Cold and Colic

Snapdragon - almost 6 months old now

A bit of a stressful weekend overall. Little baby Snapdragon had a bout of colic and had to be driven down to get watched, and eventually get surgery, to remove the obstruction that was making her colic. Friday afternoon and all of Saturday she was up and down, writhing in pain on the barn floor most of the time. For those of you who don't know about colic in horses, it has a good chance of killing them if not acted on and this one wasn't going away so surgery was the last option. She has to stay at the vet until next weekend when she will hopefully be coming home to DVR. Horses are certainly MUCH more delicate than they look...I never would've guessed. Cross your fingers for little Snapdragon, she's not out of the woods yet.

This weekend hit a bit of a cold front, especially Sunday. Because of poor Snapdragon's situation, I chose to abandon the cross race at the Res and instead stayed local for a short little singlespeed ride in the hood in the afternoon. Possibly my inaugural 'last singletrack' ride of the year here. Last year, this occurred on Thanksgiving Day - a full month later!

Snow-lined singletrack at 5pm

Snow-covered singletrack a bit later on

The mandatory Hunter picture

Who knows though, it will probably dry out a bit in the coming weeks here so I can get up higher again to ride another day. But this year seems like it's going to be a big winter...forecasted snow all week so this may have been the last time of this year. I didn't head out until 4:30 so by the time I got back I had the headlamp on, carefully navigating the singletrack into the house. Stoked a fire to warm up the digits and again wished that either my hands would learn to warm themselves, or that I could find a pair of gloves that was waterproof, warm down to 20 degrees, and with enough dexterity to ride comfortably and under control. Not possible I fear.