Sunken Roads & the Missing Spectacles

      Comments Off on Sunken Roads & the Missing Spectacles

I hate up banks.

Ok, hate may not be the word.

Let me think if there’s another word……

Dread?

Fear?

Nope. Hate is about right.

I’m completely convinced that every single time I’m going up a bank that my pony is going to miss the “up” part & I’m going to do some version of a lawn dart impersonation.

This all stemmed from a red-headed-twin that pretty regularly tripped up banks.

Anyway!!!

We have a fancy new sunken road on the home turf & all it took was one look to decide it was terrifying.

Fear paralysis immediately set in & I found myself flopping through it like a fish the first time.

I made it in, but completely missed the out & bailed.

I’m pretty sure I got called a sissie for that move…….

#TotallyDeserved

So.

Fast forward to the next sunken road lesson. We were working on that active, ready-to-go-from-any-distance, tail-swishy canter……

And I said something like “up banks scare me”

#NotNews

The answer was, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

As my mind is thinking of my last ambulance ride……..

I hear, “It’s a related distance. Worst thing that can happen is you bounce it.”

So.

I think my SCOPE filled dinosaur took that as a cue.

After failing to stay with him & nearly falling off backwards, we reaproached with the goal to “go with him” up the bank.

You see.

He’s really REALLY good at leaving the ground when I make a move.

So when we dropped down I moved my shoulders forward to “stay with him” and

You guessed it

He left the ground

And we bounced the sunken road

#MurphyHimself

For those not old enough, Murphy Himself & Ian Stark routinely bounced one-strides and made it look effortless. There’s a slow motion of him bouncing a massive combination around minute 2:45 in this video.

But back to 2018.

Sure enough. We bounced it.

But unlike Murphy Himself it was far from effortless.

I face planted on his neck & while amazingly I stayed in the tack I came up without my glasses.

I was recovering from my “nearly lawn dart” moment when the fearless leader says, “Where are your glasses?”

The even crazier part of the story is that a barn full of people have searched for those glasses.

There must be a glitch in the matrix because they still haven’t been found.

Meanwhile I’ve departed on a quest to figure out just what your position needs to be to survive a sunken road.

This fabulous RNS video has definitely given me some food for thought.  More about my sunken road research in PART 2!

Share with: