Thursday, February 21, 2008

Please to donning the bad idea jeans

Off the top of my head, there are about three brazilian reasons not to go beyond the usual "four gaits and maybe a little jumping" rides I've been doing for the last few years. After all, I have yet to fall off, sustain serious injury, or damage any horse during the course of those trips. The smart money says that keeping that record is the way to go. If I got to feeling bored, I could switch it up by taking out an Icelandic pony and learning the tolt, making it five gaits and maybe a little jumping.

But certain things run in the blood. Il Padre boasts a bit of Georgian and Cossack heritage, and his father kept a brace of Orlov trotters back in the motherland; La Mère, although the child of generally peaceful Anglo-Saxon farmers, lusts for edged weapons (I got her a knife in Junín and she almost wept), practices tai chi sword for hours at a go, and once spent a weekend studying kyudo. Mix those chromosomes and perhaps it's no surprise that you end up with someone who thinks that spending a vacation learning horseback archery in New Zealand from a Magyar bowmaker would be the ne plus ultra in the history of esoteric leisure-time baddassery.

I mean, the hell with always having the last word; I could learn to always have the Parthian shot.

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