I'm Not a Jumper

And, That Doesn't Keep Me from Jumping

Saddling up early Tuesday.

If you wait until you are good at something before you try it, You'll never get good at it.  On the Memorial Day Weekend adventure to the Bar SZ we were able to do a LOT of trail riding.  We arranged to stay an extra day and rode Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.

The Bar SZ is 660 acres and trails run throughout the place.  We explored the foothills and along the San Benito riverbed.  Tim and Michelle the ranch managers are Downunder Horsemanship fans and they set up interesting trail challenges on just about every trail.  It's so cool.  You'll be riding along and see a mailbox or square to turn circles.  There was a tire with poles in a star wheel.

In the area they designate "The Willows"  there are jumps and tires and trees to ride around.  There are logs to backup through.  In one area there are three big tree trunks lying on their side.  I wanted to see if I could jump them.  

Jessie and I walked over them first to insure the ground, take off and landing, was safe.  Then we revved up the engines and took off.  This was our first attempt.

It looks horrible, but it FELT huge! (Except for that last one.  That just hurt).  We tried it in the other direction (no video) and it wasn't noticeably better.  

Tuesday morning before our ride, I set up some small jumps in the covered arena.  Ranae and I were in there practicing when we see Michelle Borland, one of the ranch managers, come running up to us.  Michelle is a Level IV certified CHA instructor and has loads of experience in hunter/jumper.  She gave us a few pointers and mainly helped us to not hang on our horses' mouth.

We worked on it for about 20 minutes, then headed off on our trail ride.  I would like to report that our jumping was much improved as we glided from jump to jump.  Evidently, this stuff takes a lot of practice ;)