Friday Foto

Arabian Silk: Horses of Endurance

Yesterday, I found out that this week is the 1st annual Duke City Documentary Film Festival. From last Sunday through this Friday, there will be films all day long at four theaters downtown. I managed to go to my first film on Tuesday night, Arabian Silk: Horses of Endurance. 

The film was showing at 5:30 at a coffee shop called Village Roaster. I googled it and proceeded to the address listed, directly from work. Alas, there was no coffee shop at that address! I called my son and he went on the internet but couldn't find any alternate address so I decided to go to the KiMo Theater where some of the films were being shown. After driving around the block twice looking for a parking space, I finally managed to find a parallel parking space on the street across from the theater. As I turned off the engine, I noticed that the building I was parked in front of was the Village Roaster! I went in to a tiny little coffee shop and then down the hallway into a large meeting room with a big screen TV set up playing the movie. It was very dark as I tried to find an empty seat and it was too bad that I had come in late because as I sat down, they were talking about a horse and rider falling off the trail during the Tevis Cup ride??

The movie was primarily about Roger DeSoi (De-swa), an Arabian horse, and his owner, Jerry Zebrak as they competed in the Virginia City 100 mile endurance race. The film said that this is the only race where the riders begin at a saloon and at a cemetery. Jerry had bred several endurance Arabians and they all carried the surname of DeSoi which means silk, Armanda DeSoi, Atina DeSoi, etc., since he acquired his first mare by that name. With all his official rides, Jerry has covered something like 30,000 miles~and much, much more if you consider the practice miles! 

Endurance riding is the fastest growing equestrian sport in the world and is currently held in 53 countries. The film also concentrated on a Japanese race that Atina raced in. It must have been very hard to set out a 100 mile course on 60+ acres of land. The competitors wore GPS units to track their paths because they had to backtrack and zigzag so much. They went up and down the one mountain four different times! It was amazing for me to think about Endurance Riding in Japan!

The film talked about the Arabian horse as the predominant breed of choice for endurance riding. It is said that Allah created the horse from the four winds: spirit from the north, strength from the south, speed from the east, and intelligence from the west. Allah gave horses flight without wings. The film covered the beginnings of endurance racing in the 60s and even discussed the Pony Express riders of the old west. Also, did you know that one of the requirements of calvary horses was to cover 60 miles a day for 6 days in a row? I didn't, until last night.

There were humorous parts, painful parts, failures, and accomplishments. The motto of the endurance rider is "To Finish is to Win". An interesting part was where they talk about how they continue to ride far into the night to finish the 100 miles within 24 hours. One of the riders mentioned how hard it is to ride in total darkness, dependent solely on the horse. She mentioned that riders sometimes get vertigo and should practice. I can relate. I have ridden in the dark and I do get vertigo. It's a very strange sensation to experience forward motion beyond your control and, at the same time, not be able to see where you are going.

I met Christine Lazzarini, director, after the movie and complemented her on her fantastic documentary about endurance riding. I was amazed when she said that she knew nothing about horses before this film because she made a great film. It is both educational and entertaining and I could tell it was well received by both horsey and non-horsey folks. 

She said that the DVD is available for purchase at her website and I promised her I would do my best to spread the word. Here are some trailers of the film.

Bowie video day (The Lord's Prayer)

This is for Lytha and her Man in Germany
(ok my man just showed me the live taping of annie lennox and david bowie performing together...
now my man is telling me that bowie did the lord's prayer on that tribute concert...!!!
what a night of learning for me.
thanks for your post!) 

Her comment is in response to my Under Pressure post.
A landmark event in rock and roll history, Bowie was slammed by critics for being too sensational. I, however, don't see it as a publicity stunt, he is, after all, a very spontaneous and, although not religious, spiritual person. He studied for years to become a Buddhist monk before he ever went into music.




The Lord's Prayer recited by David Bowie during the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert

Anky goes western!

I didn't realize that the 3 time Olympic Gold medal winner and top of the world FEI  Dressage Freestyle champion picked up a "hobby" of reining. Here she is performing at the 2010 FEI games.



Here she is at the 2006 WEG finals performing her winning ride.

I'm crazy, really lazy, a rollin', funky strolling, all playing

My camera has been acting strange the last few days. When I turn it on it goes to a black screen. Then it won't turn off. I can't do anything with it. Sometimes it says it needs formatting. I stopped by a camera shop after work but the shop had already closed. I planned on stopping by in the morning to see what they said about it. However, I noticed that when I put the SDHC card into my work computer to load a screen saver picture it seemed to scrape and then I noticed marks in the copper strips so I began wondering if maybe the card was bad. SO I stopped by Best Buy to purchase a new one. Along the way over to the accessories, I looked at the cameras. Wow, a Fujifilm camera with 14 megapixels and 18x optical zoom for $199.99! A Nikon 10 megapixels and 26x optical zoom for $379.00. Amazing!  And way more money than the $16.99 4GB memory disk I went in to buy. So I bought the new card and tried it in my camera. Voila! it is working again!! When I got home, I decided to run the horses and try out my "new" camera. Here's the results.

First, a roll!

Here's Scout

Nadia is finished rolling and getting up. 

Scout takes off

while Yalla! watches.

Nadia runs over to Annie

 
Annie takes off running

 and the others say, "what?"

 Yalla

Nadia

Here's mother and daughter. It looks like Yalla! is growing up.

I'm crazy, really lazy, a rollin', funky strolling, all playing - song: Chilly Down, artist: David Bowie, album: Labyrinth

Pretty soon you're gonna get older

I just happened across these old photos this morning. In the first picture, my two youngest children were having a Tea Party, al fresco. They loved to play outside together. It's one of the reasons why I am glad we moved to the country.

 

This picture shows my daughter riding Beighley, Scout's mother. Horses are another reason I'm glad we moved here.

Pretty soon you're gonna get older - song: Changes, artist: David Bowie, album: Hunky Dory

Sunday Stills (Billboards 10-10-10)

Ooooh, I love today's date- 10/10/10!! How cool is that?
Today's photo challenge is to take pictures of those annoying billboards. Fortunately, I made a business trip to Gallup on Thursday and was able to snap a few photos along the way. I wasn't driving. ;)

I'm not sure what the bus was doing behind the sign but it's interesting.

How about advertising in front of you as you drive down the road?

For more Sunday Stills, check here.

You used to be a puppet dancer!

I came across this video today. I certainly hope he can get things turned around. Maybe this video has helped.

As it's Bowie related, I thought I'd post it. Enjoy!



You used to be a puppet dancer! - song: D.J., artist: David Bowie, album: Scary Monsters

Friday Foto

Art Decade

There was a special event Sunday morning that my son wanted me to come into town for, actually beyond town, to Rio Rancho, where I used to live. At 10:00 AM a ski shop was selling passes to Angelfire Ski Resort for $40 which included two free passes a month during ski season with no restrictions. The only catch is to put their advertising on your car. What a great marketing idea, eh? My son has been doing this for the past several years and thought it would be great if he could get more passes. Last year he got a sweatshirt too. They give away 100 of these passes each year. This year, because it was a weekend and not a weekday for the sign-up, there were 400-500 people in line. As a result, we didn't get passes. However, they planned on doing another one of these events with another ski resort so I got put on the texting list that my son was already on. What fun- another day, another time, to look forward to! ;)

Anyway, since I was on the far side of town, about 60 miles from home, and the weather

 was especially nice, I decided to take a hike in one of our Open Space parks.

 This area would have been our backyard if we had bought the house we were having built, years ago. However, fate has a way of changing one's destiny. Only because of building restrictions did we not buy it. We were building a massive two story house with ten foot ceilings in a new neighborhood. However, after the building started, the builder told us that building codes required a maximum of 19 feet tall because of the view of the escarpment from the city.  Do the math. We couldn't build the house the way we wanted it so we mutually voided the contract. Then we looked around in the East Mountains and found our current house with acreage for horses. I've never regretted it.  

I decided to drive past the "old" house and noticed a parking area for the Open Space. I was curious about the escarpment. I'd heard there were lots of petroglyphs in the rocks. So I grabbed my MC'Dee coke and my camera and headed out to the Piedras Marcadas Canyon. For lots more information, check here.

  True enough, there were petroglyphs (drawings) everywhere.

 Hmmmm, my hand is the same size as theirs, sort of!

 Notice the arrow pointing at me?

 I think this rock would be a great place for a letterbox. Check out the arrow pointing the way.

 It always makes me wonder who did these drawings and what were they drawing pictures of?? Such a scary face! No, not mine, well, maybe!!

 I think this rock is my favorite. I love all the ripples on it. I wonder how it was made?

 Is this a hunter or a devil or what?

Here's a view of the city and the Sandia Mountains in the background. My would-have-been house is that gray roofed house almost center. My current house is around the mountains at the far right, a long ways away.

Is this a friendly caterpillar maybe? What do you think it is?

I took this photo so you can see how big and jumbled the rocks are. Do you see the people at the right hand side? These rocks are all volcanic in nature

.

Climbing around on the rocks, you discover little troves of petroglyphs. Once, I set my coke down to do some climbing and then I lost it. I had to walk around several minutes to recover it. 

 I really dig the feet. Is this a story board, I wonder?

I also saw real lizards 

 and tiny little bird tracks.

  I wonder if there was a snake here once. Scary!

These tiny flowers are so delicate and beautiful.

 

Art Decade - song: Art Decade, artist: David Bowie, album: Low

Since he pinned you baby

Sandy had an adventure recently. 

She found a porcupine! It appears that it was a rather unpleasant encounter.

We tried to pull them out with tweezers but couldn't. The only thing we could think of to do was to put the big plastic Elizabethan collar on her so that she wouldn't rub her face. 

 

As soon as my veterinarian's office opened, I called them. They said to bring her right in because they'd need to sedate her to pull them out. I told them she was a stray that had adopted us and that we had decided to keep her so they might as well check to see if she'd been spayed while she was under. 

When I called in the afternoon to check on her, they said she was ready to come home. The doctor had checked her and since he couldn't see a spay scar he went ahead and fixed her like I'd asked. She was in heat so it's probably a good thing he did. He could tell she has had puppies before. When I asked about how old she might be, he thought she might be about five. He said she looked to be part Terrier, Heeler or Cattle dog, and Chow mix because she has a mottled black tongue.

She sure was glad to see me!

She's going to have to wear the collar for two weeks now to prevent her going after the stitches. Poor thing!

Since he pinned you baby - song: Cracked Actor, artist: David Bowie, album: Aladdin Sane

Sunday Stills (Red & Green (10/03/10)

This week's Sunday Stills challenge was to photograph red and green and not from archives. Again, a simple trip to my barn was all it took.

How's that for red and green?

For more, please visit here.

Sunday - song: Sunday, artist: David Bowie, album: Heathen

I've borrowed your Time, part II

My daughter didn't end up going with me to Vampire Weekend after all. She wanted to go out with her new boyfriend instead. Hmmmpf! The nerve! So, I asked my son to go in her place. He good-heartedly agreed because, although they're not his "type", he likes them.

It was great to have my son along for both concerts. He has definitely inherited my musical obsession, and then some. He's so crazy. He got kicked out of VW 7 times on Thursday night because he kept sneaking down into the reserved section. I didn't realize our tickets were only good for a certain section because when I bought them, they were the only ones available. He was lucky we were at the Casino and they had in-and-out privileges. He got to know the security and they just let him back in. It was a much smaller show than Muse, of course. He is really big into the local punk scene but they're mostly good guys, not gang or mean or anything. He just has a big anti-establishment complex and is always pushing the boundaries on things. He certainly isn't afraid to stand up and be seen. Actually, he rather likes the attention.

At VW, the sound was kind of bad down front but I had a great view so when I called my son on my cell phone to see where he was, he told me he was in the very back. I guess it was one of the times he'd come back in. We actually moved around a lot there. We started in two roomy seats behind the sound machines and I thought, "wow, this is too good to be true." It was. A guy in a wheelchair came up and said we had his seats. We wandered down front to the barrier from there and stood about midway in the venue watching the "lucky" people pass through to the section in front of the stage.

I was a little disappointed with the sound. Always, for the warm up bands the sound is bad, can't upstage the headliners, you know, but it was still a little distorted for VW. I debated and then decided to join my son in the very back. I spent the second half of VW's set at the back with my son and lots of room to dance, which I did. Where we stood at the back, there was great sound and a pretty good view too. Afterwards, we mosied around the Hard Rock Casino (couldn't gamble because he's underage), looked at the glass cased costumes of the rock icons, and grabbed a couple of sodas from the refreshment station. Then we wandered out to the parking lot and talked and waited for the traffic to clear a bit. We finally got home around 11:something.


Muse was FANTASTYK!!! What can I say? They're one of my favorite bands, often labelled the best live band in the world after U2, and they didn't disappoint. We got there early. I thought it started about 7 like VW but the concert actually started at 8. We waited outside with several hundred other diehards and enjoyed the music of the two local radio stations.

Once inside, we beelined it for the stage. My son and I found a place about 10-15 people (20 feet?) from the stage. We were very crowded but the people around us were cool. Of course the five tallest guys in the room were in front of me! LOL. The crowd seemed to drift a bit and pretty soon I only had one or two tall guys in front. Such a difference from Vampire Weekend when there were only four short girls in front of me at one time.

Funny, several of the people around us had also gone to the VW show. I think I grew an inch last night stretching my neck to see the stage better. Muse often played on risers and there were three huge columns of  visuals where they had awesome, awesome graphics and close ups of the crowd and the band members. There were two guys in chairs about 50 feet up in the air, working the cameras, lights, sound? I'm not sure what they were doing but we watched them being lifted up by cables during intermission. It must have been scary up there.

It seemed like everybody knew the words to all the songs they played. THANK YOU! Clear Channel for buying the rights to their last couple of albums and giving them airplay on the radio. Just a year ago, they only played one or two Muse songs but for the last 6-8 months they've been playing a Muse song every hour- and rotating them too. They played lots of stuff from the two most recent albums and a couple of older songs, ending with Knights of Cydonia on their encore. Too soon, the concert ended and I only realized how loud it had been when we staggered out. I noticed several "older" women alone at Muse too so when I've considered attending concerts by myself, I now realize that I'm not the only one.

After a quick stop at a gas station for gas and drinks, nothing like a cappuccino after an evening out, we drove the long way home and finally arrived around midnight or so.

I was so hyped from the concert, I searched the internet for some live Muse. I found and downloaded a full set of the songs we'd just heard from a similar concert in Bercy, France. I haven't listened to it fully yet but it's got great sound and includes all the little snippets of impromptu piano and harmonica playing they did. I didn't get to bed until after two this morning and then I was up at 6:30 as usual, so I feel like a zombie today. But I intend to relive my concert today on my cd player.

What a whirlwind these last few days have been. Now what am I going to look forward to? The Balloon Fiesta which starts today? Or the Greek Festival? ?? We'll see...

I've borrowed your time - song: After All, artist: David Bowie

I've borrowed your Time

Vampire Weekend was awesome last night! The Hard Rock Rocked!!

And today, I unloaded 200 bales of hay this morning with my two sons, my son's friend, and the the two men who delivered it. I got a call at 6:30 in the morning that they were almost at my house. I woke everybody up, we unloaded it, and then I took a shower and went to work. I got in about five hours of work until I left to get ready for tonight. It's another hour drive to the venue but this time it's in the other direction. 

I'm so excited! I feel like I did back in '83 when I went to a Bowie concert during his hot Serious Moonlight tour. 

It should be awesome!! I'll report in tomorrow. Gotta go!!!

I've borrowed your time - song: After All, artist: David Bowie

Friday Foto