Hard to believe a week ago I was out in short sleeves, minding my own business, kind of digging that unseasonable warm spell. But Indiana has found her wintry self as evidenced by ice frozen on the inside of my kitchen window. When it takes a wood stove & the furnace to make it comfortable wearing my flannel shirt...it's cold. Only the dog seems to have good sense. She lies splattered out on the floor in front of the wood stove snoozing, while "we" carry in armloads of firewood, chip out frozen manure, and drag water buckets out to the horse trough. It is not easy on old arthritic bodies. Yes, Bella Boopster (the jack-rat) has it right.
I find I'm on a Green Bean Endurance team, Appy Inc., for 2016. Hoping I can do this one a better job than last year! My team this year consists of three (on the vine) beans, myself and another (picked) bean. My strategy this year was to align a few Appaloosa horses (one has completed Tevis), a Morgan, and a Thoroughbred. Not a full Arab in the bunch, so it should be interesting! I'm one of the more "experienced" riders in this year's team, and that in itself is kind of funny ☺ What do I have...maybe 425 completion miles? One of my Appy cohorts has quite a few more, maybe she, can lead me. At least I have the winter months to look forward to doing a few rides.
Green Bean Endurance will in fact have more riders this year than last. We have several TEAMS that have zero combined miles, so it will be a fun to watch the growth in the new riders (the best part). We changed / simplified the TEAM format for 2016, and I created an Individual rider platform that should be a lot of fun for those riders (but might be a little challenging for me...in the scoring). Let's call it a social experiment. Sadly, I've not managed to motivate myself enough to renew my AERC membership. But at some point in this venture, I will be required to do it. I ran a query in our spreadsheet data yesterday and found thirty riders in want of mentoring. THIRTY!!! That is the kind of growth we are having. I referred them in the right direction, and touched base with a friendly senior AERC member who has shown good will toward our broader Green Bean group. The regional mentors lists are in our new members inboxes in hopes of them finding a match up. The other side of Green Bean is a lot of planning going on. We first need to see how this year goes with the changes, and work out between the two principles (myself and another) our vision for the future. We shall see!
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