Herbie's New Sweater

Herbie got a new sweater. She seems indifferent, but she'll thank me when the temps drop! In the meantime, have some pictures of her running around the yard.

Sweaters do not slow Herbie down!

Kristin and Rachel

Kristin and Rachel came to visit today! They were always some of my favorite volunteers and they are one of the  few things I miss about SRF. They're on vacation from school and their parents agreed to let them come play for a couple hours. Ozzy seemed to remember Kristin's mom's car and was waiting with his ears pricked at the gate to the indoor. We took turns riding before it started to rain and Mike joined us for a trip to the pizza place. I haven't really ridden Ozzy in the last month and he's rusty, but he was a good boy and everyone had fun. Have some photos!

Click!

Herbie the Christmas Dog is not amused. The good news is it made Mike's mom happy.

Christmas-- and new camera photos!

Mike and I have had a wonderful and relaxing first Christmas together. Santa was good to me this year and Mike even came over for Christmas breakfast with my family. My brother was excited to meet Herbie and I was excited for traditional Polish food. Mmmm!

Afterwards, we took Herbie, who was brimming with energy, for a quick hike at the top of the apartment complex. These are the trails C and I grew up adventuring on and it was a bit of a trip down memory lane. We even went down the big steep hill by the red tower on the AT&T property.

Of course I brought the new camera with me. I am thrilled! It's so nice to have a camera that actually FOCUSES and the image quality is just what I was hoping it would be.

Anyway, have some relatively boring photo spam.

Even my hippo got in the holiday spirit!

2011 In Review

Annual review.

New Camera

I have the most awesome friends ever. They pooled money and bought me a new camera for Christmas. I totally cried. Apparently Mike orchestrated the whole thing and even got my mom and brother involved.

Weird Day

Fluzy Update

Just thought I'd share some cell phone pictures I took of Fluzy this morning. The filly has been doing really well. Most of our ride this morning was spent walking and trotting around the farm as a sort of intro to trail riding. She was very brave with no spook. The only 'bad' thing about her is that she's lazy and wants to stop to eat grass, but I suspect her owner won't mind that particular 'flaw'.

Chilling out by my car while I put things away.

This pretty much sums up her personality.

Completely unfazed by the horses running in their paddocks. Good filly.

Merrill Creek Reservoir

Yesterday, while browsing through Google maps in satellite view, I spotted a big-ish body of water that I had never noticed before. I zoomed in and it was labeled 'Merrill Creek Reservoir'. I did some internet research and discovered a 5.5 mile, well-marked trail with the promise of scenic views and a nesting pair of bald eagles. It wasn't hard to convince Mike and Bryce to go hiking there today.

As we drove past the strip malls of Warren County, I had a moment where I worried this would be some small, crowded yuppie park.  Thankfully, as we got closer, the roads got narrower, windier, and less populated. We arrived in a small gravel parking lot. We were the only car to park there. After glancing over the park rules and regulations, we took off in pursuit of the black-marked Perimeter Trail.

We hiked for just over two and a half hours, returning to the car to the sound of bats chirping at dusk. We wandered over two dams, through fields, and in the woods. We only ran into a handful of people all day, including a group of boatmen with a beautiful older pit bull cross. I don't know if it's just because it was the dead of winter, but this park seemed like one of Jersey's well kept secrets. It was quiet, empty, and beautifully maintained.

The walk was definitely well worth the drive. Not only did we get the stunning views we were promised (watching the sunset turn the sky purple over miles of hills and valleys); we also saw the bald eagles!!! They swooped low over the water and sat in trees just off the shoreline. Sadly, we were almost out of light by the time we saw them so my photos are kind of a let down.  Also- I seriously need a new camera.

Turns out this hike was in the 50 Hikes book and I learned a lot about the sights we saw by reading about it after the fact. I think the visitor center would be worth checking out on a return visit.

In any case, have 50+ photos.

Goin' Up to Boston

On Monday Mike and I drove up to Boston to see my brother's final presentation at MIT. Is it bad that I live a life in which a day trip that far doesn't even strike me as strange?

Because the presentation didn't start until 7:30pm, we got to sleep in. We left a little after noon and made really good time on our way up. We stopped only for lunch and gas. I haven't been up that way since Erin and I took the horses up for Hack Weekend. Just like last time, we brought a GPS for the last leg of the journey and ignored it all the way up there.

"Turn right? Turn right now? OMG I JUST WANT YOU TO TURN RIGHT!!!!"

Finding the parking deck was easy and we got a spot right on the first floor. My parents were on their way over from their hotel so we just laid the seats back and waited for them.

The four of  us wandered over to the auditorium. After a mix up with name tags, we got prime seating smack in the middle of the room.We were about an hour early so we got to watch some of the warm ups. The girl practicing was obviously very nervous and we started off being unimpressed. These are MIT students. You kind of expect the best, y'know?

Before long, the presentations started. Only at MIT does the final for a class fill an auditorium with 1200 people and feature a cameo appearance by the Mythbusters. Let's not even mention the live band and organ music.

The idea behind the class is that the students are broken up into groups of a dozen or so. They are given three months, a theme (on the go) and a $6800 (??) budget. They then have to come up with a product, design it, build a working prototype, do the market research, and come up with a product release presentation.It's all very intense and impressive. Many of these projects go on to actually sell and go into production. I fully expect to see infomercials for some of these in the next few years :-P

There were some really great ideas and I was blown away by some of the prototypes. I had picked up a clipboard with evaluation forms at the beginning of the presentation. I was honest with my ratings and tried to leave both positive and negative comments at the bottom of each group's page. I'm curious about how the projects were graded.

Photo grabbed from my brother's FB. He's the one with the big smile.

My brother's group's product was the Walker Prime. It's essentially a walker that turns into a cane, the idea being that people with walkers are often limited by stair cases or narrow entrance ways. It was simple and brilliant. It was also well executed. During the question period, someone asked how much force is required to open and close the walker. Could an elderly person handle the transition? Mike's response was, "If they're not strong enough to open and close the walker, they probably shouldn't be out walking anyway." My brother handled it more eloquently by inviting the audience member to come to the booth after presentations and try it for himself.

Other ideas that stood out were an automatic sink filler for commercial kitchens (made especially awesome by the sonar technology the students incorporated into its design), a keyless bike lock, a 'rent-a-helmet' hub for bike stations, and a lever system for manual wheelchairs to keep the user's hands from getting wet and dirty on the hand rims. The latter was an especially sleek and professional design.

It was a tough crowd and some of the questions from the audience were downright brutal. I want to know who kept giving the Prius driver the microphone! There definitely won't be a shock to the students when they release their products into the real world.

At the end of the night, it was definitely worth a five and a half hour drive. We laughed our asses off (at one point I  was suffocating myself in Mike's shoulder to keep from snorting) and just generally had a good time. The presentations were well planned and the interludes were set up so that there was no down time in between. Q&A sessions were kept short and sweet and the presentations themselves were informative and to the point.

After the crowd let out, we met up with my brother in the lobby. Mike finally got to meet him. "Mike, this is Mike. Mike, Mike." LOL. My brother was super busy and had a lot of people to meet and greet, not to mention an essay he still had to write for class the following morning, so we kept it short.

We said goodbye to my parents and went our separate ways. Back at the car, we tore out of our business clothes in record time. Mike traded his dress shirt for a flannel and declared that he needed some redneck exposure to feel normal again.

That night we stayed at Mike's to cut some time off our travel. I joked that I'd shoot down the empty highways at 120mph, but there were a lot of cops out so we kept it to a conservative 80mph instead. It's a shame because I think we could have made it home in three hours ;) The trip home went quickly and uneventfully (except for the part where I narrowly missed hitting a fox on 287, but I don't want to talk about that). It was 3:30am by the time we got home so Mike took the day off on Tuesday.

Not a bad way to start the week!

Round Valley/Island Beach

Mike and I have had an outdoorsy weekend. What else is new?

On Saturday, we didn't get back from the Christmas tree farm until mid afternoon so we didn't have time for a full blown hike. Instead, we went over to Round Valley and wandered up to the first outlook area along a trail Mike hasn't been on in years.

I felt like I was betraying Herbie by going to the reservoir without her. "We're going to come home and she's going to be all 'you guys smell like Round Valley!' and I'm going to feel guilty."

After staring at the unbelievably blue water, we did our usual adventuring thing and wandered straight down the side of the mountain to the Jeep trail, and then the water's edge. It was a blustery day and the temperature was dropping fast as the sun set, but it was a nice walk and I had a good time picking my way along the beach as darkness fell.

Yesterday we drove down to Island Beach to introduce Herbie to the ocean. I get this craving for the beach in winter and it's starting early this year. It turned out to be a very romantic afternoon, especially since we haven't been to the beach since our suicide swim back in August.

The beach was all but deserted. The water was dotted with fishermen and the sand hosted a handful of dog walkers, but our encounters with people were few and far between.

Herbie was thrilled with the new place to play and really seemed to love both the sand and the waves. As always, she was very brave and dove right into the surf despite frigid temperatures.

After walking up the main stretch of beach for an hour or so, Mike and I decided to see how far the park actually goes. We packed the dog back in the car and took a drive. It wasn't long before we reached the end of the road. Once again, we parked and took to the sand on foot, following the beach buggy access trail.

As we wandered up the beach, Mike spotted something over the dunes to our right. Could it be? It was! A lighthouse. I have a thing for lighthouses. And what could be better than a surprise lighthouse??? We decided to see how close we could get. We wound up going almost all the way to the end of the island then took a trail to the right, through the dunes. We arrived at the bay side of the island just in time to watch the best part of the sunset. Unfortunately, the lighthouse was all the way across the water, which I had suspected would be the case (I would KNOW if there was a lighthouse in Island Beach.)

We walked hand in hand back to the car as night seeped across the Atlantic to meet us. Reds and oranges faded to soft lavender hues and it got too dark for pictures. The only people left were the fishermen and they were too busy casting lines to notice us. We smiled and kissed and watched the tide rising then drove back down the island in the dark, stopping at the entrance gate to watch a practically domestic fox cross the street.

It was the perfect day and we want to go back with the truck soon. Herbie was completely tuckered out, which is good since we're ditching her to go to Boston today.

Lessons/Training

Totally forgot to blog about Ozzy's lesson last week! Some days that horse is worth his weight in gold.

Over the years, I've given 'lessons' here and there on Ozzy. He has toted his share of dead beginners (live ones too) and kids, and he's even taught some of my more experienced riding friends a thing or two. However, last week was the first time I charged for a lesson on my own horse.

Ozzy can be both a confidence booster and a challenge. He is also a great judge of character, personality, and ability. If you don't know what you're doing, he'll go out of his way to take care of you, but if you're cocky, he'll knock you down a peg or two. Ozzy makes for a great teacher because he'll ignore you if you don't ask correctly so he doesn't teach riders bad habits early on. I will never teach someone to jump four foot courses or compete in upper level dressage, but when it comes to learning the basics on a horse you can trust, Ozzy's got it.

I landed this client through Carolyn's spay/neuter clinic. A woman dropped her cats off and asked if Carolyn gives lessons. Carolyn called me on the spot and we set up an appointment.

My client, a lovely Polish woman named A, went trail riding with her husband once in upstate New York and decided she really wanted to learn to ride for real. She has no horse experience, but came with a good attitude and the ability to listen to instructions. She brought her mother and daughter, both of whom greeted me in Polish. Everyone seemed at ease when they learned language wouldn't be a barrier for anyone.

We started with a half hour lesson... so she could see if she actually liked riding (and really, how much walking can you do in one day?)

I was immediately impressed with A's ability and willingness to mount from the ground. As soon as she was in the saddle, Ozzy looked at me as if to say, "O, one of these. Got it," and set to work like a pro. I ran A through the basics of riding posture... heels down; hip, shoulder, ankle; how to hold the reins; looking where you're going, etc. She has naturally good posture and I think the leg position will come with muscle memory before she knows it. I did a lot of shouting 'heel down', but didn't have to tell her to 'sit up' a single time. She definitely doesn't feel that 'fetal position' pull that most beginner riders seem to experience.

For the first part of the lesson, Ozzy followed me around the ring like a puppy dog while A worked on getting the feel of his walk. As her steering got better, she was able to get him to turn away from me. He built her confidence by obediently coming to a stop whenever she got insecure or off balance. A's biggest issue was her timid kick. I had to remind her that Ozzy is a thousand pounds and she's not going to hurt him. "Kick him like you mean it," I told her as he moseyed to a stand still by the audience at the fence. As the lesson went on, her leg cue got better and better. By the end of the half hour, A was steering Ozzy around the edge of the ring at a lovely 'marching walk'.

"See how he listens to you now?" I beamed. "Very different from just half an hour ago, huh?"

Inside, I was laughing at my wanna-be crazy, thinks-he's-still-a-super-fit-endurance-steed as he plodded around the ring at a careful walk, pretending to be a dead broke school horse. Each step was measured and planned, and Clumsy Horse of the Century didn't trip once the whole time. He's a dope and I love him.

I finished the lesson on a good note, and I must have done something right because A is coming back this week AND tipped me an extra $10 at the end of the ride.

I have now officially made more money with Ozzy than his old owner did a the track :-P

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Today I went back and rode Fluzy again. Her owner sent a bridle down from Illinois and it fit the filly beautifully. She remembered everything I taught her last time and stood like a rock as I mounted.

We warmed up walking on a loose rein before adding some light contact and 20m circles. We spent today focusing on moving off the inside leg and picking up our shoulder on the turns. Fluzy was my golden girl and did great.

I mixed it up by adding some trot work every so often. All I'm asking for at this point is a relaxed, consistent trot with no pulling. Everything else will come later. She really is a joy to work with.

At one point, Fluzy hesitated in the corner. She's a pacer and I felt her trying to figured out where to put which leg. To discourage her from pacing, I sat deep and pushed her forward. She offered a few strides of canter and I praised the heck out of her. In the next turn, she offered me a beautiful, three beat, relaxed canter. I patted her some more and brought her back to a trot. She definitely doesn't need to be cantering this early in the game, but it's nice to know the option will be there down the line.

I know the owners are looking for a trail horse down the line. I wasn't planning on taking the filly out of the ring until the third ride, but she was being so good today that I figured I might as well. The only 'bad' thing I can say about Fluzy is that she's a little on the lazy side. Because she's so smart, she gets bored easily. The last thing I want to do is sour her in the ring. After a particularly good stretch of trot and some nice bending into the corners, I dismouned and led the filly out of the ring.

While I was out there, I decided to test her mounting brake. I took a noisy bucket, tossed it unceremoniously on the ground beside her, and hopped onto it like a mounting block. Fluzy didn't so much as bat an eye and I swung back onto her, no big deal.

And so we finished our ride outside the ring, casually strolling back to the barn on the buckle. She didn't look at a single thing the whole way back and stood like an angel while I dismounted.

I swear... the next horse I get is going to be a young thing that nobody has screwed up yet!

I think Mike and I were meant to be together.

Hiking the Pine Barrens

Mike brought his 50 Hikes in NJ book down with him this weekend and we decided to knock something new off the list today. Mike has never been to the Pine Barrens so I decided to come up with a hike down there. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough daylight for anything listed in the book, and the shorter hikes were on unmarked trails that I didn't want to risk. The Pine Barrens are vast and easy to get lost in. Definitely not an area you want to mess around in. After much debate, we decided to go down to the pines without much of a plan. The rules were stay on the trail, be back before dark, and don't go too far. We brought knives, a GPS, and the faithful Herbie dog.

I basically made a decision on the way down about location. I've done a few endurance rides out of the BBB Gun Club, down a dirt road behind some cranberry bogs by Brendan T. Byrne State Forest. I remembered the way from memory and we parked by the gun club to keep from getting my car stuck in the deep sand. We started by taking the power line trail up to the 'main road' in the woods. 

We spent a few hours exploring, playing with the dog, and observing the different types of pine and sand. The weather was stunning, especially when you consider it's December already! We broke our 'don't leave the trail' rule when we found a foot bridge had washed away during one of the recent storms. Mike found a log behind a wooden spillway and navigated our way across it. I was thoroughly impressed when the trail continued on the other side. We bushwhacked up a fire trail and wandered down countless side paths off the main dirt road. In the end, we only did about 4 miles, but we made it back to the car before dark and didn't get lost or dead.

Of course, I took a ton of photos.