"Broke Leg Mountain"

The second day on our retreat to Awanita has been sort of interesting. I decided I would be adventurous and do lots of crazy, exciting, dangerous, stuff this weekend. It all started out pretty well when I set out to go horseback riding. First of all, I haven’t ridden a horse in about 15 years which pretty much makes me very inexperienced. This was not going to be good. We all loaded up and went to go “get” the horses across the mountain. We got there and the first battle was actually getting on the horse, this is not as easy as you might think. I tried to get on the horse in the most common way by placing my left foot in the stirrup and raising my body up on onto the horse. This method was not working as well as I had hoped mainly because my feet would not fit in the stirrups. The only part of my foot that would fit in the stirrup was the tips of my toes, so I could not lift myself up no matter how hard I tried. This presented an issue because I was not planning on admitting defeat especially with eight students and three adult leaders all watching my every move. So I decided that I was going to beat this horse, whose name was “Trigger” by the way, no matter what it took. So we lead “Trigger” over to a near bye gate and tried to get him close so I could get on. Trigger, however had different plans. The horse would not cooperate in coming close to the gate so I could place my tiptoes in the stirrup and get on. We got the horse as close as possible and I did what any normal human being would do. I climbed to the top of the gate and leaped off onto the horse’s back like Jackie Chan in Shanghai Nights. This plan was working a lot better but the trajectory of my approach was not as accurate as I had hoped. I had landed on the horse’s butt. This is much better than standing on the ground but the goal of actually riding the horse had not actually been attained. I was lying across the horse praying that it would not take off with me hanging on for dear life. I managed to pull myself across the horses back and into the saddle all the while I am sure “Trigger” was asking God what he had done to deserve a 333 lb man leaping from a very tall gate onto his back. The remainder of the ride was uneventful with me hanging on most of the way with just my tippie toes. Half way through a nice gentleman named cowboy, brought me some stirrups that my feet could actually fit into and it made the rest of the ride more manageable. Dismounting the horse could have been a problem because I thought I might have to transfer to a smaller horse and then to an even smaller horse and then to a large dog to get close enough to the ground not to kill myself. But, again I jumped from the horse to the ground with no problem at all, minus the permanent injury to my left knee from holding on to the horse with a “thigh hug” since my feet would not go in the stirrups. I think that I will leave horseback riding to people with smaller feet, and smaller bodies. I have posted several pictures of this event for your enjoyment.