Battle Creek 25/50
July 17, 2004

Battle Creek proved to be an interesting trip for me. I haven't made a long trip for a 25 in quite awhile now and several days before I was starting to get lazy about the whole thing. The five-hour drive was starting to look really long by myself. I'd just done Gold Country the week before and a week at Cold Springs three weeks before that,and staying home for a weekend was starting to sound appealing (I know, crazy, huh?) Besides the fact that my husband was wondering whether I was ever going to stay home on a weekend again ...

A year ago I got this email from a lady in Georgia who was relocating to Stockton, CA and wanted to know if I knew of any places to stable her horse. We emailed back and forth and continued to do so off and on after she moved here. But we'd never met. I dawned on me that she said she was going to Battle Creek and I got the bright idea to ask her to go along with me. About an hour after I emailed my invitation, I thought to myself, "What, are you nuts? You don't even know this woman and you wanna spend five hours in the car with her, all weekend long and then five hours back?" I thought about it awhile longer and decided it was only for the weekend, how bad could it be? Funny thing was, she was on the other end of the computer thinking the same thing.

Mindy Morris and her gelding Jimbo (left) arrived in my driveway Friday morning bright and early and immediately my fears were relieved. Out stepped this petite gal with this great southern drawl and a sense of humor and I knew we were set. She opened the window of her trailer and out popped one of the prettiest Arabian heads I've ever seen, bright eyed and with the "I'm here" attitude. I could tell right away Jimbo had a lot of character.

The trip was wonderful. Mindy and I got to know each other and we had an absolutely great weekend together. We couldn't have gotten along any better. By the end of the trip I was starting to think in Georgian accents. "Ah'm sayin' ..."

As for the ride, the good news is ride management was great and did a pretty good job pulling off a first-time ride and they had great volunteers. And the views of Mt. Lassen were awesome. However, the entry information for the ride said "The ride is over logging roads with relatively flat grades and good footing and goes from 4000 feet elevation at camp to 6200 feet at the highest point on the route." My poor pea-brain thought this would be a good ride to take James Dean on for another trainer ride since he is just starting his endurance career. Well, we got lots of training on technical stuff which I didn't anticipate ... many times we cut off the logging roads and just plain old "went down the mountain," over decomposed logs, boulders, over logging tractor mounds, through bogs ... it was not an easy ride. In fact, I'd say it was the toughest ride I've been on to date. Poor little James was one tired puppy and I found myself apologizing to him over and over on the last eight miles. His 11-hour day at Cold Springs was a walk in the park compared to the 6:15 minutes we were out on the trail this weekend.

I will say that I'm very proud of him. He's gone from being horrendously afraid of sticks six months ago to being able to pick his way through rotting timber. He only scared himself once when one of the logs flipped up when he stepped on it with a back hoof. I managed to stay on with only losing one stirrup. Once he scares himself he's very scared of everything for a couple of miles afterwards. But he was so tired this ride, he was over it very quickly.

The last 8-mile loop was a killer for James after going up, up, up so much on the first loop. He and I both mistakenly thought (I know he was thinkin' the same thing) that we'd surely be going down most of the second loop. Wrong. And the poor boy ... one time we finished going up for awhile and got to go flat. He'd run out of steam for going uphill a few grades ago. We turned a corner and looked where the trail went and I swear he saw that long grade and his heart just went out of him. I felt so bad. He just did not want to climb anymore. We stopped a lot on the second loop going up. I tried getting off and walking uphill but I'm not in the best of shape and I have alttitude sickness and was giving him all my water so I decided that wasn't such a good idea. I did get off and walk all the downhill. Just no way I was going to ride him through all that on his third ride.

We ended up 15 minutes over time and I decided about 20 minutes out of the last vet check I didn't care how overtime we were, I wasn't going to make James trot through any of that rock. And we're not talking a rock here or a rock there, we're talking several long stretches of roads made out of nothing but rocks. I might have been able to go a little faster in some spots if I'd put easy boots on over James' shoes. I usually do that when I know it's going to be rocky. There were three of us OT on the 25. I still can't believe the winning time over this trail for the 50's was 4:30 hrs. Man ... I'm not sure of many of the other details on who did what to who on the 50 so you'll have to wait until the official results come out for that.

Mindy was doing the 50 and she, along with lots of other people, got lost quite a few times. I got lost twice on the 25 even at my slow pace. It's not that it wasn't marked. It was. But logging roads go EVERYWHERE and not all the turns were marked with three ribbons. Sometimes there was only an orange arrow painted on a tree or a log. And they warned us we'd have to be attention. It was an exercise in paying attention, big time. By the time Mindy got back to the trot-by at camp with one 16-mile loop remaining, she decided to hang it up, having already gone quite a few extra miles. She was feeling like a complete wuss about it but we discovered she wasn't alone in the RO department at that point. I know it's endurance, but ya gotta be havin' fun, too, right? We were parked in the sun and by 2:00 p.m. we were all boiling so I got out the generator, turned the fan on high and Mindy and I crashed in the trailer until the generator ran out of gas. By that time it was 5:00 p.m. and it was pretending like it was going to cool off a bit.

Mindy's comment on the way home was that she thought she would like to try this ride again, if they decided to hold it at a cooler time of the year. It's definitely a "Battle!"

I didn't see a whole lot of familiar faces at this ride, but then, I have travelled mostly south and into the desert in my quest for rides this year, so that's probably why. But I did see Ruthie Waltenspiel and Jennifer Niehaus, Tinker Hart and her mom Kay Matthews. I got a chance to make a few more new friends. Our camping neighbors were Rosie, Nikki and Joyce (sorry to say I didn't catch their last names) and are RideCamp readers. We couldn't have had nicer neighbors and it was really great to meet them.

I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying this ride next year. It just wasn't right for me this year on a green horse on his third ride at the conservative speed I normally travel. And I do want to thank ride management for starting up a new ride, thank all the volunteers for doing such a great job and thank the sponsors who donated the great raffle prizes. I can't even begin to imagine taking on the responsibility of putting on a ride. My hat is off to anyone who has the courage to do it.

Next stop ... Tevis coverage with Karen Chaton. Lucy Trumbull is riding this year so Karen is going to take pictures and try to keep y'all (Mindy influence) up to date as it's happening and she has asked me to help. Should proove to be very interesting. I was asked to crew for someone that I'd met at a ride a couple of years ago but our band was supposed to have a gig that weekend and I couldn't go. But it was just cancelled so I told Karen I'd help. Then I'm off to the Fireworks ride and then Eastern High Sierra. Hope to see some more of you RideCampers there!

:) Jackie and James Dean (the new kid on the block)