The weekend before Father's Day, Dodie hosted a NACMO ride at Green Lane. Of course, I was in! This NACMO ride also featured camping, which I was extra excited about. It turned out to be a stellar weekend. Highlights included dunking the ponies in the reservoir, riding bareback at night with fireflies lighting the way, and doing the long course with friends.
| Truly my happy place. Lucy was also very content, and was giving a series of happy grunts. |
As I've mentioned a few times in my last several posts, Sandy and Emily hosted their first NACMO ride at Deer Path Park in April. I first heard about the plan as it was hatching back in February at Dodie's ride. I was very excited to have a ride super local to us, and I joked about having a home field advantage because I know the trails. I planned to take Lucy and do the long course. We went, we saw, we conquered. It was a good day.
| I have gotten really into this sport in the last year. |
One of the perks of my corporate job is that I get a good amount of PTO. The downside is that I'm really bad at taking it.
Part of the problem is that I'm a workaholic. I don't say that as a brag. It really is a problem. One of the factors is that I work a lot of (voluntary) overtime and I lose money in my paycheck if I take PTO during a pay period. As a result, I won't take a day just for the sake of taking a day. I would rather work and make more money than sit in the corner and stare at the wall. A con of working from home is that there is no real separation between work life and personal life. With my personality, I struggle to turn it off.
Other limiting factors include the horses and the dog. I would not trade any of the critters for anything, but it's tough to schedule vacations and long getaways when there are seven horses and a terminal dog to consider.
This year in particular, things got a bit wild at work. Despite doing a bunch of rides and taking a mini vacation in the fall, I had nine PTO days left. I can only roll five over into the new year. For as much as I'm a work addict with no off switch, I absolutely will not throw away a PTO day. I scheduled the remaining four that I had to "use or lose" and started reaching out to friends.
I took one day for Lucy's solo field trip.
I had the following Friday off as well. As luck would have it, Julie and Tor (who I introduced to each other at the FLSS pace) were available! They were already planning to ride, and I sort of invited myself. We decided to meet at Christie Hoffman Park for a low key day of hopping some fences.
| Julie and Amira over a monster log. |