RE: saddle i.d.

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

<I'd like to think the thefts were an aberration and perpetrated by
one or two (non-endurance) individuals...but I am hearing from
friends about bags sent out to vet checks not getting back to their
owners.  What kind of person would stead a cooler with a rider's
horse's name and event name on it?  A non-endurance person, I'd bet.<

In a poor country with endurance being a novelty, we've had our share of
problems like this at the big rides when all the Dubai folk come and
everything is chaos. We are usually very careful with equipment, knowing
that a saddle can mean a month's income for someone....or a year's depending
on the saddle. At our first ride, one local rider was silly enough to leave
a saddle sitting on a fence for an hour and sure enough it vanished. She
never found it. On the other hand at the last one, I had someone take my
Garmin III plus out of the backseat of the car while I was unloading
stuff....but they didn't know what it was. I think I'm one of the few people
here who has one. This guy took it to a friend in the pyramids area who
recognised it and told him it was a very specialised light meter and he'd
never find anyone with a camera that fit it....so the guy sold it to him for
about $15, which I happily reimbursed. At the same ride, a friend's groom
recognised a heart monitor (again a very rare item here) as one of mine that
had gone "missing" a few months ago and he casually picked it up in it's
case and returned it to me. Sometimes it works the other way too.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@ratbusters.net
www.ratbusters.net
AERC #M22292