My marriage to an American free spirit ended fairly amicably in 2003. This post has been edited to respect her privacy - hence reference to "friends".  | Struggling for air at 12,900ft! in the Rockies |
Things got off to a hectic start this late spring when I got promoted to Production Manager - running the entire plant. Our previous Production Manager quit for another job and I guess I was the most suitable candidate around. I also had been saying some things about how our production could be better so I was asked to put my money where my mouth was.
The workforce morale was not at its highest, our boat deliveries were running late and taking too long to build so it took a bit of sorting but we are now delivering boats on time and in budget and the workforce smiles - most days. I let go a whole layer of middle management who (in my view) simply slowed down communications and didn't manage the staff well. I also passed responsibility for a lot of our day to day decisions down to the staff on the shop floor. The result has been a hectic time for me and a 35% measurable improvement in productivity. Good for the profit sharing.
Sisters Ann, Gail and never before seen 11 month old niece Carys came over in April and stayed for a few days. We didn't exactly charge around town but it was fun to see them though Carys never did figure out the time difference and woke in the middle of the night assuming it was morning UK time every day. We also decided that we really had to become a two car family as it was taking too much of our time running around for each other with just one while supposedly saving money. I spent every spare minute checking out car lots and dealers and after a determined look around found an Audi 4000 (the 2 wheel version of the Audi Quattro) for $1,000 - sold as seen - no warranty. All the missing bits of furniture turned out to be in the boot and although the mileage was highish it is a German built car with the potential for 200,000 miles with care. A good clean, service, new exhaust (you can buy the parts in the US much easier than in the UK and fit yourself) and fix of all the simple things like electric sunroof, windows etc and we have a respectable runabout that is better than the usual "island" car. So named because as soon as an island car leaves the island it disintegrates - never to run again. Not so with this beast.
With my wife very busy with her job someone had to exercise our increasingly energetic horse - Cuervo. Despite putting him into training he was getting to be quite a handful when the thought occurred to him (erratically and unpredictably) and when he bolted one day I decided to bail using the emergency dismount that I had practised - preferably before he tried to make the turn on the stony road by the stone wall. I made the dismount but put my hand out as I stumbled. Visions of a broken collar bone flashed before my eyes but fortunately I bounced with a sprained wrist. Just as well I had finished sorting the car out a few days before hand.
Three days later on getting it checked out I discovered I had actually broken my wrist and 10 weeks in a cast ensued - boring in the heat of summer. The bone broken was the navicular bone which doesn't heal too well but fortunately as of a couple of weeks ago had remade "75% of the bone with a full recovery indicated". The doc had said to carry on living a "normal life" so I carried on riding and working while learning to write and sketch with my right hand. My proficiency grew and when my cast came off it took a few days before I reverted to writing with my left hand again - amazing what you can do when you have to. Cuervo was temporarily banished to another barn and we rode other horses in the interim. I also made a start on a long held ambition - to learn to fly a light aircraft. This was OK but my cast kept getting in the way when trying to fly so it was suggested I give it a rest till it came off. I hope to start again in a couple of weeks - the left hand is not yet back to full power (muscle wastage was incredible) though I have recovered full mobility. I am also under a "no power work" ban from the Doc till the end of Sept.  | Cessna 152 - my first flight plane |
The first flight was fun. They don't mess around. 20 mins in the classroom proving, in theory, that it will fly. 60 mins walking round the plane checking every single nut, bolt, split pin, fuel tank, contents, paperwork etc. Then you are sat straight in the pilot seat and the instructor deals with the radio and gets you to taxi out, take off, fly around and land - about another 30 mins. The instructor follows you on a set of dual controls while sitting in the passenger seat. The aim is clearly instant gratification and you get that! It is very similar to the computer simulations I've flown and I think it helped - at least in terms of orientation and knowing what was going on. I flew about 50% of the first flight without intervention from the instructor and his comment was - "not bad". Of course it was a perfect day with ideal weather, a carefully managed teaching scenario etc but it was FUN. It is also relatively cheap. At least one fifth of the cost of doing it in the UK. So as and when funds (and horseback riding!) permit I will stumble on towards my Private Pilots' Licence.
By summer end we were both pretty fried with work. We'd managed to find time to book a vacation at a guest ranch in the west but with one week to go before we left North West airlines announced that their possible pilot strike might start the morning we turned up at the airport to fly. Not a satisfactory situation and although, with 2 days to go, North West announced they would rebook the tickets with other airlines - getting them to actually do so was hard work. Three hours of gruelling phone calls later we thought we had a booking - but we were only really going to find out when we got to Boston airport at 5.00 in the morning
All was well and we blasted off to the west and a vacation. Landing at Denver (Colorado - my 21st US state visited in 3 years) we hired a car and drove north through the Rocky Mountain National Park and over the highest road in the US - 12,900ft. The car struggled and gasped for air and was significantly underpowered by the time we got to the top. However - apart from everyone else stopping to look, the view was tremendous and the humidity virtually nil compared to Rhode Island. We didn't catch on yet because it seemed that in the 30C heat (80's F) we didn't actually sweat. In fact the air was so dry that sweat vanished instantly and we learned our first lesson in "keep drinking water".  | The Rocky Mountains |
We drove on through some outrageously good scenery arriving at our ranch just in time to nearly miss dinner (but they kept it for us because we called ahead)
We then fell in with a great crowd. Another couple who rode seriously and a family who hadn't ridden before but were determined to try. On the first day we were given horses and tack based on the experience we had written on our applications. We set out for a short ride to get everyone settled in. 10ft outside the corral we ran into a few cattle who "seem to have strayed into the horse pasture". Within seconds the wranglers had us rounding them up and driving them up into the field they should have been in. Clearly they figured enough of us knew enough about riding to make it work but we all fell about laughing at the plaintive cries from the family at the back "you DO KNOW we have never been on horses before…..?" They saw the funny side too.  | |
That afternoon we tinkered with saddles and tack, A friend changed horses for one that was "more interesting" and we went on our first trail ride.
It was quite staggering what the horses would do. No ground was too rough and they would honestly and competently tackle anything you asked of them. All at 8-9,000 ft. Our horses back east would have a fit if asked to work this hard. Turned out at night with just the grass to eat and a small handful of grain every second evening these guys were great. But they were also a herd of 30 and you had to be careful about the pecking order and boss horses. Cross behind the wrong horse unexpectedly and trained though they were a hoof could lash out or a horse could start unexpectedly. We broke quite a lot of gear in the corral when horses jumped and simply destroyed whatever they were tied up to or tied up with so they could break free. But they were never dangerous to people. It was only dangerous if you stood in the wrong place when they were sorting out their pecking order.  | Jan, Ellie (our wrangler that day), Jeff, Ori and Graeme
Riding - Boots, Brush, Chocolate, Bars, Surefoot |
The beginner family split off and got a different wrangler who taught them a bit more about riding. We (the "Advanced Group") went on a series of hair-raising mountain climbs, trail rides and pasture gallops. Charging across a meadow or wild grassland was simply a blast - you just had to watch for horse ankle breaking gopher holes in the ground and ditches hidden in the long grass. The holes we dealt with by not galloping where the wranglers knew there were problems. The ditches - the horses simply jumped at less than a horse length notice at the full gallop. No problem. We did occasionally hit holes unexpectedly and then the horses were amazing. One canter my horses' gait simply went all over the place - though the speed never slacked off. Then I realised he had seen holes and was avoiding them. Pam's horse put its leg down a hole at the gallop one day and simply changed lead in mid air. Suddenly putting down it's up moving foot and pulling its down moving foot up out the hole. Lest I give the impression we galloped everywhere - we did not. Spending 6-8hr a day in the saddle meant that you walked most places so the horse would last the week. Lunches taken with us or we went back to the ranch for them. Dinner was back at the ranch or cooked on the trail at a campfire, riding home in the sunset. Food was thoroughly solid, better than average family cooking served at a large family table with a picture view over the ranch.  | Pause for a rest |
In the evenings there were various activities (if you were awake enough to deal with them!). We went into Saratoga to the hot springs where we all broiled ourselves in 35C (104F) water for a bit - it certainly eased the aches and pains. We then went on a bar crawl - bit hard to do in Saratoga - it's pretty small. One bar was shut as it was midweek - there is only really any action on a Friday and Saturday when folks come into town. One had a truly awful singer and looked just like a cowboy bar in a movie - lots of mean looking folks hunched over tables, the bar and the pool table - only these were real people - friendly enough but I think they looked mean because the singer was so bad. We finished in the hotel - left over from the 1860's and also looking like it could do service on a movie set. It was deserted - it was Wednesday night. Other nights we stayed home - learned to rope, practised branding on wood (the cattle were all branded in the spring) or on our chaps for a memento, played team trivial pursuits, read or drank a couple of beers and chatted. You brought your own beer and the staff were ever circumspect and drank Cokes.
Monday night we were given a very serious talk by the rancher Gib about approved methods of herding cows. "This is not City Slickers!" (the movie). The rancher earns money by putting beef on the cattle for the stockbrocker who actually owns the cattle and running them or stressing them with inappropriate moves takes 1% of their body weight off per hour. On a good year the rancher would break even and still own his ranch. The profit came from growing hay for winter fodder and from us - the guests(!). So all cattle moves are at the walk and moving 800 cattle from one pasture to another can take the best part of a day. The cattle are moved to fresh grass every two to three days and we carried out two full blown moves as well as a few stray round ups while we were there. When we started working cattle we really were riding. The horses went into "work mode". They knew what they were doing and were good at it. For those of us who had ridden before the horse simply became an extension of you and did what you needed with no prompting - you just "thought" what you wanted to do and the horse would do it.  | Billy the wrangler (and cook!)
leads us down across the river to round up 800 cattle |
Dispatched to prevent a break back of cattle from the main herd back down a river gully I simply rode over the edge of a 20ft drop into the river. The horse didn't bat an eyelid. He tucked his hind legs up, extended his forelegs and slid down the bank into the river without really turning a hair (he pinned his ears back for a moment though!). In theory we had to stay in sight of the wrangler and we were always told to let the cattle go rather than get broken off or stress them. However the terrain meant that you often couldn't see the controlling wrangler and when it got really rugged you couldn't always see the person next to you to pass the word along. During one move two of the guests who could ride well got separated along with around 60 cattle of their own. Initially it wasn't apparent but when they figured it out they just got on with it and drove the cattle into the pasture themselves by another gate. The wranglers gave us a lot of leeway as we could clearly ride. It was fun talking to them about the weeks when everyone is a rookie (or as they call us - greenie). They had some funny stories.  | Graeme on Surefoot (for Mum!) |
The wildlife was amazing - large jack rabbits, racoons, coyotes, small non-poisonous snakes (too high an altitude for poison - apparently), four varieties of trout in the stream (a lot of folks come to the ranch to fly fish), chipmunks, gophers, woodchucks, skunk and mule eared deer. The dogs came on every ride with us and spent all their time rooting out wildlife which we would see charging off over the horizon - dogs in pursuit. They often caught rabbits which they ate. The chipmunks would dive into cracks in the rocks or get into the middle of a prickly bush and stand there - in full view with four dog noses full of prickles pointed at it. After a while the dogs would get bored and leave it alone - though they hated to do so. On a forest trail we had a near thing with a deer one day. We were trotting down a trail when a deer exploded out of the trees about a horse length in front of the lead wrangler and pursued by the dogs. It crossed the trail - flat out - and was out of sight before you knew it but if it had hit the horse or wrangler things might have been grizzly.
Last day - and just for fun we had a "Dudeo" - A fun rodeo. Riding in the corral with egg and spoons - riding a slalom course against the clock and riding in pairs doing tricks. The finale was barrel racing - on a slightly smaller than standard course around oil drums set in the corral. We in the "advanced group" took it pretty seriously and had a lot of fun - putting in some quite respectable times considering we'd never done it before and the horses are really working horses - not barrel racing horses.
Last night was a barn dance - set upstairs in the real barn where a floor, some benches and a sound system had us all learning to line dance - courtesy of our wranglers - again.  | Socks |
We left the ranch and carried on driving west and south into Utah to see the geological formations in the Badlands. As we drove south out of the Flaming Gorge reservation area it was amazing to see the layers of geology. The road was signposted to let you know which era you were driving through and what lived there in pre-history. Dinosaurs, extinction of dinosaurs, formation of coal, humanoids appeared etc. Fascinating. Unfortunately we got a bit overextended and had a 350 mile push back east overnight to catch our flight home from Denver. We had planned on stopping in a motel for a bit but they were all full as it was Labor Day weekend. Driving in the dark on open roads is OK but as nothing is fenced you really can't go fast in the dark as you are bound to hit wildlife. We had a couple of near misses with deer even though we were going slow.
We finally got lucky and found a motel in a town somewhere (there is a town about every 60 miles) with a room and slept for four hours before dragging ourselves up in the dark and scraping over the Rockies from the west and into Denver in time to catch our flight home. Great holiday.
Now it is the beginning of the fall, the leaves are beginning to turn. My sister Ann got married to her long time beau Charles while we were away on holiday. I am in the thick of building boats for all the fall boat shows. I am supposed to go to California for a conference - other than that - no plans for a bit. |
We went mountain biking the easy way - up on the ski lift with your bike for a mad run down after. We also went riding at two different ranches. One was pretty rugged and out of the way and took quite a bit of finding at the end of dirt trails. That was a long day in the saddle looking at scenery that you can only access on horse back. The claw marks of bears on the tree trunks was a bit sobering! On returning from that ride we discovered that they played polo. Well sort of - not knowing the rules they played with soccer rules - ten a side. So I had to get my picture taken on a Belgian Horse wearing Western Tack while swinging a polo mallet. I put the terrible looking swing in this picture down to the fact the horse is so short!
We also went on a performance ride at a ranch. This consisted of a trail ride to round up some cattle and then having driven them back to the rodeo ring we practiced barrel racing and roping cattle. We didn't actually get a rope - you have to learn to run the cattle down first and it is pretty hard to do. If you are not within 6ft of the cow no roping ability is going to let you get him. You basically have to be right on top of the cow. As the cow is running as fast as it can and weaving to avoid you and you are having to try and gallop right on its butt it is pretty hair raising stuff. The picture shows my friend "tracking" her cow which has just been released from the gate. It's running and she is galloping along the anticipated track - it veered right!!! In the real world you work as a pair - one cowboy gets the cow's head and the second one immediately ropes its back legs (think about that - you have to bounce the lariat on the ground just in front of its running back legs and it steps into the loop which is bouncing up to get it). You then ride in opposite directions to tumble the cow. It sounds cruel and it is certainly pretty rough but if done correctly merely tips the cow on its side. It is also the only safe way to hold a cow down while you inoculate it, carry out any other vet work needed and - oh yes - brand it.
Later in the week we went to the mid-week rodeo in the town where the working cowboys come into town for some mid-week competition and beer. If you look carefully in the picture these guys have just got the cow in 6.27 seconds. They were slow! Winning times from the cow being released to being roped both ends are less than 5 seconds! We also stayed through the thunderstorm to watch our wrangler from the day before try his hand at bareback bull riding. Poor guy lasted less than 2 seconds!
Copyright © 1960-2009 Graeme J.W.Smith