Famous Last Words

Thursday I had a great lesson on Sky. When we were finished, I was feeling so good, I wanted to keep riding. So I tacked up Bingo, the pony who is dead calm for children but will spook at his own shadow if an adult is on his back. While I was trotting Bingo around the arena, Leslie was having a lesson on Barney, her 20-yr-old thoroughbred.

I wanna ride Bingo!" said Leslie. (Everyone loves Bingo.) Leslie was frustrated with Barney because he was doing beautiful flying lead changes which would have gotten perfect marks for Level 3 dressage, but she was trying to get him to work on the Level 1 test.

"Wanna switch?" I asked.

"Absolutely!"

So when Leslie finished her lesson, I gave her Bingo, and she gave me Barney.

Barney is AWESOME. He stands at 16.3 hands and has the most amazing stride.

"You have to be firm with him," warned Leslie, "or he'll take off with you. He can be a butt."

"I'm not worried about him taking off with me," I said. (Famous Last Words.)

I could tell Barney was excited when I first got on him. Whether it was from just coming out of a lesson or from all the jumps in the arena, I didn't know. (Barney had once been a gold metal jumper. He had also had training under Michael Matz--the guy who trained the famous Barbaro.)

I took Barney into the dressage arena so he wasn't tempted to clear one of the jumps, and we began to canter.

His canter was almost too amazing. It felt like we were flying. I was totally comfortable in the saddle. The only problem was that once we were in that flying canter, I forgot to actually RIDE. I was leaning forward, and so Barney kept going faster. As we approached the edge of the plastic dressage fence, I suddenly realized I had no control what-so-ever. I looked at that little plastic fence and thought, "He's jumping out of this arena."

I prepared myself for exiting the dressage arena, but all of Barney's training must have kicked in at the last minute. He suddenly made a sharp turn to the right. If he had been a car, his tires would have squeeled. I, on the other hand, kept going in the same direction, at which point I "was separated" from Barney. Unfortunately, I landed on my back on that plastic dressage fence. Ouch.

"I should never have written that blog about the Physics of falling off a horse," I said to Janine when we got back to the barn.

"That's the bare basics of physics," said Janine. "If you want to get into real physics, you'd have to calculate the velocity of the horse, your velocity, and the angle at which you were separated."

Definition of acceleration: a = (Vf – Vi)/Δt
*motion equation: Vf2 = Vi2 + 2aΔx
*linear motion equation: Δy = Vyit + ½ ayt2

Hmmm. Okay. Maybe not. I think I'd rather fall of a horse than do anything resembling Janine's homework. Besides, the calculator on my iPhone doesn't have sine and cosine.

"Were you tense at all?" asked Leslie later that evening, when we were chilling out in the break room. "You looked really relaxed."

I laughed. "You mean relaxed as I was flying through the air?"

"Well, yeah. You seemed pretty calm."

I probably had been. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I don't worry about falling off.

"And I can't believe you got back on," Leslie continued.


"Well, it wasn't his fault," I said. "I was leaning forward. He was doing exactly what he thought I wanted him to do. He's a good horse. I can't wait to ride him again."


The next day, my body hurt from head to toe.

When I told Alexis how stiff and sore I was, she had only one thing to say.

"Stay on next time."

Thank you, Alexis. It's good advice. I think I'll take it, along with some Ibuprofen.