(no subject)
Jun. 10th, 2007 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickHad a pretty good (if lengthy) horse outing yesterday.
We rode on Sideling Hill over near Flickerville. Probably Flickerville is not a town you've ever heard of. Hell, I hadn't heard of it before this week and I live less than thirty miles from the place. Getting there -- head south out of Crystal Springs (it's an exit off of I-70) toward Emmaville. In Emmaville (not very big, couple of houses at a Y in the road) bear to the left. You'll go up a big bark of a mountain (Town Hill) and overtop of the I-70 interchange there. (You could also, I suppose, follow I-70 to the Town Hill exit, get off there, and head east down the mountain, but we were starting from near Crystal Springs and picking up horses in Emmaville.) Kind of follow along, there, down the mountain again, keep to the right, and you'll get to Flickerville. (For the terminally curious, here is the USGS map of the area.)
Sideling Hill is not terribly far from Flickerville either. We're in the ridge-and-valley section of Pennsylvania, which means that if you go east-west, you get a succession of valley-mountain-valley-mountain. In this case, it's Emmaville (valley), Town Hill (mountain), Flickerville (valley), Sideling Hill (mountain). If you head in a more north-south direction you get either ridge-of-mountain or bottom-of-valley. Mostly, the tops of the mountains don't have much on them besides trees and the occasional summer-people cabin because they are cold and windy and made out of rock and crops don't grow there very well. The valleys have fields and farms and little wee towns and creeks and stuff. It's all very picturesque -- we got a hell of a view looking east from the top of Sideling Hill out over Belfast Township and whatnot. Anyway.
We went up the mountain (steep climb with rocks) and we went across the ridge of the mountain (mostly flattish, some locally-defoliated areas due to gypsy moths, some burned and regenerating areas (black birch, about ten or twelve feet high, nice jungle-ish effect), largely good footing) and down the mountain again (steep descent with rocks). Then we rode back along the vally to where we'd started from. There were hot dogs and burgers afterward.
The IRH was solid, though we only saw two cars and those not very excitingly. Taku wasn't too bad. Everyone did pretty well, really, considering that it was six hours of riding (there were frequent pee breaks because several of the guys had packed beer). We'd taken along a non-riding girl, daughter of the pig farmer from whom Liss is leasing ground to run the horses on, and I think she got rather more than she'd bargained for. Six hours on a horse is a bit much for folks who don't ride. Two hours is about all a nonrider can really handle -- at that point they're amusingly stiff afterwards but not beat to shit. The eleven-year-old daughter of the pig farmer probably weighed more than I did (I am a hundred and sixty pounds) and could not get on a thirteen-two pony by herself. There's something wrong with the world when kids are like that.
I tried out my new saddle pad, which held in place nicely. I really like the way that the saddle fits me and doesn't move on the horse but it turns out that six hours in it was enough to generate some back tenderness on the IRH over her loin area and I'm not pleased about that. I'll have to see what I can find on the interwebs about it, but I can't be having with sore loins on the horse. That's not a good. That's so not a good that it's a dealbreaker. I hadn't noticed any soreness in previous rides on this saddle (which I really like) but those had been shorter, two-hour rides. *sigh* I really do like this saddle, damn it all, but if I can't fix this problem, it's going to have to go down the road and I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board. Bugger.
We rode on Sideling Hill over near Flickerville. Probably Flickerville is not a town you've ever heard of. Hell, I hadn't heard of it before this week and I live less than thirty miles from the place. Getting there -- head south out of Crystal Springs (it's an exit off of I-70) toward Emmaville. In Emmaville (not very big, couple of houses at a Y in the road) bear to the left. You'll go up a big bark of a mountain (Town Hill) and overtop of the I-70 interchange there. (You could also, I suppose, follow I-70 to the Town Hill exit, get off there, and head east down the mountain, but we were starting from near Crystal Springs and picking up horses in Emmaville.) Kind of follow along, there, down the mountain again, keep to the right, and you'll get to Flickerville. (For the terminally curious, here is the USGS map of the area.)
Sideling Hill is not terribly far from Flickerville either. We're in the ridge-and-valley section of Pennsylvania, which means that if you go east-west, you get a succession of valley-mountain-valley-mountain. In this case, it's Emmaville (valley), Town Hill (mountain), Flickerville (valley), Sideling Hill (mountain). If you head in a more north-south direction you get either ridge-of-mountain or bottom-of-valley. Mostly, the tops of the mountains don't have much on them besides trees and the occasional summer-people cabin because they are cold and windy and made out of rock and crops don't grow there very well. The valleys have fields and farms and little wee towns and creeks and stuff. It's all very picturesque -- we got a hell of a view looking east from the top of Sideling Hill out over Belfast Township and whatnot. Anyway.
We went up the mountain (steep climb with rocks) and we went across the ridge of the mountain (mostly flattish, some locally-defoliated areas due to gypsy moths, some burned and regenerating areas (black birch, about ten or twelve feet high, nice jungle-ish effect), largely good footing) and down the mountain again (steep descent with rocks). Then we rode back along the vally to where we'd started from. There were hot dogs and burgers afterward.
The IRH was solid, though we only saw two cars and those not very excitingly. Taku wasn't too bad. Everyone did pretty well, really, considering that it was six hours of riding (there were frequent pee breaks because several of the guys had packed beer). We'd taken along a non-riding girl, daughter of the pig farmer from whom Liss is leasing ground to run the horses on, and I think she got rather more than she'd bargained for. Six hours on a horse is a bit much for folks who don't ride. Two hours is about all a nonrider can really handle -- at that point they're amusingly stiff afterwards but not beat to shit. The eleven-year-old daughter of the pig farmer probably weighed more than I did (I am a hundred and sixty pounds) and could not get on a thirteen-two pony by herself. There's something wrong with the world when kids are like that.
I tried out my new saddle pad, which held in place nicely. I really like the way that the saddle fits me and doesn't move on the horse but it turns out that six hours in it was enough to generate some back tenderness on the IRH over her loin area and I'm not pleased about that. I'll have to see what I can find on the interwebs about it, but I can't be having with sore loins on the horse. That's not a good. That's so not a good that it's a dealbreaker. I hadn't noticed any soreness in previous rides on this saddle (which I really like) but those had been shorter, two-hour rides. *sigh* I really do like this saddle, damn it all, but if I can't fix this problem, it's going to have to go down the road and I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board. Bugger.
