Ride Stories

Pine Tree 50... Riding High: 2008

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Sharon Levasseur

In deciding whether to do the 50 or 100 at Pine Tree this year, I took several things into consideration. Most importantly, I read all the Decade Team interviews at www.aerc.org. Regardless of how long it was before the rider took each horse to its first 100, most of them said they like to do a 50 about 3-4 weeks before the first 100 of the year. Since so far all we've done this year is a 2-day 60, I decided to opt for the 50 at Pine Tree and try for either the 75 or 100 at Vermont.

The week before the ride, I spent a little time each night making sure I had everything in the trailer that I needed, and that it was arranged efficiently. I made a few improvements, like putting adhesive linoleum tiles on the wall under the bridle hooks in the rear tack, and like buying a tall narrow set of plastic drawers for "kitchen" stuff. I've never really needed that before, but one of my other improvements was a two-burner propane stove so I was going to need camping pots and utensils! I had everything loaded by Thursday at 11:00 p.m. As usual, there was no list, but I just knew I had all the essentials on board and everything else was fluff.

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