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[RC] 20-Mule Team 100 (long) - Aaron TurnageGirl You?ve Got it Bad ? My 20-Mule Team 100 My 20-Mule Team ride started on December 23rd, the Saturday before Christmas. We were down at my parent?s house and I decided it would be fun to take my son roller skating, something I had not done in about 15 years. We went to the roller rink with my mom, my son, and my sister and less than an hour later my mom was driving me to the ER since I had fallen and hurt my arm. As we were driving in the car, with my arm propped up on my jacket and a bag of ice on the top I looked at my mom and said, ?You know what this means don?t you? You?re going to have to saddle Sinatra for me at 20-Mule Team.? =) She looked over at me and shaking her had laughingly said, ?Girl, you?ve got it bad.? Yes, I do. Fast forward about 5 weeks and we are entered and getting ready to go. The arm ended up being a minor fracture of my radius. I called and rescheduled my cast removal for the Thursday before the ride rather than the originally planned Tuesday after. I lied and told the scheduler I had a wedding to go to and didn?t want a cast for in the pictures. =) I had to thank my aunt for that excuse, it worked perfectly. I had been able to saddle and ride with my cast just fine, but couldn?t wear a glove so that was of concern to me. After removal and x-ray the doctor pronounced me totally healed and able to go do what ever I wanted to with that arm. He kind of blinked at me funny when I said ?Oh good. I?m doing a 100-mile ride on my horse on Saturday.? He wished me well and I went back to work testing my shortened range of motion in my wrist. I met a very nice lady through a mutual friend from the Reno-area who was also planning on going down to 20-Mule Team. Jean and I made plans to meet after work on Thursday and drive down to Bishop and overnight at the fairgrounds there. It was to be Jean and her horse Chi?s first 100 and Sinatra and my third (finished Sunriver, overtime at Tevis). The week getting ready to go was just crazy, work was hectic, I was busier than normal with my husband?s business, and then just all the checking, cleaning, packing, organizing that goes into going to a ride, compounded because this was our first ride of the season and I hadn?t been through everything since our last rides in October. The drive down on Thursday went smoothly. I would highly recommend staying at the Bishop fairgrounds. They gave us two box stalls and had the water turned on for us. Very pleasant and easy to deal with, although not quite so easy to find our stalls in the dark but we managed. Woke up and got a fairly early start and arrived in We got all checked in and vetted. I know I?m not at home when I get asked by every third person what kind of horse Sinatra is. People in
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