This is what I love about endurance riding in this country:
it's fun.
The Owyhee Cheap Thrills No Frills endurance ride proves my point.
You can name a trail the Booby Rock Trail. Could you do this in an FEI ride in France or the UAE? I don't think so.
You can follow your long shadows to the Owyhee mountains and back in a day.
You can race the 50 miles if you have those competitive bones in your body; you can win and tie with three old endurance friends (and get a pair of cool sunglasses for your award), like Bill and Sue and Lee.
You can ride slow and finish last or close to it every ride - and not only get the occasional really cool Turtle Award for doing so, but you might have a 5000+ mile horse that you hope to do 10,000 miles on, like Carla and the Khid, who came from Colorado to do the two days.
You can ride with a friend whose horse reaches 3000 miles, like Nance and Quinn!
You can ride to see some great scenery - even if you live here and get to ride here all the time and marvel at it every day.
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You can have a horse that gets Best Condition almost every time he's ridden: Fire Mt Malabar has six starts this year and six Best Conditions (Day One here with Lee, Day 2 with his wife Naomi); you can ride a horse to her 6000 miles, like Annerose Carlisle did with Ginger. (Annerose thought Ginger got 6000 miles at the Fandango in May, but she was 10 miles short. On Day 1 here, she got it!) You can come and do trail rides if you don't want to ride 25 or 50 miles. We love to have you! You can come and do your first 50 mile ride, like Judy and Milan from California, or or Estelle from South Africa, and Shim Sham!
You can ride your horse that you just love love love on his first two LDs like Linda and Ted!
If you're a horse, you can wallow in some mighty fine grass after 50 or 100 miles.
You can drink some wine and tell tall tales, and you can have great dinners:
and you can act silly.
If you're lucky, you get to ride someone else's horse, A THOUSAND MILES TOGETHER, like me and Jose and the Raven - THANK YOU STEPH AND JOSE!
If you're lucky, you can just come to an Owyhee ride, and have fun!
