As
many of you know, my family moved to Austin, Texas this January (from
Brookline, Massachusetts). I went down to visit them this week, as did my
grandmother from Boca Raton (Florida), and they decided to show me real Texan
things. We ate a lot of barbecue, watched a University of Texas Volleyball
game, and we also did the manliest, most Texan thing of all: we went horseback
riding.
The
last time I had been horseback riding was in 1999, so I wasn’t really sure what
to think about this expedition. I’ve lived a good life without riding horses,
and I wasn’t particularly interested in changing that. I’m not opposed to the
idea of horseback riding; I’m pretty indifferent. But, I also wanted to do cool
Texan things, and I kind of wanted to see what had happened. Although they’ve
adapted to Texas pretty well, my family (myself included) is still a bunch of
city slickers who can’t tell one end of a horse from the other. I thought this
had the potential to be a very interesting day. We all got in the minivan (a teal
Honda, very manly and Texan) and drove off to some ranch where there were
people waiting for us with a trailer and horses surrounding it.
So
first off, they had a horse that was big enough for me. This was a pleasant
surprise. I mean, I’m huge (6’10”, for those unaware). Fortunately, the horse
was huge too. The other thing I noticed was that riding a horse is really
uncomfortable. They tell you to sit up straight, which is honestly borderline
painful. I managed to kind of slump down in the saddle and find a pose that
sort of worked, but I realized something. All the horsemen throughout
history—the Mongols, knights, cowboys, etc—they all had asses of steel, a
quality mine lacked.
Riding
a horse is different from riding a bicycle or driving a car. The controls
aren’t as tight. It seems that way at first, when they teach you how to pull on
the reins to steer, or pull back to stop, but you’re still on an animal, not a
machine, who will only usually do what you say. My horse didn’t really want to
stop at times, because he wanted to keep up with all of his horse friends. I
was told this was normal, and to just kind of roll with it.
So,
there I was, rolling with it. We rode around the ranch, going up and down
slight hills and through shallow streams. We took our picture next to cows and
tried desperately to get the dog to stop barking at bulls. It was a good time.
I had come to two conclusions. The first was that horseback riding was pretty
fun. It’s not something I would go out of my way to do weekly, but I enjoyed
myself. The second conclusion was that I was good at it. I had to be corrected
much less than the other members of my family; this obviously meant I was a
prodigy. I was a badass cowboy. I was The Man With No Name. I had mastered
riding my horse, and I was ready to start shooting people who laughed at my
mule.
He don’t like people laughing at
him, you see
The
problem is, I was not actually The Man With No Name. I had a name. My name is
Sam Notelovitz, and I am not, in fact, a badass cowboy. Near the end, one of
our instructors decided to go a different route. Unfortunately for me, my horse
was best friends with the instructor’s horse, and he was not about to get
separated from his best friend, not while he was forced to carry some big,
heavy city slicker with delusions of grandeur. He decided it would be in his
best interests to turn around, leave the group, and follow his best friends,
and he ignored my attempts to suggest otherwise.
Being
abducted by your horse is not a pleasant feeling. You realize very quickly that
you can’t get off and walk back, because it’s a long way and also you probably
can’t dismount a moving horse. You can’t tell the horse what to do, because if
he gets mad he might be forced to take drastic measures. You kind of just have
to sit there on your horse and hope that something good happens. Sure, a
trained horse… rider… would probably be able to manage something, but those words
do not describe me very well.
My
horse caught up to his friend. The instructor looked surprised that I had
followed her, then kind of laughed it off. She told me that my horse didn’t
want to be separated from his friend. This was sweet and all, but I still got
abducted by my horse.
I
suppose that’s the most interesting part of the story. After that we rode our
horses back to camp, dismounted, and eventually went home, everyone sore but
not talking about it. All in all, a fun time.
