First off...I want to get some very grateful thank you's out there...Stephen King, Stephanie's patient husband, THANK YOU, for supporting Stephanie's passion for the sport of endurance! Stephanie and Stephen, thank you so much for opening your home to me, and my Brats, Oso, Cisco, and Ty all week long. It was so nice to have a shower available to get cleaned up after trekking around the trails. It was also nice to have clean clothes midweek, rather than figuring out which dirty shirt was the cleanest. ;-).
I also want to thank my own Terry Ross, for being as supportive. I'm sure he enjoyed the peace and quiet all week while the Brats and I were in Trout Lake w/all but one of the horses.
To all of the awesome volunteers that showed up to help us out, thank you so much...particularly Sharon and Gordon who came all the way up from so. Oregon to help us out. Gordon looked like he had just ridden a long 100 miler when he crawled his frame out of that Honda. He then took on the task of driving the horse ambulance on Sat, and fortunately didn't have too much to do. Sharon took several pulses, served up dogs and burgers...and showed everyone who slowed down for a moment the photo album of her gorgeous new Granddaughter.

PNER Teams...THANK YOU for taking on the food prep all during the ride! The Bad Girls, the Consolidated Gaiter Teams, & the Awesome & Alpha Raiders outdid themselves serving up food to these tough riders and their crews. Steph's friend, Lorraine and her daughter Julie kept the ride help and the radio crews fed. Thank you so much...and Radio Crews...THANK YOU for helping us keep track of these riders, and a double thank you goes to the big hearted radio crew who gave Cindy Fleming batteries for her ailing headlamp. I bet she packs extras the next time I suggest it to her! <BG>

To all of you riders who showed up and attacked your first long distance ride or your umteenth, THANK YOU! What a first class bunch of riders. I didn't hear one complaint about trails, about long vet lines, about food, rocks, or poor marking all day long. Either you're a quiet bunch or you're easy to please...thank you for that!

Phew...what a week! I headed to Trout Lake last weekend to help Steph prepare for the ride. All the while, keeping a vigilant eye on the extended weather forecast, we watched Friday morning dawn bright and sunny, warm, oh...and rather humid. :-)

It was kind of fun to see the rigs start coming in starting on Wednesday. By Friday the near end of the huge meadow was filling up with sleek fit long distance horses. The vet in started at 5 pm. Around 6:30 Paul L started serving up his awesome gumbo and the wine tasting began. When we saw our last pre-registered rider, Brenda Casebeer drive in we decided to wait on the ride meeting until she was finished parking her rig and taking care of her horse.
I really loved the relaxed atmosphere of this ride meeting, which took place on the patio of Stephanie and Steve's house. Steph had a really great HUGE ride map tacked up for all to see and Steve gave a first class weather report. Our vets, Dr. Jen, Dr. Cassee, and Dr. Mike were introduced and then Dr. Jen gave riders their criteria and further fine tuned her great pre-ride talk. There were several riders present to jump into their first long distance challenge, either for themselves or their horse. It was a great thing to see.

There was a relaxed controlled start, led by Steve, at 5 a.m. on Saturday. The first riders showed up at their trot by vet check 11 miles and an hour and ten minutes later. That began a successful day for riding...which leads me to RIDE RESULTS...betcha thought I'd never get around to it huh! Well, there were some great ride stories I heart throughout the day, so I hope some of those riders (Naomi!) take the time to share when they're rested up and clean again, so I'll just skip right to the meat of the matter...btw. ..the sheet I have at the moment doesn't list the horses, but Karen Leiman has that info if you have a burning need to know right away. =) I'll try to fill in what I remember.

In the 75 there were 20 starts and 15 completions:

1. Ron Sproat & Lady's Dividend (Sue),9:07, *BC
   
2. Carol Giles & SAR Tiki Galaxy (High vet score), 9:07.01
3. Marie Mallon, 10:47
   
4. Melissa Fiedler, 10:47.01
5. Becky Fiedler, 10:47.02
6. Robin Ryner, on AH Priority Male (owned by Sue McLain), 12:02
7. Chris Sprague, 12:17
8. Max Merlich, on Junior, 12:33
9. Tammy Hall, 12:48
10. Michele Ferebauer, 13:07
11. Ramona Thacker, on MS Shiraz, 13:22
12. Marilyn Milestone, on Leggs Candidate, 13:22.01
13. Brenda Casebeer, on Brego, 13:25
14. Sally Perry, on Lira, 13:25.01
15. Leonard Rolph, on Dancer, 14:12

• Lenda Goodpaster
• Sharon Adena
• Linda Tribby
• Kerri Clark
• Karen Leiman

In the 100 miler we had 17 starts and 11 completions:

1. Katie Glowaski, on DLF Jobster, 12:20, *BC
2. Susan Summers, on "Clark", 12:45
3. Martha McMurray, on LJ Ohadi Cedar, 13:38
4. Nance Worman, on LJ Jasuur Haraka, 13:38.01
5. Ernie Schrader, on Captain Calypso, 13:38.02
6. Frank Elmer, on Kiara, 13:56
7. Lee Pearce, on JAC Mr Turner, 14:12
8. Naomi Preston, on Karlady, 14:12.01
9. Cindy Fleming, on HRA Magic, 17:26
10. Kelly Nutter, on The Sun King (Mickey), 18:23
11. Molly Farkas, on Zantana Bey 18:23.01

• Tiffany Rettig
• Kim Black
• Dennis Summers
• Dean Hoalst
• Lois Fox
• Melissa Longhurst

(Official results to be sent to you soon Lori :-) )

And...one more time, because I am THAT grateful, Thank you Karen Leiman, for giving your time, effort and patience to being an awesome ride secretary. Thank you Mary and Anna for coming up and then staying up so late to help us out. Thank you to all of you volunteers and Raider Teammates, that came up to Trout Lake and helped out, to all of you who spent the $$ to fill up your tank to come ride those beautiful trails that Steph and Steve work so hard to bring to us, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you Steph and Steve for allowing me to invade your space all week. This ride couldn't have happened w/o you most of all!

Thank you thank you thank you!! If I forgot you, I'm sorry, right now I have DIMR.
Nuff already, now back to your regular programming. The Wow's are bathed, I'm clean, and Terry has finished getting things back in their right order around here, I'm crashing and burning for a day before getting back to what constitutes as Normal for me.

Darlene