I’ve established I don’t really make resolutions (“inebriated declarations of good intent”), and that no season plan ever survives first contact with reality, so to date, I’ve never done any kind of formal resolution/plan/goal type of blog post.

Since I’m really hoping 2016 will be a different year, I figured I would try something different on the blog.

Not resolutions, and not daring to type into existence any sort of “plan” (hmmm, notice that “plan” is a four-letter word? coincidence?) but rather some goals and things I’d like for 2016…some specific, some more nebulous.

• Learn to properly ride a sitting trot.
  • If I can learn to properly sit Mimi’s jackhammer trot, I can probably sit any horse’s trot. I have tight hips and a lazy core, so “sitting trot” = “bounce like a stiff board” and the “posed and pretty” equitation that I grew up on tended to result in more of the “mannequin on a horse” look than actual effective riding.
• Get to at least one endurance ride.
• Finish (and not overtime) at least one endurance ride.
• Further my hoof trimming education.
• Do a better job of tracking training rides/mileage. (To whit, I’m getting one of these based on thoughts and recommendations from Mel…and with the thought/hope of having more to record this year.)

As far as “things on the calendar” go:

• I actually have three ride entries sent in, one being for the Tahoe Rim ride in August up in Nevada. It’s a lottery-drawing entry with very limited numbers (super-small basecamp), and your entry is basically for a rig spot — so if you have a three-horse rig, you can bring two more people with you.

  A small group of us all collaborated on sending entries in to increase our chances of at least one of us getting drawn. I had jokingly said “It would be kind of ironic if my entry got drawn, since I would be borrowing both rig and horse to do this ride”…and I got drawn. Ah, irony.

  So I have the entry spot, and Lucy has the rig and pone (I get to ride Roo! I’ve ridden him probably half a dozen times now, but not at a ride, so I’m really looking forward to it!), and the ride falls on my birthday weekend, so it’ll be happy birthday to me.

• AERC Convention in Reno in February, where I will once again be working the Renegade Hoof Boots booth. This year, the convention in being run in conjunction with the NATRC convention, so it should have some good attendance.

• Tevis (crewing) is a given.

And aside from that, I’m taking a “just go with it” approach to the year, and hoping the gremlins go use someone else as a chew toy.