The Unexpected

The Unexpected

The other day, I planned to go on a ride with Ellen in the morning, but it was raining.  We waited and waited, and finally, she had to leave because she had to go to work.

I still wanted to ride, and so did Kevin.  We waited together for the rain to stop.  Finally, it did, and we headed out on the trail.

It really didn't rain that much, though some places had rain the night before.  The river was a little higher and muddy; but totally crossable.  We crossed and started trotting out to the next river crossing.

It wasn't that long before I noticed the river looked a little funny.  Our trail goes somewhat parallel to the river.  Most of the time you can see it.  It just seemed a little high.  Kevin didn't notice anything, so I thought I could have been imagining it.  I would just keep an eye on it.

A few minutes later, I was sure of it--the river was going up.  I mentioned it to Kevin, and he agreed.  We continued to trot on down the trail.  I was thinking that it was already too late to turn around, anyway.

By the time we got to the next river crossing, the water was raging.  We had a few choices--all of them involving walking home on the street.  We could cross on the ford we were at and go home that way.  The problem with that was it would mean we didn't have much of a trail ride, and much of the way there were no driveways to duck into if traffic got bad.

The next option was to go to the ford north of us and ride up our street to our barn.  That meant riding up a long, steep road with cars whizzing by.  I didn't want to do that, at all.  We eliminated that option immediately.

Option number 3 gave us the longest trail ride.  We would ride up to the trails by the show ring--out to the street and home on the road that way.  It seemed like the safest way--and we even got the best trail ride that way, too.

We turned around and headed home.  That did mean we had to pass up where we usually cross the river.  Starry was in the lead and refused to pass up the trail to go home.  Kevin had to circle him a few times to get him to go.  I followed along.  Just as we were passing up our river bank, Cole jumped, spun and tried to run down the bank to the water!  It was lunch time at the barn, and he wanted to go home!  I just spun him all the way around until he was facing the right direction.

Reluctantly, Cole followed Starry down the trail.  All went well from then on.  We did have a little trouble when we wanted to go up the very steep hill to get to the show ring trails.  Kevin has to lead Starry up it, and since I still hadn't gone that way this year, I decided that would be the best idea for me and Cole, too.  Well, Starry said he didn't even want to be led up the hill; and he started backing down it.  Cole needed to lead, but he refused to pass Starry because he was being rambunctious.  I showed Cole that he could follow me to get past Starry, and he was happy with that.

The trip on the street was only about 15 minutes, but since I don't like riding on the street, Cole really didn't have much experience with that sort of thing.  Ellen said we did do it once, many years ago, just as a training exercise.  I didn't really remember that, but it could explain why Cole was very good and surprisingly relaxed.

We made it home, safe and sound--and had a nice ride, too.

I guess it must have really rained hard upstream...