Hit the Dirt

I've been working on my bio take-home all day and there was a dinner for graduating seniors in the biology major at Cascarelli's, so I invited Halley to go with me and she asked if I wanted to go with her to the barn afterwards and ride her horse Raleigh. I said why yes, yes of course I'd love to. So we gathered up our riding clothes, went to relli's and got a free pizza. So we headed out to the barn and changed into our riding attire, Halley tacked up Raleigh and we headed into the arena. After about 20 minutes or so Halley decided he was getting tired so I should get on. It was great, he was really controlled and easy to ride, the gait changes were awesome and his canter was really nice. So I changed directions and picked up a canter going the other direction...only he picked up the wrong lead (wrong foot in front for the direction we were going) and he got confused, flustered, I don't know. Just to fill you in Raleigh is an ex-racehorse. So he takes off full gallop and I thought at first we were just going to go through the fence to the other side of the arena, but then he changed direction so we were headed for the viewing gallery that has no windows. My last thought before bailing off was "I'm going to be the first one to go through the viewing gallery." But I didn't, I landed, flat on my back against the wall (I didn't hit it) and Raleigh took off to the other side of the arena. I got a lot of dirt in my pants and a scrape on my back, but I came up laughing and I would've gotten back on, but Halley decided she would make him work a little longer. I would like to thank Don from Aerial for forcing me to learn how to fall, it has come in handy :-)

I really wanted to end my college career with a bang. Though I may still have a chance to fall into the viewing gallery on Tuesday for my last riding lesson.