[RC] Endurance Carolina Style: Prequal - Howard Bramhall
Well, what can I say? Evidently, unless I've lost my ability to be
abundantly verbose, and, I don't think I have, quite a lot. Those
Carolinas, they were a calling. The initial leg of the journey
had me heading north with the first stop being the Sand Hills
endurance ride in South Carolina. My wife and kid were not with me
when I pulled out of Daytona Beach on Wednesday morning; we had decided to
travel separately, with me driving the Omni Bus and trailer, loaded with three
horses (Moonlight Princess, War Cry, and American Spirit). The wife and
kid were to follow in our pickup two days later, loaded with enough hay to last
ten days (kid has school, wife works, I drive a bus).
I don't really work and sometimes have a difficult time admitting this
when someone I meet for the first time gets around to asking me, "So,
Howard, what do you do for a living?" My answer, usually, is, "I do
endurance." You see, it has become my job, my life, a passion that I
cannot describe properly with words, even though I'm arrogant enough to make the
attempt. And, I know there are those of you out there who feel the same
way, the only difference being most of you have the sense not to try and write
about it all.
I swear, I feel like I'm driving some kind of surface floating submarine
vessel, with a tug boat attached to the stern, when I'm Captaining this 34
foot motor home. I need to paint it yellow so I can truly sing, "WE all
live in a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine." Sing
with me now: "We all live in a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine, a
Yellow Submarine." I love that song and must have played it a hundred
times (being the lone human on board I can get away with doing this) while
sailing towards Florence. As I depart the Inter-coastal Interstate
turning westward, my ship motors towards a totally isolated, non-port town
name of Patrick. Seas were calm, sky was blue, not much of a wind, and the
tide was going in my direction. "Sea of green, sky of blue, in my yellow
submarine."
"IN the town, where I was born, lived a man who sailed the sea. He
would tell us of ??." OK, enough of that, even though I really feel
that traveling in this ship is an adventure unto itself. Attach a 3-horse
slant load trailer behind this monolith and I'm definitely taking up more space
on the highway than I deserve. Only in America, can a nut like me, be
allowed, legally, to pilot through your town or bayou, with no special
driver training whatsoever, on my way to an endurance ride. I don't think
I could do this in Canada and this Ship of State definitely would not fit
on those skinny cobblestone roads in Europe without eliminating hundreds of
Mercedes and BMW's along the way. Considering how the Europeans feel
about Americans these days, I don't think I would want to attempt such a thing
anyway. As they say in Mexico, "Kill the Gringo and take his horse."
Pulling into the spacious state park, just before dusk, I spot the large,
recently built barn, with over 20 horse stalls, and the RV parking, with
electric and water, about a hundred yards away from the barn. Oh my, this
place is just what the Doctor ordered. I love the idea of stalling your
horse and living in comfort at a ride. Maybe, because such a thing
is so rare. All I know is I sleep very well at night knowing my
horses are safe and secure inside a barn. I have a very difficult time
sleeping at most endurance rides when they are tied up to my horse trailer or
inside a portable corral. I have arrived to endurance horse paradise, Part
One, and I know, Part Two, up in the mountains of western North Carolina, will
be the same, if not better.
There were a few folks from Canada at the campsite who had been there for a
week or more already. Otherwise, the campgrounds were empty; I was a bit
early for Saturday's ride. After walking, stalling, and feeding the horses
I went back to my Sub to relax, cook up some dinner and have a few beers.
I checked out the television and found I could get quite a few stations, which
is not the norm deep inside a State Forest in a remote area. And, there it
was. The war with Iraq had just begun, and, out in there middle of
nowhere, isolated and alone, I became entranced watching it all. The evil
wretch of Iraq was getting to learn America's National Anthem first hand.
"Bombs bursting in air," comes to mind.
Americans are not the same since 9/11. We're angry, upset and don't
plan on letting those whose only purpose in life is to take out
people who don't think like they do by blowing themselves up believing this is
their ticket to Paradise. War is ugly, it's nasty and difficult to
watch. And, there I was watching and listening to every syllable
mispronounced by Dan Rather and the snobby Peter Jennings. I
wonder how this will all play on Saturday Night Live?
