ride4acure

I’m feeling the razor sharp reality of having 50 hours to go until ‘this boat sails’!

I have a ‘mud map’ in front of me  on a huge poster size peice of paper that has aproximately 100 tasks under 15 different headings  on it with blessedly 90% of those things now have a big fat green line through them!  A few last minute preparations and we’re good to go.

Today Friday the horses are getting reshod, final checking of all equipment lists for horses, humans, dogs and truck.

Clarke Horseshoes have generously donated our shoes and nails again for this trek.  This time we’re trialling tungstan studs in the shoes to help prolong life of horse shoes.  Last year on my trek I was reshoeing the horses each fortnight!  Hopefully this will slow things down a little!

I’m doing two presentations about ride4acure and the trek,  at two local schools Kinchela Primary and also St Joseph’s Primary Kempsey this morning.  Kinchela Public will be following ride4acure and using our trek as part of their cirriculum for Geography and PDHD (physical and human development?) the Principal at Kinchela was Hannah’s teacher for a couple of her earliest years at school and made a deep impression in Hannah’s heart and held ‘best teacher in the whole wide world’ status!

Joe has his final day at school today for the term and is ‘pumped’ about what’s happening and ahead.  His rat Emily is coming and has her name painted on the side of the truck as ‘Emily the Adventurous Rodent’!  My question is what would this big adventure be like from a Rats perspective? Hmm.

“Prior and proper preparation prevents p*ss poor performance” has been a guiding principal for me for many years.  I’ve taken it into my working life, family, horsemanship and most definitely into project planning for each of the three ride4acure ventures.  Every day I prepare myself and methodically work through tasks that need to happen to keep taking us toward the bigger picture.  It’s the small things that add up to be a big things-achieving an awesome outcome relies on the daily focus on small details, often mundane, hard, difficult, sometimes stretching the realms of possibility but relying always on the ‘it will come’ philosophy.  So far so good.  I definitely don’t sweat the ‘small stuff’, things either work out or they don’t…fortunately mostly they do!

I am on the pointy end of the planning and organising for this trek and it’s been a whopper.  I realised this morning that the idea of packing my house up in the next week to put into storage seems like a small thing compared to the other work I’m doing!  (That says it all to those who know about moving house!)

I picked our truck up from Venture Smash Repairs in Kempsey yesterday

Isuzu Makeover Stage 1!

with it’s fantastic ‘makeover’, it’s now  painted pink, white & grey and is off at Mavins Trucks now for a service, then it’s signage at Kempsey Signs where Brian and Brent Stringer have some gobbsmackingly awesome work to do on it that will make it stand out as we travel across the country. Then off to Fosters Southside Tyres for an upgrade, and back to neXgen Engineering for James Findlay to finish off some internal metal work.  It’s all coming together.

I woke up at 3am this morning (not unusual-my mind is a little ‘busy’ at the moment, and I practice a little meditation to slow things down).  I like working very early in the morning so I’m just going with it.  I turned on the ABC radio and the Overnights show was talking about the Nullabor, so I rang up and ended up having a ripper interview straight after the 4am news.

Esther continues to train the horses daily, they (horses & Esther!) are reaching peak fitness, looking fantastic thanks to the wonderful sponsorship we have from Manuka,  Mitavite and Clarke Horseshoes.

Keep your social calender free for Sunday May 1st our Eve of Trek Fundraiser at Crescent Head Tavern 3-6pm where we have live music and an auction. We have some fabulous items for auction including 4 intro flying lessons with Mid Coast Flying, B & B accommodation, $200 car service, Jann Kesby ceramics (local legend and world famous ceramics artist!)  and much much more.  And of course the next day 2nd May 9am departure from Crescent Head Day 1 of 97 days crossing Coast2Coast!

In the USA the first Monday in May is called Melanoma Monday and it just happens to be the day we’re kicking off the coast2coast horse trek 2011! And Hannah’s 23rd Birthday….there is a move to make this International Melanoma Day.  Not sure of the logistics of creating that kind of thing but I second the idea!

The phone rang early yesterday morning just as I was going out the door to work and it was a friend in town who had Charles Olsson in her shop and he was asking her about the ride4acure trek.  Charles (and his Marketing Manager David in the support wagon) had just spent three days riding with Tony Abbot on the ‘Pollies Pedalling’ bike ride from the Gold Coast to Sydney, which is coming through this area.  The long and short is ride4acure now has Olsson’s sponsorship and they’re providing hydration tablets called ‘Horse Tranz’ , this was syncronistic as the night before Esther, Joe and I were sitting around the kitchen table talking about this very thing, crossing the country and horses drinking different water types.  Horse Tranz is also an electrolyte replacement supplement and is available online

http://www.farmservices.com.au/product.php?productid=1002 or enquiries to  http://olssonpacific.com/ additionally Olsson’s have also supplied us with skin care products from the  http://optherapy.com.au/ skin care range.  We will need it as working outside all day comes at a cost!  Trekking in winter is hard on anyone,  our skin will cop it for sure with wind and cold.

A key part of our skin care is the application of sunscreen throughout the day.  All year round  we need to use sunscreen when out in the sun for longer than ten minutes when the UV is above 3.  Which is most of the year for us guys in this area.  But stands for most Australians.

What a beaut morning to be planning and preparing! I am sitting on the veranda of Mums house in Sherwood looking out to my horse paddock and a backdrop of this wonderful Macleay Valley. It is so good to be ‘home’ in a town where people knew Hannah and its a three hour trip to town to pick up one item by the time you run into old friends and catch up with what’s been happening! The horses are looking terrific and are on a strict feeding regime, I am so thankful to Manuka and Mitavite for supporting me and ride4acure! I truly believe that for my horses to do their job to the best of their ability they have to be on high energy diet, which the Manuka Horsilage and Mitavite ProSport provide. My knee has recovered and I am back full force into my training and preparations!

The three horses Meg, lofty and Titan have a real team attitude. We have a system towards everything now, who gets caught first, fed first, let go first and it all just works. Lofty has really come into himself as a horse and is just proving himself time and time again as a trustworthy and confident crew member. Titan is as he as always been perfect:-) I may be slightly biased as I have been his only human for the past seven years! And Meg is a little trouper, after shaping up for the trek last year from Kempsey to Melbourne she is again taking things in her stride. I enjoy most moments of my training aside from the ones spent in the pouring down rain… But the wet weather is a fact of life and building my resilience towards variables that are out of my control!  I have met so many great people on the side of the road that pull up for a yap! My most memorable however is the 80+ year old woman who pulled up and talked for 10 or 15 minutes and parted with wise words that I shall never forget.

“Love, if you want loyalty buy a dog, if you want trust Keep your horses, if you want heartache, get a Man”

Having a very trustworthy team of Horses and a very Loyal red heeler, and being single I couldn’t help but have a quite laugh!

Happy Trails!

Esther. Xo