Week 5 Recap

Lots happened this week, folks, so just bear with me. In follow-up with the last post, my back felt awful immediately after writing. I went to girls' night anyway and laid down on my back in an attempt to get things to stop hurting, and they didn't...so I kind of started crying in front of everyone. >.< Fortunately the other girls were very understanding, got a heating pad and insisted that I remain prone, prayed over me, and let me stay in the same spot for the next couple of hours on the heating pad. By that point my muscles had relaxed enough to let me walk back to staff housing without wanting to cry again, and by the next morning my back was almost normal. It's been a little sore, but nothing nearly as awful as Tuesday was.

And now, without any further ado, pictures! I didn't get any on Sunday, so most of these should be from Monday on.

On Sunday Casey drove the tractor around the arena all afternoon, and the result was incredibly soft dirt. I think these footprints are Cody's...

Speaking of which, there's the man himself on Pecos, warming up pre-jingling.

I'm rather proud of this series of pictures, by the by. They turned out really nice.

Rascal! In love with this horse and his markings...I got to ride him later in the week, and he's barn-sour and buddy-sour and has a tendency to rear when he's worked up, but he's still a really cool horse. Kinda reminds me of Colletta a bit, from when she was a snot. XD

Also fascinated with his wolf teeth--he's got 4 total, which makes for an interesting time putting on/taking off his bridle.

Oh yes, Alijah and Andrew doing what wranglers do the most. Heh.

Bring in dem hawses!

I think I may have been creeping on people at this point from the porch of the dining hall. <.< >.>

Lij!

Getting rained out...

The rain has been wonderful this week--after having it be so dry we need all the rain we can get. The great part is that we just got into the part of summer that means we'll be getting a storm every day, at least once a day.

Square dancing! This girl was beasting it on the hula hoop. Good grief.

This lady nearest to me reminded me of my grandma. *sigh*

Charissa got a new hat.... :D

Claire J! She helps out at the barn on Mondays and Fridays, generally speaking. She's pretty cool.

Emily P, one of my roomies...she's pretty awesome. *nods*

Guests!

More guests! This little boy looked like a china doll. Talk about adorable and kinda freaky at the same time...

I got kinda artsy one morning at the barn...I think this bird is a barn swallow of some kind, but not for sure.

Remington has a niiiiiiice bu--never mind.

The incredibly talented EB made this for one of the guests, and I managed to get a picture of it. *sigh* It looked AWESOME. I thought it was storebought until I saw EB's brand on the back. 

That stitchwork is to die for. And I didn't notice the little 'HOPE' stamped up there until now--makes me love it even more.

Rain over Longs...

So I'm down at the bottom of the stairs for staff housing, talking to Cody and Alijah, when Luke gets in the Sammy (one of the suburbans) and starts to drive away. Before I know it the other two have jumped on the hood of the van and are riding away on it. O.o

They got knocked off with a good quick tap of the brakes. XD

Oh! So Thursday I got to go help jingle...talk about thrilled. But I have a really great story about how that came about.

I had been thinking for a couple of days that I would LOVE to help jingle. I hadn't ridden in weeks and have been going down to the barn every morning anyway, so it's not like it would be too much out of the ordinary. But I've been hinting around lately that I'd like to ride and it just hasn't happened--one person would say yes, and another person higher up on the chain o' command would shoot it down. So I thought that if I asked, the answer would be no...but Wednesday I decided that I didn't care what the answer was, I was going to go ask anyway.

I wandered down to the barn after full clean on Wednesday, lurked around a bit watching the others jingle out and untack horses, and finally went up to Nick. This is sort of how the conversation went:

Me: Hey Nick, I have a really big question to ask.
Nick: Really? I have a question for you too.
Me: ....really?
Nick: You want to go first or me?
Me: Go for it.
Nick: Would you like to help jingle tomorrow?

There may or may not have been hysterical laughter and an inclination to flail for a few moments after that. But I managed to stop long enough to tell Nick that that was my exact question. Darron was standing nearby, so I asked him to get pictures (because what's the point of a great experience if there's no proof? XD).

I was to be at the barn by 5:30 to saddle up and ride my horse around to get a feel for him, and I was so excited that night that I ended up waking up at 3 and lying there until 5. It was CRAZY.

There's mah pony! He's got some gnarly teeth, man.

EB, looking like a boss...

Mwahaha. You can't tell here, but my horse was getting really excited and his buddy-sourness was coming out full-tilt.

I should have made him go faster at this point, but I was fighting him so much on what direction to go that it was nearly impossible to go faster than a trot. Meh. 

It was over here by the fence that I could feel him getting a little too light on the front end and I had to whack his neck with my arm so he would stay down. XD

Coming back...

I know the trend, and you'd think I'd be used to it by now, but Darron takes a LOT of pictures. All. The. Time. There were at least 75 by the end of a 15-minute period.

Also, I can't keep an angry/straight face to save my life.

More of the wranglers doing what they do most.... XD

Oh yes! Evening of the 4th--I was in the dish pit with Cody and Ellie, so we didn't go out with the others til later. But when we did I found the kitchen gals and we all somehow ended up laying on each other. XD Will got the picture, and flattering it is not, but it kinda typifies the moment. 

Also, fireworks. :D

There was a smiley face and everything!

Afterwards we looked at the line of traffic and yelled 'LOSERS!' Then we got stuck in said traffic. -.-

The grand finale was pretty awesome as well...and there's a story behind that. See, at one point the fireworks had been going off for quite a while. We were waiting for the grand finale, and then there was an explosion complete with a slight shock wave (a car alarm went off behind us and everything)...then no more fireworks. So we all start packing up and getting ready to walk back to the cars.

About halfway back the fireworks kick up again, and we got to see the actual grand finale, sans massive explosion. XD

I would like for you to observe the unity between man and horse here...

...because later someone got bucked off. O.o Nick was chasing another horse and swinging his stick around when the string got caught on Cactus' hind leg (Cactus being Nick's mount). Cue spinning and bucking across the pasture, and it ended like this. EB has already requested that this be blown up, autographed by Nick, and hung in the barn for posterity's sake.

Braiding horse manes at wrangler breakfast...Moriah and I usually drive back in the Niner, but after we loaded it up someone else drove off in it. So several of us rode on the hay trailer back to the kitchen...it was definitely more fun than driving the Niner. XD Anna and I 'surfed' the whole way by standing up--woulda gotten a picture, but my camera was in the Niner. :/

Also, funny story from breakfast: I was sitting next to Jason, with Darron behind during the recitation of poetry. I saw movement and glanced around to see Darron put a pine needle down the neck of Jason's jacket; both of us start laughing, and Jason whips around to see what's going on. Every time I looked over at Jason to see if he noticed the pine needles I would start laughing again, and he would whip around to glare at Darron (who didn't do anything after that point). I don't think Jason ever noticed the needles...but his thinking that Darron was up to something may have resulted in a bit of whiplash.

Oh! There were a couple of baptisms too--Claire J here...

...and our very own Charissa!

Right when she came up there was a huge lightning bolt to Estes Cone and a massive roll of thunder. Talk about awesome. :D

...and then there's our 'Czechoslovakian synchronized swimmers' making their appearance. I may or may not have a video of their performance that I need to upload somewhere.

These guys are such goobers...but in a good way. XD

Jingling out on Remington...Darron said that I could ride Rem sometime, so I'm just going to keep lurking around at the barn until that happens. XD I've never had much of an affinity for Appaloosas, but the ones here (vices aside--Rascal is everything-sour and Rem is just spoiled) are pretty cool.

Love this picture--they were BOOKING it, man.

Round the bend!

Afterwards Darron decided that Remington needed a trim, so we (D, Ellie, and I) wandered over to the shoeing shed and set up station next to Luke. I think he's under Cash (Casey's horse) here...

Ellie took my camera at this point. XD This kinda reminded me of my days as a farrier's assistant--Darron knows that I used to do that, so he asked me to diagnose Remington's feet before he started up. I think I did pretty well, considering I haven't done that in over 2 years.

I would also like to mention that Remington has the attention span of a gnat--he kept whipping his head around to look at various things, and he's got such a big head that he almost whacked me a few times. O.e I may or may not have threatened him with a lip chain at one point.

About a minute after this picture was taken, tragedy struck--Darron had a hoof knife sticking out of his back pocket and cut his wrist on it. He rushed off to the office, Ellie and I rushed Remington to the barn, and D was taken to the hospital. It was feared that he'd nicked a tendon, but turns out that he just missed it and only need a couple of stitches. I felt sick about it, though, because I saw the knife in his back pocket and it didn't register that the blade should have been down (which was dumb, because all the times I've ever been holding horses I've watched knives be put away, sharpened them, been told where to put them, etc, and they always, always, always go in blade down). Argh.

Oh yes...on Saturday afternoon some of the staff were trying to photobomb the live cam for the ranch. They got 5-6 pictures of various people in poses--not sure how kosher that was, but it was freakin' hysterical.

It was John York's birthday! So we all sang happy birthday and ate cake. XD

A group of us (me, D, Moriah, Emily P, Cody, and Anna) drove up Trail Ridge Road on Saturday afternoon. It's basically the highest paved road in the US (so the others told me, anyway), so we wound our way through the mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park. This is leaving Estes...and it was pretty epic.

The mountains were SO beautiful. Sigh.

Oh yes! We saw lots of elk too. I think I may have missed my calling as a wildlife photographer. XD

Several of them had these tracking collars--from what I understand they're used for measuring migration patterns and stuff.

*sigh*

Also, MASSIVE bull elk. I was thoroughly impressed.

This is where we stopped...2200 feet more and we would have been equal to Longs!

Looking out while walking up to the mountain peak...

There were signs everywhere telling people to stay off the tundra. These little flowers were fascinating--no idea what they were, but they was interesting.

These too.

At the top of the peak!

Group picture...I was off the rock while everyone else was on it, hence the height difference.

The 'manly man' picture. XD

Oh yes...the hat. It's actually Darron's, but I kinda borrowed it at lunch and forgot to give it back. It made me channel my inner thug, which is more difficult to channel when demanded to do so by the person holding the camera. O.e

Trying again...

Aaaaand photobombed. *sigh*

There may or may not have been yelling at this point. I don't exactly remember.

There we go--thug life intact.

Another camera fiend!

I think Cody is warming up to the camera, yes?

'The Thinking Hiker'. D is always requesting random picture ideas...

Anna! She denies it, but she is freaking gorgeous.

Moriah!

There goes Cody, trying to photobomb again...

I think after this point I went and wrested my camera away. XD

Foot picture, per Darron's request.

Coming down the mountain...

There were a ton of people, so I would trot/sprint ahead until I got caught behind someone, pause to take a picture and let the others catch up, and then try to sprint again. The steps were weird so I goose-stepped most of the way.

The visitor's center!

Every time someone would leave the trail: "PROTECT THE TUNDRA!!!!"

Self-portrait? Meh.

Hey, it's one of my roomies! This is Claire B--she moved in 2 weeks ago, and has been an interesting addition. Here she and Kay are trying to play volleyball/basketball. XD

Such thugs. XD

Also thug still...kinda. XD Lij has a ripstick, so I tried teaching myself how to use it on Saturday. After half an hour I was able to go more or less in  a straight line and kind of turn. Sometimes. Getting started is the hardest part...but I really enjoyed it. I want to try it again sometime.

There was a lot of falling/jumping off.

And then there's Kay, doing something crazy. XD

That evening we all went out for ice cream and to wander around Estes--my intent was to get hiking bootlaces, and I came back with a headband and half a pound of candy. O.e I ended up sharing said candy with the wranglers while greeting at the front gate today, because I do NOT need any candy at all.

Speaking of not needing candy, I've been really trying to eat better over the past week or so in addition to working out. Because of my back I've only worked out twice, but hopefully that'll change this week. *crosses fingers* I have the workouts, it's just that the early mornings are kinda hard to get up to sometimes. Sigh. Plus the wranglers jingle at 6, and I hate to miss that. >.< We'll see what happens tomorrow...