Tevis coverage - Michigan Bluff

[Lucy Chaplin Trumbull <elsie@calweb.com>]

I spent most of yesterday morning stranded at a 
friend's house in Foresthill - no other access to
electricity/phone to be able to upload what stuff
I had from Robie/Squaw. 

Then I managed to get down to Michigan Bluff and take 
a TON of photos, before being commandeered to help out, 
and ending up up to my elbows in bran mashes for the 
rest of the afternoon, until the last riders came through.
That was really good fun - and a good way to get to talk 
to riders about their horses.

Pics are at:

http://www.calweb.com/~trouble/tevis98/michigan-bluff

No captions yet, but they are kind of listed by rider
name.

Most excellent horse was Robin Hood, the huge mustang,
ridden by Andrea Bianchi. I adore this horse and she
has a wonderful relationship with him.

Prettiest horse was Debby Lyon's little grey. (and
she was a nice lady too!!)

Best tack combination - and you thought Karen
Chaton's purple tack was overkill - was rider280.jpg
(don't have her name listed on my sheet at present).
Met Mo Livermore, who was wonderful. Horse looked fine,
despite what I read about her taking a tumble earlier
in the day.

I spoke to another rider, the small grey/white pony
Felex (don't have the details in front of me) who also
went head over heels. She said she was astonished he
hadn't done much damage, although she wanted to get
though the vet check quickly in case his knee stiffened
up.

There's a pic of Suzanne Hayes' Kooter "not eating"
and I'm happy to report that she left Michigan
Bluff hand walking him, with a flake of hay under
her arm, which I'm sure he was made to eat before
she got on. I saw him at the finish and he looked
GREAT.

Frank Smith's mule (frank3.jpg) is a real cutie.

Goofy, Brian Reeves' horse, arrived at MB with
minutes to spare before the cut off and he wasn't
coming down as quickly as Brian was happy with,
so he opted to pull - he didn't want to put him
through having to play catch up for the rest of
teh evening. An excellent attitude. Goofy tucked
into three bran mashes and a load of hay and was
a contented horse. Goofy-pull.jpg

Judy Long was riding with him, but trotted into
MB a few minutes earlier. She looked awfully
tired, as did Warpaint and said she was feeling
abit queasy. She zipped out of MB and I was told
later, made up quite a bit of time at FH, but
was probably still chasing cut-off for the rest
of the evening. I see this morning that she completed,
but also noticed someone on that list who I was told
pulled, so I don't know how accurate that list is.

One horse got into trouble outside Francisco's
(near the river crossing) - the horse was aobut
4 miles out, in a really inaccessible place - they
weren't sure they could get a trailer in there to
get him out. However, Karen Chaton said she saw a 
horse "with a bag in it's neck", so it sounds like
they did.

I heard one ride vet/tech saying that wherever she
was they had 11 horses on IVs at once, which was
pretty crazy.

Remington was pulled at Deadwood/Dusty corners (get
those two confused). I spoke to the lady who was 
riding sweep and she said that he was still trotting 
coming into the check, but that he would miss the
cut off for the next check (I'm thinking it must
have been Deadwood, because I think DC is next), so
he was pulled for time. Remington was fine, though.

Karen C and Nick Warhol crossed the finish line at
3:15. They were aiming for 3am, so this was close.
Weaver apparently stumbled on the last mile (no doubt
causing Nick to have some sort of ulcer develop -
some of you may remember about how he finished last
year, but was miserably pulled because of lameness
at the final check). He said they walked in most
of the last section (paranoid? Him?). Unfortunately,
his crew were in the wrong place (at the stadium, 
about five mins walk from the finish line) and he
had no rump rug, so I leant him the pulloever I
was wearing (oh, well, the T shirt had bran all
over it...). He made the vet do the trot though
immediately and the vet was really nice and 
congratulated him as he came back. Nick gets a
real completion. He was really happy. We found his
crew and Shatta settled down with them to wait for
Judy.

Karen was very happy with Weaver. Because Nick had
come in ahead of them, she let him do his victory
lap around the stadium first and then followed.

Of course, all Weaver wanted to do was be with his
friend, so he trotted a quarter of the way around
before doing a U-turn to get to Shatta. But they
got around eventually, after a bit of persuation.
Weaver was bedded down for the night with about
five tons of food, and yes, he was still eating.

Karen was chuffed to bits to have the vet at MB
tell her that Weaver had the best hydration of any
horse he'd seen that day.

She was also pleased that Weaver had gone from a
"B-" at the start, to an "A" in gait by the time
he got to Foresthill.

One thing I did hear (and never saw, I wasn't there) was
that Potato's horse was lame when it came in. Interesting,
seeing as it looked like they passed him. There were a few
disgruntled people about that.

The 3rd place mule has to have been the most popular animal
mentioned all day. I never saw it until the end of it's
vicotry lap, as I was coming into the stadium and it was
huge. But all day, all I was hearing was "did you see that
mule!"

Marcia's horse, Saamson, looked great.

Andrea rode Robin Hood around at a canter, bareback, for
her vicotry lap.

I finally left the fairground at 4;30 (in time to
see Brian roaming the parking lot, going to check on
his "pony") and got home at 5:10.

Patrick says I fell asleep in mid-sentence about the
new trail after Deadwood.

Now I've had 3.5 hours sleep (mmm, wonderful, after the
4 hours in the truck the night before) and feel kind of
human. My foot that I whacked last Monday jumping over
the sofa on to the concrete floor is really hurting
(whine, whine) after almost literally standing on it for
25 hours, so I'm kind of gimpy today (Karen, btw, was
not *too* sore when she came in, and was feeling much
better after a shower).

I'm going up to the fairgrounds later to hang out with
people and watch the awards.

I hope you all enjoyed the coverage. Richard was a little
unhappy with the speed of the updates, but it is really
hard up there. I watched them trying to download files and
the signal kept going away. 

I'll try and get the captions up to go with all those photos'
later this evening.
-- 
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Lucy Chaplin Trumbull - elsie@calweb.com
Repotted english person in Sacramento, CA 
http://www.calweb.com/~elsie

with Mouse and Provo
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