Saturday at Valles Caldera, horse riding seemed inviting despite the fact that I’ve only ridden once in my life and that horse rolled onto its back as I scrambled to escape.
And then there’s this at Freakonomics Blog: “Each year in the United States, an estimated 30 million persons ride horses. The rate of serious injury per number of riding hours is estimated to be higher for horseback riders than for motorcyclists and automobile racers.”
Follow the link. It’s interesting.
I’ve never been on a motorcycle, but I did have a mean horse deliberately hurt me once. I was care-taking some property in Arizona for a friend and feeding her animals, including a horse who spent too much time penned up. One day I was riding him out in the desert when he suddendly took off hell bent for leather toward a field fence. I tried with all my might to stop him, but he knew exactly what he was doing. A few inches from the fence he stopped on a dime, and naturally, the momentum threw me off his back and hard onto five stands of barbed wire. My brand new jeans and blouse were ruined, and the next day I felt as if I’d been hit by a Mack truck. I think I slugged him before I walked him back to his corral.