More Getting Ready for My Colorado Dude Ranch Holiday

By Arden Foster on April 19th, 2012

The jeans have arrived! Thank you e-bay! They came straight to my front door with no nasty UPS man demanding a small fortune before he would hand them over. The site is http://stores.ebay.co.uk/peachstatewholesale, and the Q-Baby Ultimate riding jeans were $27.99. The tag said $59.99. The postage was $19.25, but I paid more than that last time only to be hit again on the doorstep for another $30.00, so it was a much cheaper experience this time. Now I am all set on the jeans front. Long sleeved shirts are a must too, but I have two lovely ones that I bought at RTR on previous visits, so I may just add to my collection when I get there. It will be interesting to see the Wranglers’ shirts this season, they always have an official shirt, although there was some dispute as to whether the 2010 shirt was red or pink……………….

Talking about packing and the list I gave on the first blog entry, my Colorado connection (the one who thinks Wrangler jeans are naff) has reprimanded me for failing to include BYO wine and pre-dinner nuts to consume on your balcony! I agree that a nice glass of wine on the balcony doesn’t go amiss, but with all the delicious food provided I don’t think I could eat anything else. I had to try really hard to ignore the home-baked cookies supplied at ‘Trails End’ last year as it was!! Of course, if you are as skinny as my Colorado connection those kind of problems probably don’t come your way!

Incidentally, I am typing this very slowly as I have my right wrist in a splint, having broken it falling off my bike the same day that I wrote my last entry! Dangerous things bikes. Stick to horses is my advice. The last time I broke anything was falling off a horse box, when I was 12. Yes, a horse box, not a horse! I was standing at the top of the ramp trying to see if it was nearly time for me to jump (we were at a gymkhana), when my feet slipped from under me (it was wet, it was an English summer) and I fell from the top onto the ground on my back like a stranded beetle. It hurt like hell. A little old man in jodhpurs and a waistcoat said I had dislocated my shoulder and he would put it back into place. I declined! My dad was sent for. I don’t know how, as this was long before the advent of mobile phones and we were in a field in the middle of nowhere, but he arrived somehow and carted me off to the hospital, where we sat in Accident and Emergency for 5 hours! When I eventually got to x-ray and the radiologist said I’d broken my collar-bone, my reply was ‘Thank god for that, if my Dad had sat here all the time and there was nothing wrong I’d be in trouble’!!! Actually, he probably wouldn’t have been  angry at all, after all he did get up at ungodly hours in the morning to take me and my sister a mile and a half up the road to  where our ponies were stabled so we could muck out and turn them out before catching the bus to school. And he did that for YEARS, and he knew nothing about horses and he could never ride one as he had a steel plate in his leg from a motor bike accident and that leg didn’t bend (remember what I said about steering clear of bikes!), so he only did it because he was my Dad. My Mum knew nothing about horses either, and she refused to learn. She insisted on calling girths ‘belly bands’ and made a fuss about them clanking around in the washing machine and filling the door seal up with hairs! She called hounds ‘dogs’ and grey horses ‘white’. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO embarrassing in public! Yet I realise now that she went out to work 5 days a week to pay for those ponies and their ‘belly bands’. Those of us blessed with a happy childhood have a tremendous amount for which to be grateful. And those of us who grew up with horses in our childhood were doubly blessed. When I visit RTR I feel like that 12 year old again.

I’m looking forward to seeing some photos of the RTR horses  in their winter pasture so I can daydream a little more about my cowboy home from home.

 

The jeans have arrived! Thank you e-bay! They came straight to my front door with no nasty UPS man demanding a small fortune before he would hand them over. The site is http://stores.ebay.co.uk/peachstatewholesale, and the Q-Baby Ultimate riding jeans were $27.99. The tag said $59.99. The postage was $19.25, but I paid more than that last time only to be hit again on the doorstep for another $30.00, so it was a much cheaper experience this time. Now I am all set on the jeans front. Long sleeved shirts are a must too, but I have two lovely ones that I bought at RTR on previous visits, so I may just add to my collection when I get there. It will be interesting to see the Wranglers’ shirts this season, they always have an official shirt, although there was some dispute as to whether the 2010 shirt was red or pink……………….

Talking about packing and the list I gave on the first blog entry, my Colorado connection (the one who thinks Wrangler jeans are naff) has reprimanded me for failing to include BYO wine and pre-dinner nuts to consume on your balcony! I agree that a nice glass of wine on the balcony doesn’t go amiss, but with all the delicious food provided I don’t think I could eat anything else. I had to try really hard to ignore the home-baked cookies supplied at ‘Trails End’ last year as it was!! Of course, if you are as skinny as my Colorado connection those kind of problems probably don’t come your way!

Incidentally, I am typing this very slowly as I have my right wrist in a splint, having broken it falling off my bike the same day that I wrote my last entry! Dangerous things bikes. Stick to horses is my advice. The last time I broke anything was falling off a horse box, when I was 12. Yes, a horse box, not a horse! I was standing at the top of the ramp trying to see if it was nearly time for me to jump (we were at a gymkhana), when my feet slipped from under me (it was wet, it was an English summer) and I fell from the top onto the ground on my back like a stranded beetle. It hurt like hell. A little old man in jodhpurs and a waistcoat said I had dislocated my shoulder and he would put it back into place. I declined! My dad was sent for. I don’t know how, as this was long before the advent of mobile phones and we were in a field in the middle of nowhere, but he arrived somehow and carted me off to the hospital, where we sat in Accident and Emergency for 5 hours! When I eventually got to x-ray and the radiologist said I’d broken my collar-bone, my reply was ‘Thank god for that, if my Dad had sat here all the time and there was nothing wrong I’d be in trouble’!!! Actually, he probably wouldn’t have been  angry at all, after all he did get up at ungodly hours in the morning to take me and my sister a mile and a half up the road to  where our ponies were stabled so we could muck out and turn them out before catching the bus to school. And he did that for YEARS, and he knew nothing about horses and he could never ride one as he had a steel plate in his leg from a motor bike accident and that leg didn’t bend (remember what I said about steering clear of bikes!), so he only did it because he was my Dad. My Mum knew nothing about horses either, and she refused to learn. She insisted on calling girths ‘belly bands’ and made a fuss about them clanking around in the washing machine and filling the door seal up with hairs! She called hounds ‘dogs’ and grey horses ‘white’. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO embarrassing in public! Yet I realise now that she went out to work 5 days a week to pay for those ponies and their ‘belly bands’. Those of us blessed with a happy childhood have a tremendous amount for which to be grateful. And those of us who grew up with horses in our childhood were doubly blessed. When I visit RTR I feel like that 12 year old again.

I’m looking forward to seeing some photos of the RTR horses  in their winter pasture so I can daydream a little more about my cowboy home from home.