The person who recruited me is listed on page 32 of
the new EN in the illustration of the 1972 Top Twenty Five (Great job, by
the way AERC and Troy!). His name is Bill Cary and his horse was Monte Wolf. He
is my step father and he learned about the sport of endurance from our next-door
neighbor who really didn't know anything about it either. He just knew there was
this race from Squaw Valley from Auburn and maybe they outta give it a shot.
Their story is pretty much a duplicate of all the rest of the old timers. I
was his crew and only did one ride in the 70's because that's all I could
wheedle out of him to let me borrow his horse. :)
It wasn't until I hit 40 that I realized I had hay
burners in my backyard not earning their paycheck. So I chose endurance because
I figured I didn't need all the fancy show gear and I figured I knew how to do
it. Little did I know I'd spend at least the same amount of money or more doing
endurance than showing!
I had a head start on a newbie because I'd been
there in the 70's and knew at least the goings-on at rides. I knew I had to
condition my horse properly. Things have changed tremendously since then, but
the main game plan was the same ... a certain amount of miles in a certain
amount of time. It wasn't too hard to get into the swing of things. I kinda miss
the shotgun starts, though .... NOT! And, I have learned along the way, that
while I did have a head start in the learning curve, there was so much more I
didn't know.
This month's issue of EN was particularly fun to
read and look at. I love the picture of "unloading" on page 40 ... a far
cry from the way a typical XP rider arrives at a ride these days, that's for
sure!
If you read the paragraph below the title of the
illustration showing my dad's name, it says "This chart was compiled from the
records of 695 horses and riders, as reported by the 24 Endurance Rides in which
they rode during 1972." That's, what? Somewhere around a tenth of the
current AERC membership? Boy, has our sport grown! Think how easy my guidebook
would have been to compile with only 24 rides vs. over 300 rides we have today!
I'm sure a lot of people don't realize how big a job it really is to keep track
of and run the organization of AERC. It's a huge job. One that probably doesn't
get a lot of thanks, but more often than not, I'm sure, complaints.
Anyway, I kind of got of track. But in light of all
the bickering lately, I think it would be great if we could all remember to
thank those that have helped our sport ... AERC, Ride Managers, Volunteers,
Sponsors, your mentor, endurance.net ... whomever .... it's much healthier
to be positive about the good things, rather than to focus on the
negative.
