Sunday, August 15, 2010

Ride management stress

I'm sitting here with my morning cup of coffee contemplating my day.  I'm skipping church today so that I can finally sit down and work on all my tshirts for my upcoming TTC ride and Maggie is going to help me sew some prizes. She is very enthusiastic about helping, so we'll be heading out to Joann's once they open at noon.  We had planned an early morning ride, but it's just too hot. I'm hearing that it may be the hottest day of the year.

This ride has seemed so far away for so long.  Now it's right here in my face and even though I have done quite a bit of planning and doing ahead I suddenly feel like I have way too much to accomplish in way too little time.

We rode at Six O yesterday, the site of my ride. I rode the trail I wanted to use and figured out many of the obstacles. I also discovered that the trail looks very different backwards and that the markers are only one one side of the trees. So I'm going to go back in a week to double check my trail and ride it the right direction. I may even see if Kim will let me put up a few markers. I was so irritated with myself b/c I left out part of the deer plot and since I was trying to check mileage I didn't want to go back and do it again, lest it mess up my calculations.  In the end, between 2 GPS's and a phone GPS, I came up with 9.1 miles of trail, and that was with leaving out part of what I meant to ride.  So, a week from Monday Maggie and I will go back and ride the trail the right direction to make sure I get everything in I want and double check the mileage again. 

I picked out some great obstacles and then realized that some of them may not be as accessible to the drivers as necessary.  I'm wondering if my judges  can ride horses to their judges places or if that would even be fun for anyone?  Just thinking out loud. More likely I will find some places to do the same obstacles in better locations.

I used the GPS on my phone to make a track of the trail that was surprisingly accurate. It was supposed to email to me, but that function didn't work so well. However, I have discovered that i can upload it to www.everytrail.com and share it on facebook.  I love the topographical feature, but I don't love that all the little squiggles from the from the deer plot don't show up in great detail.  

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