It's a Small (Gloomy) World

Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day. Like a Monday maybe? How about Monday all day, Tuesday and Thursday mornings and Sundays after seven? I think that is more than fair, don't you? Following a top ten day (Tuesday) which I didn’t ride, we had a not so nice day on Wednesday. Thursday was supposed to be morning showers, but they continued All.Day.Long. I am reminded of the song from Hee Haw and yes, I am dating myself…

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

That’s how this weather makes me feel.

Mindee, over at Our Front Door, mentioned she was all out of ideas for something to blog about. I felt the same way. Having a theme related blog, horses that is, I need to do something horsey or be around horses to get inspired to write. The pictures in the pasture just don't cut it. In the comments of Mindee's blog, someone said “life always gives you something to blog about....eventually.” That’s true, because it did.

On Wednesday, our Platte River Ride was iffy at best. The Big Fat Lying Weatherman was predicting an eighty percent chance of thunderstorms late Wednesday afternoon. Not 20%, not 30%, but 80%! I don’t know what the rest of you think, but those are some damn good odds for poor weather. So as much as I wanted to ride, I really didn’t want to drive 35 miles and be rained out in the first 35 minutes of the ride. I shot an email out to the group asking who DID plan to ride & no one replied. So late in the day, I decided I was not going to go. Bad enough riding in the rain, even worse, riding alone.

I had an email earlier from someone on Facebook that was familiar with our rides and planned to attend this one. For some reason, I thought she, Jennifer, had ridden with the north group. She asked me to contact her if the ride was canceled, so I texted her and told her I was not riding. When I was driving home, Jennifer called me. She thought she would go ahead and head over there anyway. I was surprised that she was here. I told her maybe we could hook up another time if she wanted to come down this way again. She said that probably wouldn't happen as she was passing through from Minnesota on the way to Colorado! She was NOT with the north Platte River Riders! Boy, had I messed that one up and how could I not go riding if we were having a guest that was not just from another chapter of our group, but from another state entirely!

I got home shortly after I hung up the phone and checked the radar one more time as the skies certainly didn’t look like 80% chance of storms. Nope. The forecast had changed. It was now just a 20% chance. (How can it change in 30 minutes, I ask???) So I quickly hooked up the trailer and hit the ball on the trailer on the first attempt. Drove down the road near the pasture and Windy came right up to me & put her head in the halter. Things were looking so good now that when I stopped in Valparaiso to fuel up, I also bought a lottery ticket.

I met Jennifer and five other riders at Oak Glen. Although still cloudy though the winds had died down, it was definitely sweatshirt weather! Visiting with Jennifer, I learned she was traveling across three states to visit her dad in Colorado. She was traveling with two horses so they could go riding during their visit. She had carefully mapped places to stay along the way and had learned of our group on Facebook and thought it was a great opportunity to ride with our group and see some of Nebraska along the way.

I have to admint, I was a tad bit jealous of her wanderlust, having been on overload lately with the boys’ last days of school, and couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to load up and haul out – what would be my version of “Calgon, take me away!”

And to further illustrate that it truly is a small world, Jennifer hails from the same area that one of our rider’s visits in Minnesota and sure enough, they knew a lot of the same folk. It was like old home week for them! Simply amazing. And no, we didn’t get rained on. It didn’t even sprinkle. Nor did my powerball numbers come in.