Me and Tank: Kicking Up a Little Trail Dust
Trust me, there’s no better way to establish family hierarchy than a good old horse ride.
Forget about galloping. I mean a trail ride. Handling your steed without tailgating or losing all control and being taken on a madcap romp through the brush and thickets.
On horseback, posers are fast separated from real pros, braggarts from humble doers.
You want to know if you all get along?
Go on a canoe trip and you’ll soon find out which participants are later found in shallow graves out there along the riverbank.
We didn’t have canoes so, in a pinch, horses would have to do.
The other day, I took a supervised trail ride with my little family of five.
Me, my wife, her sister, her husband and 14-year-old daughter.
But first let me characterize each rider, just to give you the comic Keystone Kops sense of the entire outing.
Call me the Old Man. Sciatica plagued. As limber as an ironing board.
My wife is Camera Girl.
Her sister is Grasslands Girl.
The 14-year-old is Arrogant Dancer.
My brother-in-law is the Sagging Man.
With our California guests in for the holidays, I booked a 90-minute trail ride at the scenic Sandy Valley Ranch just outside of Las Vegas, which hosts everything from corporate retreats to authentic Mexican rodeo events.
My first mistake came long before I even hit the saddle, on the initial telephone call.
The booking agent inquired about each person's weight and riding skills. I said I weighed 200 pounds and the others far less.
We were all novice riders, I added.
When I told the girls, two Chinese-born sisters who grew up in Beijing, they were immediately pissed. They were hardly novices, they insisted.
Grassland Girl had ridden on the carpeted steppes of Inner Mongolia, where athletes compete with reckless abandon, at full gallop, just crazy shit.
Both girls claimed Mongolian blood. As in, they were born to be one with the horse.
Whatever.
Camera Girl exaggerates her talents on just about everything. She had no reason whatsoever to be pissed, but of course she was.
We showed up at the ranch about 1 p.m. The previous day had been windy so we were bundled up like Eskimos. There had been talk of cancelling.
Too cold, people said.
But we went and the weather was perfect.
Our trail boss was an athletic, elegant woman named Dana, a Jacqueline-of-all-trades former professional golfer and teacher, pro polo player and now expert wrangler.
She took one look at our motley crew and shook her head. We looked better ready for the ski slopes than a brief desert jaunt.
“You’re all overdressed,” she said.
It went downhill from there.
She matched us with our horses, explaining the maneuverings of the reins and stirrups.
I was first.
My ride was a cross between a Budweiser Clydesdale and a Back-40 plow horse.
His was named Tank.
Sheesh, I knew I’d put on a few pounds on Thanksgiving Day, but Tank? Did it take a military conveyance to handle my girth?
Within minutes, we were all saddled up and working our way around a circular arena, getting the feel of the horses.
I liked Tank. He was sturdy and well-behaved, though he did like to snack along the way, pausing at every bush for a nibble.
I let Tank eat.
After all, he had a lot of weight to carry that day. He needed his nourishment.
Then Camera Girl’s horse started to kick, donkey-like.
It turns out Penny, a filly, didn’t like Tank. My wife said she wanted a restraining order between our horses.
Nobody, apparently, liked Tank, which made me adore him even more.
We headed out single-file on a long circular track that includes part of the old Spanish Trail, accompanied by Dana and her staff.
There was an old cowboy named Bones and a young Latino rider named Gustavo, who listened to music on his ear pods the entire way.
Then there were the dogs, including one that was half-coyote. They played trail scout, chasing rabbits along the way.
The high desert was gorgeous, a rolling arid landscape as untouched it seemed as it was when the first settlers passed through this way 175 years ago.
Dana stopped to point things out -- the red-tailed hawk circling above, the desert hare scrambling thorough the chaparral, even the Creosote bushes the Native Americans once used for medicinal purposes.
But here’s the thing about trail riding. Those at the back end eat a fair amount of dust.
Choking dust that made the horses sneeze.
I ended up second to last, ahead of Grassland Girl. Riding atop a filly named Chick, she immediately started to kvetch. I guess her idea of fun was kicking right into a balls-out gallop.
Instead, she was eating Tank’s dust, and everyone else’s.
Grasslands Girl is normally pretty quiet, reserved in the kind of what that she is perfectly comfortable surrounding center stage to loud mouths like me at any social event.
But the moment she got on that horse she was Daenerys Targaryen, the Khaleesi of Game of Thrones, riding her dragon.
Fearless. Slash-your-throat ruthless.
Suddenly, Grassland Girl made her move. Cracking her whip like a leather-clad S&M priestess, she veered outside the line, moving up so she and Chick could enjoy a bit of daylight.
At one point, Grassland Girl told Dana that her horse wanted to lead, words that were tantamount to mutiny.
Our trail boss grimaced.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
Poor Dana.
She later explained that if one horse broke in to a run, the others would follow. Chaos would rule. Bones would break.
Me, I liked Tank’s slow gait. The Tank and I had nothing to prove.
Meanwhile, Sagging Man rode up front with Dana, on a horse named Luna, eating no dust whatsoever.
This apparently got under Grassland Girl’s skin. She began to critique the Sagging Man’s riding technique, which she described as propping 200 pounds of dead weight into the saddle.
Sagging Man, she insisted, rode like a sack of potatoes.
Why couldn’t he ride more like Grassland, looking elegant and long-necked with a ballerina’s perfect posture? More exclamation point than the letter S.
And what on earth happened to his neck, Grassland Girl wanted to know.
Sagging Man described his own technique as akin to Adonis himself, or a Roman conqueror on horseback, returning home after years of war.
Next, Grasslands Girl turned her dismissive gaze to Arrogant Dancer.
At 14, AD is pretty darned sure of herself. Her generation is the best ever put on Planet Earth. She once dismissed me by saying that at least she'd still be alive in 50 years.
You get the point.
But, honestly, she looked quite lovely atop the white horse named Whalen, like Pocahontas or some Indian princess, her hair flying in a ponytail.
She loved the ride, but later complained that her ass bone hurt.
Grassland Girl sniffed at that one.
She said that was because AD’s technique sucked, that she rode by plopping her skinny butt into the saddle rather than using her legs like shock absorbers, just like Grassland did.
Yes, we all tested Dana’s patience on that ride, but no one perhaps more than the Camera Girl.
The woman lives for taking pictures.
Of everything.
The food she eats, the wine she drinks, the places she goes.
She calls it "documenting" her life.
But there's a fine line between enjoying an experience and slavishly groping for the perfect picture, compromising -- even ruining -- the original adventure.
That's Camera Girl to a tee.
I can’t tell you how many meals I’ve eaten cold after waiting for the photo shoot to end.
Well, Camera Girl was paying more attention to her iPhone than she was her ride, which came dangerously close to the horse ahead.
Finally, Dana had to set her straight.
“Listen,” she said, “And I’m only going to tell you this once. My first priority are these horses and you are further down the list.”
You cannot ride too closely or legs will get tangled, she warned, injuring both horse and rider.
Five minutes (at best) later, Camera Girl was up to her old tricks. Handing off her phone to Grassland and AD, taking pictures herself as her poor horse flailed without proper commands.
Later, Camera Girl assumed no blame for her antics. She insisted her horse had been drunk. She had maintained full control at all times, camera or not.
(Don’t get me started.)
Finally, Dana’s long day on the trail was coming to an end.
We crossed a tarmac road on our way back onto the ranch and Dana, ever the conscientious guide, stayed behind to slow an oncoming car, like a guard at an elementary school crossing.
All safely past, she joined the rear of the line with me and Bones and Tank.
I was just thanking her for her patience when I heard her mutter something under her breath.
I turned to see Grassland Girl leading a charge of four horses, with Sagging Man, Arrogant Dancer and Camera Girl all in hot pursuit.
They all said this as the day's most day's most satisfying moment.
It was also Dana's nightmare.
This wasn’t an organized horse ride. It was an all-out stampede. Reckless. Out of control. An ambulance call waiting to happen.
“Stop!” Dana shouted.
Several times.
Poor Dana.
In the end, my left leg was so sore from sciatica pain, I had to use the old people’s contraption to get off my horse. Tank was lead between two planks and I was able to scramble down like an infant on all fours.
We all had fun. Still, no matter how much of a tip we gave Dana, it wasn’t nearly enough for her pain.
On the way home, we each took turns assessing the day.
Arrogant Dancer judged her performance as flawless.
Sagging Man fretted aloud about his posture.
Camera Girl worried she didn’t take enough pictures.
Grassland Girl still dreamed of the open steppes of Inner Mongolia. She insisted she wasn’t overly critical of her fellow riders.
“Can’t I be arrogant about one thing?” she said, mostly to herself.
Me?
I already missed Tank.
