Lodestar Eventing

My Trek is written off, my Pompino has a shagged rear wheel (yes, still), my Hunter (the bike) is going through a puncture spate to match the last days of the dog and his wheelchair (if you were at SSUK 07 you’ll know).

I’ve also been very slack about bike riding this year, just 700 miles. But if I want at any time between Kirsty and I there are enough bikes in working order that I can get out for a ride. Only laziness and availability of alternatives is stopping me from setting to the inner tubes with the Tip Top or rebuilding a wheel, the work of but an evening, with beer.

But now it turns out that Monster has a “bog spavin on her hock”. This means two things.

Firstly the horse world really can compete with mountain biking for impenetrable jargon.

Secondly the bloody thing can’t be ridden for 6 weeks. I could get a custom frame built and made up in less time. Provided it’s not a Hunter or a Jones, obviously. The decision whether to ride or not is out of my hands. Like a child hoarding toys, when you can’t have something what do you want? That’s right, what you can’t have.

Just as cycling is always better larking about with mates so is the horse riding and this is the time of year to be enjoying riding – start when crops come in, stop when lambs come out. When the bloody thing comes right the first two weeks are ‘light work only’ i.e. on my own, and by then the season will be over. We’re missing Boxing Day, and at least three meets in what I like to call hedge country. A joint favourite of Monster and I.

Kirsty used to have a horse that went lame, and I was always sympathetic, but now I know just how frustrating it is I realise that my sympathy always fell short of the mark.

She not that sympathetic that I can call on Mabel as a second string though. Mabel is too young and inexperienced to borrow, so pleas of “oh go on, let me take Mabel, we can do a non-jumping meet, we’ll be good” are falling on deaf ears. Actually even if she did call my bluff and say I could take Mabel then I might have to do an about face, because, well, she’s just not Monster.

I always used to offer her Monster to ride when her old horse went lame, so right now I fully understand why she used to turn it down. It’s not like a borrowing a bike. No matter how old and worn and just right and yours a bike gets it’s still ‘just a bike’.

Half the fun of riding a horse is riding “that” horse because you know that you’ve forged a relationship and it’s going to jump that hedge because it’s you that have asked it and over the years it has come to trust you and you’re actually a team.

I always used to say last winter that even when I was riding the horse every weekend I was still a cyclist underneath. Now I’m not so sure. At least I know which meets will be good to follow by bike – I’m not fast enough across country on foot or shanks-pony to lay the trail – so maybe I can still go up and watch and crave sympathy from 40 odd people.

That said, ‘throwing a horse over a hedge’ and ‘throwing a bike over a hedge’ convey the same intent, but you just know that one is a lot less glamorous and far more literal than the other.

Monster is obviously pissed off too. Here I am a forty-something man having to cuddle and re-assure half a ton of meat to try and cheer the bloody thing up!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 9:09 am and is filed under Hunting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.