began talking and getting to know one another.
After we were moved indoors to the quieter but smokey (since they did not have the drafts for the braai opened up) they began to serve out dinner. A small carousel tree was situated in the center of the table which held 10 different sauces. The waiter described each sauce and which meats it best complimented. Then the dinner began. Servers brought skewers full of a variety of meat. If each person wanted that type of meat all they had to do was ask and tell them how they wanted it cooked. We had atelope, wildebeast, cow, crocodile, buffalo, chicken to name a few. Of all the meats, my favorite was the chicken with it’s complimentary sauce. The taste was wonderful!
The group was concerned about the amount of rain that we were receiving and the effect that it would have on the race. We ran to the cars and transferred luggage in the pouring rain. The electricity had not yet returned even by time we got to Cindy’s farm. Candles were lit and set out throughout the house. Cindy mentioned that she rarely had time to color or decorate the candles, she used them so often when the electricity went out. It seemed that the new foal had arrived early that morning and the owner was there to see the new baby. Leave it to horses to pick the night it’s raining and there’s no electricity to have a new foal. We went to see the new baby and mother. It was standing and came to investigate when we came to the door.
We drove to the basecamp that morning. There was some apprehension as to what the accommodations would be like. None of the organizers had seem them first hand and had described them only as permanent tents. The drive into the park was 5 km and we passed a variety of animals, all the same color since they had recently rolled in the mud. We did see the tell-tale bumps in the pond of the hippopotamus. The basecamp gave us another start when we arrived, a variety tents were set-up and we began to imagine that it would be quite Spartan conditions for the next few days and wondering when we would see another shower. We were informed, though, that the tents were not located in the basecamp.
We were set up in permanent tent structures about 6 kilometers from the race site. There were six tents and one main building, the buildings facing to the north. The tents were built elevated from the ground and into the side of a hill. Brick stilts supported the front patio area. The south portion of the tent was the bathroom area, each having a private shower, toilet and sink. The bathrooms were done in a redwood slat finishing. A small vestibule area between the bathroom and sleeping area separated the two sections. Two twin beds were placed in opposite corners of the main tent. A canvas tent closed in this area and then the entire structure was covered with another canvas tent. The floor was done in a large red tile and animalskin rugs were placed next to each bed. There were two chairs, two nightstands with electric lights in the form of the old time oil lanterns. A large wardrobe was also on one side of the tent. Window flaps on both the east and west sides could be opened for circulation as well as the two large flaps on the north side opening to a generous sided patio. The main building also had several patios and a braai, it had a thatched roof covering a large bar and dining area inside. It also had a red tile floor with various animalskin rugs. A digital TV and satellite system provided some entertainment.
We met one of the vets and the chief steward, Kormy, for the FEI portion of the race while we waited to leave for dinner. Kormy was not only very knowledgeable about the horses but was also quite familiar with South African wines. She got quite a head-start on happy hour before we arrived. One of the park rangers was tasked to make sure everything was organized at the tents. He worked as the bartender also for each of the guest. He had lived for a year in the US and had worked at a youth camp in Alabama. He had an opportunity to visit some of the west during his stay and knew some of the place that we described. Fortunately, he was also a rider and described a paint horse that he still had.
That evening one of the sponsors from the race provided dinner for the race attendees. The restaurant’s name was Marquis. Everyone had to pile into the wide assortment of vehicles in order to drive to the restaurant. Since both Andrea and I had ridden with one of the rangers we had to drive by the park owner’s home to exchange vehicles. Ed and his wife lived just outside the entrance to the preserve. They kept a variety of exotic animals at their place one of which Andrea and I were able to meet. This was a young cheetah, who came up to the fence purring. He was very friendly and laid down at our feet and was chewing on Andrea’s shoe. It was amazing how friendly and so similar to a house cat such a normally wild animal was.
The roads to the Marquis were confusing and by the time we arrived I was entirely lost. There would have been no way I could have found my way back to the park. The Marquis also had a very well decorated entrance. Flower beds and ponds decorated the entrance. The interior tables were set up in the shape of a U allowing people to see each other and talk. When the Marquis opened they had purchased a very large collection of South African wines. The bottles could not be sold since the labels had been damaged, or in some cases destroyed. Several excellent bottles of wine were served and each was fabulous, one of the favorites being a 1981 Groot Constantia Cabernet Sauvignon. The meal consisted of salad and a personal braai where meats were cooked in garlic butter to each person’s taste. During the meal we had our first opportunity to call back home. The areas that we had frequented so far in the week had been quite remote. Very few farms had telephones and pay phones were not that frequent. (Many of the farms had shared lines, if they had any lines at all. It was a problem in the rural areas since the phone cables were being stolen for their copper content.) When a phone did come available the next quandary was how to dial out! We were not even able to learn how to get an operator so that we could charge a call to a credit card. International dialing codes were also another puzzle. Normally, there is some type of code that must be dialed first (011 in the case of the US) then the country code, then the number you are dialing. The first code was unknown for where we were. After several attempts we managed to place a call on a cellphone. The call was so clear and there was no delay that my husband, John did not even recognize who it was on the call! While they may have difficulty with land lines they were far ahead of having a digital cellular infrastructure. The primary supplier being Vodafone.
We left the Marquis late and returned to the tents. The general consensus was to turn in but Kormy was still ready to drink at the bar and her voice could be heard loud and clear.
The Race
Friday morning dawned bright and early. The skies were very clear and barely a cloud in the sky. An excellent day for a race!!! The race organizers had prepared a wonderful breakfast with more than ample food for the small group staying in the tents. We had coffee or tea, eggs, several types of meats, cereals, rolls, croissants to name just a few things.
Both horses had arrived at the basecamp. Andrea and I were to drawn names for who was to ride which of two horses, Nazlet or Soraji. Soraji was a 7 yr. old grey mare with only a few 80 km races to her credit. She was tall, ~15 hands, with beautiful thick, straight legs, slightly uphill build and a bit on the thin side. She had a rather normal head, nothing to give away her Arabian parentage. She was calm and only looked briefly when her traveling companion left being much more interested in the grazing available. There were several miniature horses that lived in the park kiosk area and they got lose into the base camp. (either that or they had finally found a weakness in the fence separating them from the horse on the other side, many of which were in heat) One of the miniatures was a black stallion that fully recognized that there were mares nearby. Undeterred by his small stature the stallion ran circles around the horses until the rangers were able to successfully corral them back to their pens. They were forced to spend the remainder of the weekend in their pen. Nazlet was about 8 years old, 14.2 h high and had a rather elegant, Arabian face. She was soundly built, only slighter more slender that Soraji.
Once we drew names we then began to select tack so that we could go for a short training ride. Andrea was to ride Nazlet and I was to ride Soraji.
Soraji was very enjoyable to ride and responded well once the correctly fitted bridle and bit were used. Most people rode in either a Kimberwicke or some variation of a snaffle or curb. Very few hackamores were seen and no one was seen riding in the rope halters. Soraji’s paces were easy to ride, she had very little bumping at the trot and her canter moved through her entire body and was quite enjoyable to ride. She had a long stride and listened to my aids well. She did not seem spooky nor did she want to pull and run away from me. Another international rider from Germany, Suzanne joined us that morning. She had her own horse, which she had purchased from Tjaart and Ami, plus she had her own saddle. Nazlet and Andrea seemed to get along quite well together too.
After the ride we were treated to lunch of Boerewor sausage and then an open jeep tour of the course. The course was marked in different color arrows. For the 100-mile course green arrows marked the first two loops follow by the blue, yellow, and red that the South African endurance organization uses standard on all their courses. The first two loops of the 100-mile race were the same 40-kilometer loop. We were mainly able to drive the 3rd and 4th loop on the course and they pointed our several of the more difficult areas including the cattle guards which we would have to cross. Since there were no gates on the side of the cattle guards plywood panels and rubber mats were used to cover the grates. The course went through all the major wildlife areas excluding the predator camp. Since the predators were only fed once a week and we were at the end of their weekly fast we were all happy to hear we did not enter their camp. We also learned that they were regularly fed horse meat. Two fences surrounded the predator camp, which housed two prides of lion, wild dogs and cheetah. Lions could jump the 10ft fence with sufficient momentum hence the need for the two fences, the first; a shorter five-foot fence stopped their momentum so that they could not make it over the second fence.
One of the dangers that we had to be made aware of was the hippopotamus. They stayed close by their pond but had to travel quite a distance in order to eat sufficient amounts of food to maintain their weight. Even more dangerous, though, were the wild buffalo. There was a club in South Africa dedicated specifically to people who had been attacked by wild buffalo.
There were numerous other wildlife in the park including an energetic herd of Springbuck. This was previously the national animal of South Africa but was changed after the end of apartheid. When athletes make their national team they are awarded the ‘Springbuck colors’. Several of the riders, including our hosts, had been awarded the colors and they wore the jerseys at the race. Representatives from the South African team had traveled to Dubai and New Zealand to compete. In all cases, though, they had to use borrowed horses due to quarantines for African Horse Sickness. Horses could not leave until May of 2001 due to an outbreak of horse sickness.
There are 14 identified strains of horse sickness we learned from the vets at the race. Only 9 of those strains have been isolated and an immunization developed to protect the horses. During an outbreak many horses will die since there is a very high degree of fatalities from horse sickness. Immunizations from horse sickness require that a horse do minimal work during the series of shots. The horse’s heart can not be stressed unnecessarily during the immunization time. Those that were not bringing their horses to this race had already begun the immunization process. Others would wait until after the race to begin and would give their horses time off then.
Vetting in for the race was scheduled to begin at 3:00 but did get rolling until after 5:00. Things were in full swing when we returned. Horses were being walked all over the camp and the campers had already filled many of the sites. Generators and large lights were set up so that the vets could see the horses. The starting of the generators spooked several of the horse during vetting in. Three vets were inspecting the horses. This was the first chance to work with Soraji and I found that she was calm excessively so, not wanting to trot out for inspection.
The vetting area was roped off and contained four trotting lanes. A vet stood at the head of each lane to do the inspection. There was a waiting area to enter the vetting. This was surrounded by the official’s tent, the finish line, the grooming area and the weigh-in trailer. There was considerable traffic in this area and it was quite congested. Vet cards were similar to those used in the states. Additional areas were allowed on the cards for CRI (Cardiac Recovery Index) once each horse passed the vetting they entered the stabling area and were under FEI rules. This applied to all distances from 30 kilometers to 100 miles. Unlike endurance races in the US a large grouping of stalls were located just north of the vet in area. The stalls were separated by removable partitions that could be built into different size stalls as necessary. Stallions were housed in a separate area each separated by a four-foot spacing. Some were quite well behaved, yet a few were acting up and showing off. The mares and geldings were housed together. There were no shades over the stalls. The east end of the base-camp was set up for camping. Port-a-loos had been brought in for this area. From conversation during the week with the race organizers they anticipated the only complaint would be that there was only one shower available. They mentioned that people would not come to a race unless camping and stabling facilities were available. This made it difficult to organize a ride since there were few areas that could support the size groups that attended the race.
We took an opportunity to make one last trip to the tents to prepare. We had time to head back to the tents to get ready for the early morning race start because by the time we were able to check in and get our numbers the sun had already begun to set. Kormy was generous enough to allow us to borrow her bakkie to drive back to the tent. Two people fit in the cab and one rode in the bed of the truck. It was not the most comfortable situation since the beds were dirty and it was difficult to prop oneself in some manner so as not to get bumped around. This was also the first opportunity for my dad to drive on the left side of the street. Andrea (from the UK where that is the norm) caught him tending to the right rather than the left when another car was approaching. Unsure of how things would be managed, we went ahead and packed our supplies for the race that evening. We put on riding clothes and brought the jackets that we planned to ride in. Tack, helmets and boots were already at basecamp and had been fitted to the horses. We loaded up and headed back. It was quite difficult to get back and forth to the tents since neither Andrea nor my father and I had rented a car so we tried to make sure and not forget any supplies. Plus, a truck was required in order to climb down the steep grade to the parking by the tents. Those with cars parked at the top of the hill and walked down. Obviously, since the tents and the race were located in a wildlife preserve it was not possible to walk from the tents to the base-camp.
Campers quickly filled the camping area and people both with and without horses were milling about the area. A large tent had been sent up next to the reserve kiosk. It was muggy but cooling quickly in the cold night air. A dinner of lasagna and salad was served and people stopped by when they had time available to eat, tickets for all the meals at the race were graciously provided by our hosts. We laid down for just a bit while we waited for the start of the race. It took some time but I played with the Tetris Gameboy that I had brought along, then shared that wit my dad before resigning to trying to sleep. The ride meeting started late and pulled us from our quick snooze.
The ride was announced open at 9:15 Friday evening. The new FEI rules that the ride was being operated under caused some grumbling in the crowd as well as the news that English, rather than Afrikaans would be spoken during the race. Basic rules were discussed where they highlighted some of the differences between their standard rules and the FEI endurance rules. The international riders, three total, were introduced with mixed reviews from the crowd. (This was no difference than the response that is seen in the US. Some are very enthusiastic about having international riders and some see it as an inconvenience and taking away from the local riders.) There was considerable grumbling that all the horses must remain in the stabling area until the close of the race on Sunday. This caused problems especially with the 30-kilometer riders who were worried about being stuck on site until Sunday when they finished riding on Sat. Course descriptions were provided including the order of the colored arrows to follow.
The 100-mile race began at 1:00am Saturday morning. We all tried to sleep between the meeting and the start of the race. Because of the excitement and the close-at-hand start it was difficult to get any rest. We woke up about 1 hour before the race and began tacking up. Both Andrea and I were accustomed to using heart rate monitors during the race but were unable to attach them to the saddles. We decided not to use the monitors rather than to risk losing our equipment. The horses seemed puzzled at the events going on around them and having been interrupted from the rest and warm blankets pulled off. Some were anxious to start the race but the overall attitude was calm. The start was controlled, led by the ranger’s vehicles leading the way and making sure none of the animals were on the trail. Both the 100-mile and 110 kilometer riders started at the same time. It was dark but there was a full moon. The trail was marked with glow sticks and it was easy to follow the blinking red lights being worn by each rider. There was a ranger vehicle both in front and behind the group of riders and they were excellent at keeping track of all the riders throughout the course. During the race they were the ones contacted in order to find where a rider was on the course and always had a good idea of everyone’s location on the reserve.
We started out in a group of five myself and Soraji, Andrea and Nazlet, Suzanne and Ibn, and both Tjaart and his brother, Hannes, on their horses. We traveled at a quick trot throughout the first loop. The loop went out through the main entrance of the reserve turning down a dirt then paved road. There was adequate space on the side of the road for the horses to travel safely. There was a vet check at the 15-kilometer mark which at first was announced as a running check but instead was a dismount and they checked pulse. It was confusing but manageable. We were not required to present vet cards at that point. The race continued through farm roads and by many different homes. Water was available throughout the course and was marked by a large ‘W’ on the trail. The horses traveled well together and everyone was comfortable in the darkness.
There was a big difference in the preparation that we saw for the race. It seemed that very few people gave electrolytes to the horses. When questioned they told us that they had given them to them the night before. I did not observe anyone giving electrolytes during the race. Additionally, per FEI rules, syringes for given oral electrolytes have to be provided by an FEI vet. Another big difference seen was that no one had saddle bags or supplies tied onto their saddles. No one carried sponges either. In general there seemed to be nothing tied to the saddles like what was seen in the US and people were more concerned about carrying only a minimal amount of weight. There seems to be quite a different approach towards racing in South Africa and people did not pack for being out in the wilderness but rather to race and travel as quickly as possible. There seemed also to be less attention to the care of the horse at the race, specifically, picking out feet. Since no one had saddlebags very few brought supplies in case of emergency like hoof pick, easy boot or spare leathers. At many races in the US it is very easy to find people with an entire first aid kit in their saddlebags. Little was packed for the rider, either. It was assumed that ride management had to provide drinks on the course and food at the vet checks.
During the first loop there were several areas where drinks were available. We were able to fill up on sports drinks at several stops and I did not even touch my own Gatorade that I had packed.
The terrain ranged from farm roads to rocky, hilly trails. There were no extremely steep climbs mainly just a difference in the amount of rock. The elevation was approximately 6000 feet and the humidity was high. Temperatures at night were in the 40s and there was a bit of a breeze, during the day it was in the high 80s low 90s. For someone from Arizona, the temperature was quite pleasant. I could only imagine what Andrea from the UK was feeling in those temperatures. There were no clouds in the sky and no trees on the trail to offer shade so the sun beat down on the riders.
There were a few areas on the course where we were not sure if we were traveling the correct way but never at any time did we take a wrong turn. (in some cases a glow-stick half way up a hill would be a confirmation that we were going the correct way and avoid worry especially at night) We passed the tent camp, which was very well lit up and very inviting, at about 4am having already been in the saddle for 3 hours. From there we covered part of the same tract that we followed to go from the tents to basecamp. At the predator camp we turned and went around the outside of the camp. The lions were fully awake and trotted alongside the fence as we trotted along. The larger male roared and swung his large paws in agitation at the potential meals trotting by. The final portion of the first loop traveled entirely around the outskirts of the camp almost giving an entire extra kilometer of travel quite a tease when everyone thought they’d arrived at the basecamp. We averaged only 9km an hour for the first 40 km. No riders dismounted to walk their horses into basecamp.
Upon crossing the finish line it became very confusing. There was no one there to check heart rate. I wandered around a bit lost but decided to follow the group into the grooming area. Saddles were removed and we put on coolers. Once we had our vet cards we headed straight for the vet area. (Later I learned that because there wasn’t sufficient staff they did not end the time when criteria heart rate was met, instead time stopped when you crossed the finish line. Which also meant that the hold time also began right when you crossed the finish line.) Soraji received excellent scores during the vet check. I brought her back to the grooming area and let her eat while I changed clothes and looked for something to eat. Water was available in the grooming area and we each had a person to help us out.
The hold was over quickly and we scrambled to saddle up and head back out. Cindy, the announcer, was very easy to follow since she gave a count down (from 5 seconds to go) to when the riders could leave, during the early parts of the day it was entirely in English later switching to both English and Afrikaans. Since no food had been available for the riders and the hold time had run out much quicker than expected since it did not start when the horses met criteria, I ate my breakfast as we trotted out to begin the second loop. The first check was very confusing. It was very difficult to understand the flow of the area and what was being done. There had not been adequate time to recharge for the next loop. I also realized that I was not feeling ideal. The red meat from the Marquis did not in any way agree with me. During the check I had ran to the restroom (fortunately there were flush toilets and yes the water swirled the opposite way) and felt like I had literally exploded. It was a quick relief and I was ready to head out again. Which was good because they were tacking up and ready to go.
A majority of the group felt that we had done the first loop entirely too slow. The pace for the second loop was much faster. It seemed to be an entirely new route since this time it was being ridden in the daylight.
We passed the park owners house and were greeted by a loud hissing and scratching sound. The previously cute Cheetah that had been rolling on its back and purring was running along the edge of the fence snarling at the passing horses.
We trotted and cantered the second loop. At the 15 km mark where there had been a vet check the first time there were only photographers from the local papers. All three of the international riders pictures were taken, supposedly for the Sunday paper.
During the daylight we saw more animals. At one point we chased a small flock of ostriches. The horses all took a second look at these ‘floating balls of feathers’. We noticed much more of the footing during this portion of the race. There were quite a bit of rocks that required some thought and navigation. The hill leading away from the tents was probably the most difficult area to get across. Some got off and walked up the hill.
We continued on traveling at a fast trot and occasional canter. Soraji was beginning to get tired and stumbled occasionally. The conversation was minimal and Tjaart would occasionally check on Andrea and I seeing if we were OK. I was quite happy and enjoyed the ride. The sun was up completely and it was warming comfortably. Besides the number, which did not fit me correctly and constantly flopped around it was very pleasant. I was glad to have brought the water holder that my mom sent with me to hold some Gatorade and it was also very nice to see volunteers manning gates and handing out beverages! (Cindy’s family had manned the gate at the bottom of the hill before the tents. They had set up two large tents as well as a shade and were handing out drinks to the riders. Then they would call in the riders locations.
Immediately on the other side of the hill the path took a right turn towards the wild boar enclosure. The gate was open but monitored so that none of the animals came across. Volunteers greeted us at the first gate, but the second was less consistently monitored and we had to get off and open the gate ourselves. Rubber mats and plywood covered the overly large grating. Soraji spooked quite badly going over the grating.
As we came around the predator enclosure Soraji took a bad step and almost fell. I called to the group to slow down since she was not right. I asked them to see how she looked but no problem was seen. Over one hour was cut from our first travel time and we averaged 15-kilometers an hour for the second loop. When we arrived none of our crew was available since they did not expect us for another hour. Each had tried to get a bit of sleep before we returned. It was quite confusing again at the vet check even to the point of not being able to find the vet cards. It was about 9:30 in the morning and the temperature had begun to rise. The sun was out in full force and everyone had removed coats and extra layers exchanging them for sunglasses.
The second vet check did not go as successfully for me. Soraji trotted out lame and had poor gut sounds. (Both her and Nazlet drank extremely well throughout the morning, both remaining at the trough together well after the rest of the group had finished. Andrea and I waited until they showed no interest in the water before continuing on.) She also had a very high CRI score. We had to pull at that check.
I asked my dad to help Andrea who was not fairing well herself. The heat was really getting to her. He gave her some of the Gatorade that we had brought with us and put cool towels on her neck. By the end of the hold she was better and continued on. We did not hear about the how the rest of the group fared until much later in the afternoon. My dad and I had cleaned up Soraji and bummed a ride back to the tents for showers and a quick nap. We lounged around the tents and the bar area for the remainder of the afternoon, having no choice in the matter since there was no means of transportation. Once our ride had left we were stranded at the tents regardless so we relaxed and made the best of it. We slept, and it was quite pleasant with the flaps of the tent open and a warm breeze wafting through the tent. A long shower also added to the relaxation and it felt very good to be clean. The digital cable in the bar offered some amusement and we managed to find a movie on TV but not much else.
Andrea and Suzanna arrived late in the afternoon with disappointing news. None of the international riders completed the race. Both decided to pull due to the heat. Their horses had all vetted through OK but they had decided not to push them on the ride, not feeling well themselves. Plus, one of the horses had thrown a shoe and had forced them to travel very slowly in the heat of the day. There was some discussion that mistake had been made in the entries and Hannes and Suzanne were only entered into the computer in the 110km which they had finished. (We later learned by reviewing the on-line results that they were given credit for the completion.)
That evening a braai was held for the organizers, vets and some of the riders. The last rider came in at 11:45 that evening which then let Kormy and the remaining stewards relax. (This rider had apparently overslept and did not start with the first group of riders, it appeared that he went out at least 4 hrs. after the start but this was not confirmed.) Andrea had planned to attend the braai but layed down too early and fell asleep for the night. I had to make sure my dad did not get any pictures of her while she was sleeping. As for me, by time the braai came about we had been relaxing (meaning, mixing different drinks) all afternoon. I stood around waiting then finally gave up and laid down to sleep for the night, ignoring the noise coming from the bar..
Sunday morning marked the closing of the race. The judging for Best Condition was held immediately next to the tent. The winner of the 100-mile race also won best condition and was owned and ridden by the Foyers. Their horse was in beautiful condition and trotted off smartly during the judging showing no undue stress from the race the day before. There was a continental breakfast in the tents that had been well picked over by the time we arrived.
We were able to relax and say goodbye to everyone before taking off for the airport and the long 25 hour flight back. I got to look at Soraji and see that she was OK. Her front legs were a little swollen but she trotted out OK showing only a little stiffness and slight hesitation when she trotted downhill. She was eating very well while I watched and I brought her out for some more grazing.
The return flight from Johannesburg seems much longer, lasting 25 hours including lay-over time. The unusual part is that most of the return flight is done in 100% darkness making this one of the longest nights I could remember.
It is approximately a 15-hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg, or J-burg as we came to know it. We arrived to extremely blustery weather, cold and rain. My first thoughts on arrival were that I did not bring enough bad-weather clothing for this trip! Buses shuttled us from the parked 747-400 series to the international terminal and customs. It was easy to enter and few questions were asked. The airport was newer ,deceptively large and crowded. Multiple levels held check-in and arriving passenger gates. Large glass windows interspersed between shops gave a good view of outside the terminal where palm trees were being battered by the blustering rain and wind.
We met one of our hosts at the airport. Cindy Budler and her family had offered us accommodations for the first part of our stay. Cindy’s son had made up a stenciled sign with my name on it to help us find her at the airport. The J-burg airport was crowded, guards, armed with AK-47s stood at regular intervals throughout the terminal.
It was a one-hour drive, skirting around J-burg for us to arrive at Cindy’s farm. (There was not really a good way to go from the airport to Cindy`s farm. There was either a north or south route around Johannesburg.) In South Africa, and most of the African continent, people drive on the left-hand side of the street. This takes a little adjustment to get used to because, not only does traffic run in that manner but people and horses also move to the left when approaching another walker or rider. It made for some interesting situations and gave one way to identify a fellow traveler when people would do the right-left jig when you approached. The only time we would lapse back to the more ingrained habits was when leaving either a store or gas station. The lines were on the wrong side! .
The Budler farm was located 15 min. outside of Magliesdorp, a small, one gas station town. The town consisted of one street, with shops located on either side of the street. The essentials were there, a small bed-and-breakfast, grocery store, school, tack shop, post office and liquor store. Kids, in school uniforms, walked on the sides of the street.
Some differences that we noted up front was that it seemed everyone smokes. Since smokers seem to be a smaller and smaller part of the population in the US it took a bit of adjusting. There also did not seem to be the big separation of smokers/non-smokers in restaurants and public places. Some did have different seating sections but it did not seem to be as big of a problem in South Africa in general. One observation that we saw while driving was that all the gas stations provided full service. Rather than having to pump gas or check oil you simply instructed the attendant what to do so. The service attendants were all black.
Cindy had about 13 horses on her property. Some were loaned to her for various reasons and some were her own. She was not going to ride in the up-coming race so she was beginning the immunizations for African horse sickness. We had the chance to meet with the broodmares in the pasture and two geldings in a field of their own. None of the horses wore fly masks and the insects were swarming their eyes. We learned that one very large problem was ticks and each horse and dog was treated regularly for ticks. Lyme disease did not seem to be a threat in South Africa. The horses were quite thin and the stalls were dark and relatively dirty. Hay nets hung in each stall holding just little bits of hay. Most of the horses had long coats and were quite dirty. Cindy described how the winter had been tough on many breeders. We talked and compared what we fed our horses. They used a type of grass hay and avoided Lucerne or alfalfa as we call it in the US. They did not supplement with grain or pellets as many people in the US do. They also did not blanket their horses, instead allowing them to endure the elements.
We went to a roadside shopping area to look around. It was very similar to the shopping that we had seen in Mexico, the booths were all set up on tables or sometimes the ground. The booths covered an entire corner and were in front of a restaurant. Both sides of the corner had shops. A canvas tent protected the items and the vendors from the sun. Each vendor would offer some type of deal to the shoppers and people walking by so it made it difficult to pick any one item for closer examination without being hounded by vendors. Separate from the vendors were men trying to hand out flyers looking for money or political support. They would target the men more than the women for constant hounding. We did find one booth where the vendors were less pushy and bargained for a hermatite and fresh pearl necklace and a rhino carved in a stone similar to jade. They went for R120 and R110 respectively or $16.90 and $15.50.
On Tuesday, we left early in the morning to drive to Machadadorp. A friend of a friend of Cindy’s had offered to let us use their cottage there. It was about a 4-hour drive to Machadadorp and we drove through Pretoria on the way. The expressway (N4 that we took) had four lanes, two in most directions. Additional lanes were added near the larger cities, which in this case was Pretoria. The pavement was smooth with few potholes. People frequently could be seen crossing the expressways and well-worn paths led up to one side, through the median and out the other especially near the squatter camps. The expressways were set up similar to the rest of the world, service stations, accessible only from the expressways, were on both sides. The stations would have gas and a convenience store as well as restrooms which were large and clean, gift and souvenir shops. A large tent, shading the vehicles underneath, covered some parking spaces. In some cases there were also restaurants and some local tourist attraction like trout hatcheries. It was at one of these service stations that we met up with our contact for the night’s lodgings. We got directions and proceeded to drive to the cottage.
It had gotten cooler when we got to the cottage. We lit the braai and put potatoes on to begin cooking. It started raining so we had to move under the edge of the roof to protect the braai from the rain. I also had a chance to open a South African wine and try my first one. It was a bottle that Cindy had received as a gift but neither her nor Andre drank red wine so it had only sat in their cupboards. The wine had a very distinct taste, fruity, not too many tannins. The cows were coming into the pens and we saw a variety of types with several calves playing together. They were noisy and constantly called to each other. The calves were more interested in playing and ran in between the older more placid cows. The sunset was one of the more amazing we had seen. The trees at the west end of the property were a little more stark and a bright red sun shone through the branches. None of the surrounding clouds lit up or provided any other color beyond the sinking red ball.
Wednesday morning we were able to visit one large breeding farm belonging to the Foyers. We were enticed to visit by being offered to see them feed the broodmares. We hurried to arrive but the weather was not exactly on our side. The clouds had descended and shrouded the countryside in a thick fog. Visibility was very low and the temperature had dropped considerably. We rushed to fill the car with petrol, since we had used it all the previous day driving and headed toward their farm calling once to confirm directions.
They had over 150 horses on their farm. Several bands of broodmares and young horses dotted the countryside. We drove down a long dirt driveway and parked next to a brick three-car garage. Each of the spaces was filled. To our right horses were trotting in two different round pens, a large boned bay horse led two grays in the circles. They were moving at a good clip around the pen and being encouraged by black workers. It had turned considerably colder when we arrived at their farm and a strong wind blew across the open plateau. There were no hills or trees to stop the wind as it swept over the plateau where the farm was situated.
Immediately in front of us were several multi-acre pastures. The closest housed many broodmares and year-old horses. Pens with interlocking wooden partitions were on one side of the pasture offering an area to separate the horses for feeding. Several of the young horses had learned how easy it was to get into the partitioned areas and at the food. All the horses had thick, winter coats and were shaggy and dirty. Many had prominent bones, which they attributed again to a hard winter. The next pasture over housed the broodmares that had foals at their side. Few of the foals were over a month or two old and moved around very awkwardly. Several had found an ideal place to keep warm, cuddling down into the hay. A small stream ran through the pasture providing some water. In a further pasture a younger band of horses ran playing having just been released to go romp for the day.
The Foyers most notable feature in their breeding program was the combining of the South African Boerpoerd with the Arabian. They had been very successful with that combination and were doing well in endurance racing. They had also brought a stallion from Nairobi and were seeing some promising results. We drove back to J-burg Wednesday morning since we were to get to see the horses that day. We had a 2:00 appointment to meet with the owners of the horses. We arrived at the de Wet house after driving through several incorrect portions of the city since we were unsure of where the house was located.
Two driveways led to the de Wet house. Outside a large fence encircled the house and yard. Each of the houses on that street were surrounded by high fences. The gate was remote controlled allowing the occupants to let people in from inside. The house was a dark red with a type of shingled roof. A sidewalk, leading from the longer of the two driveways, allowed access to the front door once the occupants opened that gate. We drove in the first gate which led past the house into an open patio area. The back and right sides were additional parking spaces for cars. Cars and trucks in various states were parked haphazardly throughout the patio. Black workers and kids appeared and disappeared constantly. There was little grass area to play on and some flowers planted as if by accident in some areas.
One of the other international riders, Andrea from the UK, had arrived that morning. She joined us to visit the horses and later for the tour. She was still suffering from a bit of jet lag. She was very quiet throughout the tour and we teased her saying we were just waiting for her to fall asleep. Plans changed somewhat and we had just a brief chance to see the horses. We unloaded our luggage at the de Wet house with some assistance from their help and took off. Only one horse was close by so that we could go visit, that was Nazlet. She was a smaller, bay, mare with some endurance experience having finished 2, 100-mile races previously. One a younger bay that was just beginning a race career that Ami was riding in the 80km race, another a bay gelding with a long hollow back but a very long phenomenal trot that Tjaart was planning to ride in the 160km (100mile) with us.
Our tour of the city began on a small koppe with a water tower. The homes surround the water tower were quite large and protected by large fences with barbed wire protecting the top. We had to travel several narrow drives to reach the top. Our guide, Johannes, showed us the general layout of the city. The area we were on was a more upscale residential area, as we descended the hill the home values gradually decreased and the security lessened until we arrived at the old Sophiaville that was a very run-down slum like area. The names of the towns were being changed as a result of the apartheid regime ending. It made conversation and telling directions quite interesting because in some cases people would use the old name of the city and many tried to use the new names as well. The streets were not crowded and there was little traffic. For comparison, the houses at the top of the hill ranged from 700,000 to 1,000,000 R ($100,000 to $140,000) We drove through a very ‘yuppie’ area filmed with coffee shops, Internet cafes and art shops as well as a squatter area. One area of significance was where the buildings, that had previously housed the Indian population had been bulldozed. During the apartheid years, the blacks had been segregated. People began to point out that Indians also fell under the definition of black and pushing for them to be removed as well. The buildings were bulldozed and the Indians fell under the rule of segregation as well. This area was one that Gahndi had come to and protested.
There are 11 official languages of South Africa including English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa which is pronounced with a clicking sound for the ‘xh’ beginning the word. The clicking sound had even given rise to a special song called the “click song” because the white man could not pronounce that sound. (The song was sung to brides on their wedding day.) Others are tribal languages and one being a combination of a variety of languages.
A restoration project was underway in the city of Johannesburg. Johannes was a part of that project and had very interesting perspective. Each area was being rebuilt with contributions from businesses. A guard, wearing a yellow beret, stood at the intersection providing a reference point in case someone was walking and needed directions or help. There did not seem to be many people walking on the streets. Most of the traffic was black. On the streets where the restoration project was underway banners advertised this a being a part of the project.
No hotels could be seen in the downtown area all had moved to a separate, newer, Johannesburg located separately from the old city. The downtown area was being converted to a museum, old buildings, filled with squatters located across the street. If one looked carefully you could see the signs which designated certain stores as either white or black. People in business clothes walked next to ladies in tribal dress carrying large barrels balanced on their heads. It was an area filled with dramatic contrasts and struggles. Crime is a large problem, evidenced by the high security surrounding the more residential areas. Armed guards, fences and barbed wire, were abundant.
We traveled through the city central and exited on another hill looking back towards our starting point. We got an overview of the area that we had traveled and a better perspective of the lay-out of the city.
The remainder of the group met up at the restaurant, named Carnivore. This restaurant was mentioned in several of the travel books that we had read before our trip plus had been recommended by a gentleman we had sat next to on the plane we looked forward to an enjoyable dinner. The entrance to the restaurant was a long sidewalk spanning a small pond. Thatched roofs covered the sidewalk so we were protected from the now sporadic rain. Dim lights and torches lit the way. A long series of steps led to the main floor of the restaurant. We were taken to our seats on a patio filled with people. A large braai with slabs of meat on skewers surrounding the braai were smoking filling the room. Black waiters and busboys walked quickly from table to braai. There was a guest book with signatures from all over the world.
We were seated on the patio and ordered drinks. Dad, Andrea, Ani-li and Cindy ordered a local drink that was a shot of vodka with honey. Rain began to fall which made the patio quite noisy. Talk with the group became impossible. Then, the lights began to flicker on and off eventually remaining off. The remainder of the dinner was held in darkness. This did not put a damper on the evening but just the opposite, it seemed to remove tension from the group and everyone began talking and getting to know one another.
After we were moved indoors to the quieter but smokey (since they did not have the drafts for the braai opened up) they began to serve out dinner. A small carousel tree was situated in the center of the table which held 10 different sauces. The waiter described each sauce and which meats it best complimented. Then the dinner began. Servers brought skewers full of a variety of meat. If each person wanted that type of meat all they had to do was ask and tell them how they wanted it cooked. We had atelope, wildebeast, cow, crocodile, buffalo, chicken to name a few. Of all the meats, my favorite was the chicken with it’s complimentary sauce. The taste was wonderful!
The group was concerned about the amount of rain that we were receiving and the effect that it would have on the race. We ran to the cars and transferred luggage in the pouring rain. The electricity had not yet returned even by time we got to Cindy’s farm. Candles were lit and set out throughout the house. Cindy mentioned that she rarely had time to color or decorate the candles, she used them so often when the electricity went out. It seemed that the new foal had arrived early that morning and the owner was there to see the new baby. Leave it to horses to pick the night it’s raining and there’s no electricity to have a new foal. We went to see the new baby and mother. It was standing and came to investigate when we came to the door.
We drove to the basecamp that morning. There was some apprehension as to what the accommodations would be like. None of the organizers had seem them first hand and had described them only as permanent tents. The drive into the park was 5 km and we passed a variety of animals, all the same color since they had recently rolled in the mud. We did see the tell-tale bumps in the pond of the hippopotamus. The basecamp gave us another start when we arrived, a variety tents were set-up and we began to imagine that it would be quite Spartan conditions for the next few days and wondering when we would see another shower. We were informed, though, that the tents were not located in the basecamp.
We were set up in permanent tent structures about 6 kilometers from the race site. There were six tents and one main building, the buildings facing to the north. The tents were built elevated from the ground and into the side of a hill. Brick stilts supported the front patio area. The south portion of the tent was the bathroom area, each having a private shower, toilet and sink. The bathrooms were done in a redwood slat finishing. A small vestibule area between the bathroom and sleeping area separated the two sections. Two twin beds were placed in opposite corners of the main tent. A canvas tent closed in this area and then the entire structure was covered with another canvas tent. The floor was done in a large red tile and animalskin rugs were placed next to each bed. There were two chairs, two nightstands with electric lights in the form of the old time oil lanterns. A large wardrobe was also on one side of the tent. Window flaps on both the east and west sides could be opened for circulation as well as the two large flaps on the north side opening to a generous sided patio. The main building also had several patios and a braai, it had a thatched roof covering a large bar and dining area inside. It also had a red tile floor with various animalskin rugs. A digital TV and satellite system provided some entertainment.
We met one of the vets and the chief steward, Kormy, for the FEI portion of the race while we waited to leave for dinner. Kormy was not only very knowledgeable about the horses but was also quite familiar with South African wines. She got quite a head-start on happy hour before we arrived. One of the park rangers was tasked to make sure everything was organized at the tents. He worked as the bartender also for each of the guest. He had lived for a year in the US and had worked at a youth camp in Alabama. He had an opportunity to visit some of the west during his stay and knew some of the place that we described. Fortunately, he was also a rider and described a paint horse that he still had.
That evening one of the sponsors from the race provided dinner for the race attendees. The restaurant’s name was Marquis. Everyone had to pile into the wide assortment of vehicles in order to drive to the restaurant. Since both Andrea and I had ridden with one of the rangers we had to drive by the park owner’s home to exchange vehicles. Ed and his wife lived just outside the entrance to the preserve. They kept a variety of exotic animals at their place one of which Andrea and I were able to meet. This was a young cheetah, who came up to the fence purring. He was very friendly and laid down at our feet and was chewing on Andrea’s shoe. It was amazing how friendly and so similar to a house cat such a normally wild animal was.
The roads to the Marquis were confusing and by the time we arrived I was entirely lost. There would have been no way I could have found my way back to the park. The Marquis also had a very well decorated entrance. Flower beds and ponds decorated the entrance. The interior tables were set up in the shape of a U allowing people to see each other and talk. When the Marquis opened they had purchased a very large collection of South African wines. The bottles could not be sold since the labels had been damaged, or in some cases destroyed. Several excellent bottles of wine were served and each was fabulous, one of the favorites being a 1981 Groot Constantia Cabernet Sauvignon. The meal consisted of salad and a personal braai where meats were cooked in garlic butter to each person’s taste. During the meal we had our first opportunity to call back home. The areas that we had frequented so far in the week had been quite remote. Very few farms had telephones and pay phones were not that frequent. (Many of the farms had shared lines, if they had any lines at all. It was a problem in the rural areas since the phone cables were being stolen for their copper content.) When a phone did come available the next quandary was how to dial out! We were not even able to learn how to get an operator so that we could charge a call to a credit card. International dialing codes were also another puzzle. Normally, there is some type of code that must be dialed first (011 in the case of the US) then the country code, then the number you are dialing. The first code was unknown for where we were. After several attempts we managed to place a call on a cellphone. The call was so clear and there was no delay that my husband, John did not even recognize who it was on the call! While they may have difficulty with land lines they were far ahead of having a digital cellular infrastructure. The primary supplier being Vodafone.
We left the Marquis late and returned to the tents. The general consensus was to turn in but Kormy was still ready to drink at the bar and her voice could be heard loud and clear.
The Race
Friday morning dawned bright and early. The skies were very clear and barely a cloud in the sky. An excellent day for a race!!! The race organizers had prepared a wonderful breakfast with more than ample food for the small group staying in the tents. We had coffee or tea, eggs, several types of meats, cereals, rolls, croissants to name just a few things.
Both horses had arrived at the basecamp. Andrea and I were to drawn names for who was to ride which of two horses, Nazlet or Soraji. Soraji was a 7 yr. old grey mare with only a few 80 km races to her credit. She was tall, ~15 hands, with beautiful thick, straight legs, slightly uphill build and a bit on the thin side. She had a rather normal head, nothing to give away her Arabian parentage. She was calm and only looked briefly when her traveling companion left being much more interested in the grazing available. There were several miniature horses that lived in the park kiosk area and they got lose into the base camp. (either that or they had finally found a weakness in the fence separating them from the horse on the other side, many of which were in heat) One of the miniatures was a black stallion that fully recognized that there were mares nearby. Undeterred by his small stature the stallion ran circles around the horses until the rangers were able to successfully corral them back to their pens. They were forced to spend the remainder of the weekend in their pen. Nazlet was about 8 years old, 14.2 h high and had a rather elegant, Arabian face. She was soundly built, only slighter more slender that Soraji.
Once we drew names we then began to select tack so that we could go for a short training ride. Andrea was to ride Nazlet and I was to ride Soraji.
Soraji was very enjoyable to ride and responded well once the correctly fitted bridle and bit were used. Most people rode in either a Kimberwicke or some variation of a snaffle or curb. Very few hackamores were seen and no one was seen riding in the rope halters. Soraji’s paces were easy to ride, she had very little bumping at the trot and her canter moved through her entire body and was quite enjoyable to ride. She had a long stride and listened to my aids well. She did not seem spooky nor did she want to pull and run away from me. Another international rider from Germany, Suzanne joined us that morning. She had her own horse, which she had purchased from Tjaart and Ami, plus she had her own saddle. Nazlet and Andrea seemed to get along quite well together too.
After the ride we were treated to lunch of Boerewor sausage and then an open jeep tour of the course. The course was marked in different color arrows. For the 100-mile course green arrows marked the first two loops follow by the blue, yellow, and red that the South African endurance organization uses standard on all their courses. The first two loops of the 100-mile race were the same 40-kilometer loop. We were mainly able to drive the 3rd and 4th loop on the course and they pointed our several of the more difficult areas including the cattle guards which we would have to cross. Since there were no gates on the side of the cattle guards plywood panels and rubber mats were used to cover the grates. The course went through all the major wildlife areas excluding the predator camp. Since the predators were only fed once a week and we were at the end of their weekly fast we were all happy to hear we did not enter their camp. We also learned that they were regularly fed horse meat. Two fences surrounded the predator camp, which housed two prides of lion, wild dogs and cheetah. Lions could jump the 10ft fence with sufficient momentum hence the need for the two fences, the first; a shorter five-foot fence stopped their momentum so that they could not make it over the second fence.
One of the dangers that we had to be made aware of was the hippopotamus. They stayed close by their pond but had to travel quite a distance in order to eat sufficient amounts of food to maintain their weight. Even more dangerous, though, were the wild buffalo. There was a club in South Africa dedicated specifically to people who had been attacked by wild buffalo.
There were numerous other wildlife in the park including an energetic herd of Springbuck. This was previously the national animal of South Africa but was changed after the end of apartheid. When athletes make their national team they are awarded the ‘Springbuck colors’. Several of the riders, including our hosts, had been awarded the colors and they wore the jerseys at the race. Representatives from the South African team had traveled to Dubai and New Zealand to compete. In all cases, though, they had to use borrowed horses due to quarantines for African Horse Sickness. Horses could not leave until May of 2001 due to an outbreak of horse sickness.
There are 14 identified strains of horse sickness we learned from the vets at the race. Only 9 of those strains have been isolated and an immunization developed to protect the horses. During an outbreak many horses will die since there is a very high degree of fatalities from horse sickness. Immunizations from horse sickness require that a horse do minimal work during the series of shots. The horse’s heart can not be stressed unnecessarily during the immunization time. Those that were not bringing their horses to this race had already begun the immunization process. Others would wait until after the race to begin and would give their horses time off then.
Vetting in for the race was scheduled to begin at 3:00 but did get rolling until after 5:00. Things were in full swing when we returned. Horses were being walked all over the camp and the campers had already filled many of the sites. Generators and large lights were set up so that the vets could see the horses. The starting of the generators spooked several of the horse during vetting in. Three vets were inspecting the horses. This was the first chance to work with Soraji and I found that she was calm excessively so, not wanting to trot out for inspection.
The vetting area was roped off and contained four trotting lanes. A vet stood at the head of each lane to do the inspection. There was a waiting area to enter the vetting. This was surrounded by the official’s tent, the finish line, the grooming area and the weigh-in trailer. There was considerable traffic in this area and it was quite congested. Vet cards were similar to those used in the states. Additional areas were allowed on the cards for CRI (Cardiac Recovery Index) once each horse passed the vetting they entered the stabling area and were under FEI rules. This applied to all distances from 30 kilometers to 100 miles. Unlike endurance races in the US a large grouping of stalls were located just north of the vet in area. The stalls were separated by removable partitions that could be built into different size stalls as necessary. Stallions were housed in a separate area each separated by a four-foot spacing. Some were quite well behaved, yet a few were acting up and showing off. The mares and geldings were housed together. There were no shades over the stalls. The east end of the base-camp was set up for camping. Port-a-loos had been brought in for this area. From conversation during the week with the race organizers they anticipated the only complaint would be that there was only one shower available. They mentioned that people would not come to a race unless camping and stabling facilities were available. This made it difficult to organize a ride since there were few areas that could support the size groups that attended the race.
We took an opportunity to make one last trip to the tents to prepare. We had time to head back to the tents to get ready for the early morning race start because by the time we were able to check in and get our numbers the sun had already begun to set. Kormy was generous enough to allow us to borrow her bakkie to drive back to the tent. Two people fit in the cab and one rode in the bed of the truck. It was not the most comfortable situation since the beds were dirty and it was difficult to prop oneself in some manner so as not to get bumped around. This was also the first opportunity for my dad to drive on the left side of the street. Andrea (from the UK where that is the norm) caught him tending to the right rather than the left when another car was approaching. Unsure of how things would be managed, we went ahead and packed our supplies for the race that evening. We put on riding clothes and brought the jackets that we planned to ride in. Tack, helmets and boots were already at basecamp and had been fitted to the horses. We loaded up and headed back. It was quite difficult to get back and forth to the tents since neither Andrea nor my father and I had rented a car so we tried to make sure and not forget any supplies. Plus, a truck was required in order to climb down the steep grade to the parking by the tents. Those with cars parked at the top of the hill and walked down. Obviously, since the tents and the race were located in a wildlife preserve it was not possible to walk from the tents to the base-camp.
Campers quickly filled the camping area and people both with and without horses were milling about the area. A large tent had been sent up next to the reserve kiosk. It was muggy but cooling quickly in the cold night air. A dinner of lasagna and salad was served and people stopped by when they had time available to eat, tickets for all the meals at the race were graciously provided by our hosts. We laid down for just a bit while we waited for the start of the race. It took some time but I played with the Tetris Gameboy that I had brought along, then shared that wit my dad before resigning to trying to sleep. The ride meeting started late and pulled us from our quick snooze.
The ride was announced open at 9:15 Friday evening. The new FEI rules that the ride was being operated under caused some grumbling in the crowd as well as the news that English, rather than Afrikaans would be spoken during the race. Basic rules were discussed where they highlighted some of the differences between their standard rules and the FEI endurance rules. The international riders, three total, were introduced with mixed reviews from the crowd. (This was no difference than the response that is seen in the US. Some are very enthusiastic about having international riders and some see it as an inconvenience and taking away from the local riders.) There was considerable grumbling that all the horses must remain in the stabling area until the close of the race on Sunday. This caused problems especially with the 30-kilometer riders who were worried about being stuck on site until Sunday when they finished riding on Sat. Course descriptions were provided including the order of the colored arrows to follow.
The 100-mile race began at 1:00am Saturday morning. We all tried to sleep between the meeting and the start of the race. Because of the excitement and the close-at-hand start it was difficult to get any rest. We woke up about 1 hour before the race and began tacking up. Both Andrea and I were accustomed to using heart rate monitors during the race but were unable to attach them to the saddles. We decided not to use the monitors rather than to risk losing our equipment. The horses seemed puzzled at the events going on around them and having been interrupted from the rest and warm blankets pulled off. Some were anxious to start the race but the overall attitude was calm. The start was controlled, led by the ranger’s vehicles leading the way and making sure none of the animals were on the trail. Both the 100-mile and 110 kilometer riders started at the same time. It was dark but there was a full moon. The trail was marked with glow sticks and it was easy to follow the blinking red lights being worn by each rider. There was a ranger vehicle both in front and behind the group of riders and they were excellent at keeping track of all the riders throughout the course. During the race they were the ones contacted in order to find where a rider was on the course and always had a good idea of everyone’s location on the reserve.
We started out in a group of five myself and Soraji, Andrea and Nazlet, Suzanne and Ibn, and both Tjaart and his brother, Hannes, on their horses. We traveled at a quick trot throughout the first loop. The loop went out through the main entrance of the reserve turning down a dirt then paved road. There was adequate space on the side of the road for the horses to travel safely. There was a vet check at the 15-kilometer mark which at first was announced as a running check but instead was a dismount and they checked pulse. It was confusing but manageable. We were not required to present vet cards at that point. The race continued through farm roads and by many different homes. Water was available throughout the course and was marked by a large ‘W’ on the trail. The horses traveled well together and everyone was comfortable in the darkness.
There was a big difference in the preparation that we saw for the race. It seemed that very few people gave electrolytes to the horses. When questioned they told us that they had given them to them the night before. I did not observe anyone giving electrolytes during the race. Additionally, per FEI rules, syringes for given oral electrolytes have to be provided by an FEI vet. Another big difference seen was that no one had saddle bags or supplies tied onto their saddles. No one carried sponges either. In general there seemed to be nothing tied to the saddles like what was seen in the US and people were more concerned about carrying only a minimal amount of weight. There seems to be quite a different approach towards racing in South Africa and people did not pack for being out in the wilderness but rather to race and travel as quickly as possible. There seemed also to be less attention to the care of the horse at the race, specifically, picking out feet. Since no one had saddlebags very few brought supplies in case of emergency like hoof pick, easy boot or spare leathers. At many races in the US it is very easy to find people with an entire first aid kit in their saddlebags. Little was packed for the rider, either. It was assumed that ride management had to provide drinks on the course and food at the vet checks.
During the first loop there were several areas where drinks were available. We were able to fill up on sports drinks at several stops and I did not even touch my own Gatorade that I had packed.
The terrain ranged from farm roads to rocky, hilly trails. There were no extremely steep climbs mainly just a difference in the amount of rock. The elevation was approximately 6000 feet and the humidity was high. Temperatures at night were in the 40s and there was a bit of a breeze, during the day it was in the high 80s low 90s. For someone from Arizona, the temperature was quite pleasant. I could only imagine what Andrea from the UK was feeling in those temperatures. There were no clouds in the sky and no trees on the trail to offer shade so the sun beat down on the riders.
There were a few areas on the course where we were not sure if we were traveling the correct way but never at any time did we take a wrong turn. (in some cases a glow-stick half way up a hill would be a confirmation that we were going the correct way and avoid worry especially at night) We passed the tent camp, which was very well lit up and very inviting, at about 4am having already been in the saddle for 3 hours. From there we covered part of the same tract that we followed to go from the tents to basecamp. At the predator camp we turned and went around the outside of the camp. The lions were fully awake and trotted alongside the fence as we trotted along. The larger male roared and swung his large paws in agitation at the potential meals trotting by. The final portion of the first loop traveled entirely around the outskirts of the camp almost giving an entire extra kilometer of travel quite a tease when everyone thought they’d arrived at the basecamp. We averaged only 9km an hour for the first 40 km. No riders dismounted to walk their horses into basecamp.
Upon crossing the finish line it became very confusing. There was no one there to check heart rate. I wandered around a bit lost but decided to follow the group into the grooming area. Saddles were removed and we put on coolers. Once we had our vet cards we headed straight for the vet area. (Later I learned that because there wasn’t sufficient staff they did not end the time when criteria heart rate was met, instead time stopped when you crossed the finish line. Which also meant that the hold time also began right when you crossed the finish line.) Soraji received excellent scores during the vet check. I brought her back to the grooming area and let her eat while I changed clothes and looked for something to eat. Water was available in the grooming area and we each had a person to help us out.
The hold was over quickly and we scrambled to saddle up and head back out. Cindy, the announcer, was very easy to follow since she gave a count down (from 5 seconds to go) to when the riders could leave, during the early parts of the day it was entirely in English later switching to both English and Afrikaans. Since no food had been available for the riders and the hold time had run out much quicker than expected since it did not start when the horses met criteria, I ate my breakfast as we trotted out to begin the second loop. The first check was very confusing. It was very difficult to understand the flow of the area and what was being done. There had not been adequate time to recharge for the next loop. I also realized that I was not feeling ideal. The red meat from the Marquis did not in any way agree with me. During the check I had ran to the restroom (fortunately there were flush toilets and yes the water swirled the opposite way) and felt like I had literally exploded. It was a quick relief and I was ready to head out again. Which was good because they were tacking up and ready to go.
A majority of the group felt that we had done the first loop entirely too slow. The pace for the second loop was much faster. It seemed to be an entirely new route since this time it was being ridden in the daylight.
We passed the park owners house and were greeted by a loud hissing and scratching sound. The previously cute Cheetah that had been rolling on its back and purring was running along the edge of the fence snarling at the passing horses.
We trotted and cantered the second loop. At the 15 km mark where there had been a vet check the first time there were only photographers from the local papers. All three of the international riders pictures were taken, supposedly for the Sunday paper.
During the daylight we saw more animals. At one point we chased a small flock of ostriches. The horses all took a second look at these ‘floating balls of feathers’. We noticed much more of the footing during this portion of the race. There were quite a bit of rocks that required some thought and navigation. The hill leading away from the tents was probably the most difficult area to get across. Some got off and walked up the hill.
We continued on traveling at a fast trot and occasional canter. Soraji was beginning to get tired and stumbled occasionally. The conversation was minimal and Tjaart would occasionally check on Andrea and I seeing if we were OK. I was quite happy and enjoyed the ride. The sun was up completely and it was warming comfortably. Besides the number, which did not fit me correctly and constantly flopped around it was very pleasant. I was glad to have brought the water holder that my mom sent with me to hold some Gatorade and it was also very nice to see volunteers manning gates and handing out beverages! (Cindy’s family had manned the gate at the bottom of the hill before the tents. They had set up two large tents as well as a shade and were handing out drinks to the riders. Then they would call in the riders locations.
Immediately on the other side of the hill the path took a right turn towards the wild boar enclosure. The gate was open but monitored so that none of the animals came across. Volunteers greeted us at the first gate, but the second was less consistently monitored and we had to get off and open the gate ourselves. Rubber mats and plywood covered the overly large grating. Soraji spooked quite badly going over the grating.
As we came around the predator enclosure Soraji took a bad step and almost fell. I called to the group to slow down since she was not right. I asked them to see how she looked but no problem was seen. Over one hour was cut from our first travel time and we averaged 15-kilometers an hour for the second loop. When we arrived none of our crew was available since they did not expect us for another hour. Each had tried to get a bit of sleep before we returned. It was quite confusing again at the vet check even to the point of not being able to find the vet cards. It was about 9:30 in the morning and the temperature had begun to rise. The sun was out in full force and everyone had removed coats and extra layers exchanging them for sunglasses.
The second vet check did not go as successfully for me. Soraji trotted out lame and had poor gut sounds. (Both her and Nazlet drank extremely well throughout the morning, both remaining at the trough together well after the rest of the group had finished. Andrea and I waited until they showed no interest in the water before continuing on.) She also had a very high CRI score. We had to pull at that check.
I asked my dad to help Andrea who was not fairing well herself. The heat was really getting to her. He gave her some of the Gatorade that we had brought with us and put cool towels on her neck. By the end of the hold she was better and continued on. We did not hear about the how the rest of the group fared until much later in the afternoon. My dad and I had cleaned up Soraji and bummed a ride back to the tents for showers and a quick nap. We lounged around the tents and the bar area for the remainder of the afternoon, having no choice in the matter since there was no means of transportation. Once our ride had left we were stranded at the tents regardless so we relaxed and made the best of it. We slept, and it was quite pleasant with the flaps of the tent open and a warm breeze wafting through the tent. A long shower also added to the relaxation and it felt very good to be clean. The digital cable in the bar offered some amusement and we managed to find a movie on TV but not much else.
Andrea and Suzanna arrived late in the afternoon with disappointing news. None of the international riders completed the race. Both decided to pull due to the heat. Their horses had all vetted through OK but they had decided not to push them on the ride, not feeling well themselves. Plus, one of the horses had thrown a shoe and had forced them to travel very slowly in the heat of the day. There was some discussion that mistake had been made in the entries and Hannes and Suzanne were only entered into the computer in the 110km which they had finished. (We later learned by reviewing the on-line results that they were given credit for the completion.)
That evening a braai was held for the organizers, vets and some of the riders. The last rider came in at 11:45 that evening which then let Kormy and the remaining stewards relax. (This rider had apparently overslept and did not start with the first group of riders, it appeared that he went out at least 4 hrs. after the start but this was not confirmed.) Andrea had planned to attend the braai but layed down too early and fell asleep for the night. I had to make sure my dad did not get any pictures of her while she was sleeping. As for me, by time the braai came about we had been relaxing (meaning, mixing different drinks) all afternoon. I stood around waiting then finally gave up and laid down to sleep for the night, ignoring the noise coming from the bar..
Sunday morning marked the closing of the race. The judging for Best Condition was held immediately next to the tent. The winner of the 100-mile race also won best condition and was owned and ridden by the Foyers. Their horse was in beautiful condition and trotted off smartly during the judging showing no undue stress from the race the day before. There was a continental breakfast in the tents that had been well picked over by the time we arrived.
We were able to relax and say goodbye to everyone before taking off for the airport and the long 25 hour flight back. I got to look at Soraji and see that she was OK. Her front legs were a little swollen but she trotted out OK showing only a little stiffness and slight hesitation when she trotted downhill. She was eating very well while I watched and I brought her out for some more grazing.
The return flight from Johannesburg seems much longer, lasting 25 hours including lay-over time. The unusual part is that most of the return flight is done in 100% darkness making this one of the longest nights I could remember.
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