A New Ride & Thoughts

Horses are, by far, the most eco-friendly mode of transportation. You feed them a renewable product, hay, and they take you where you want to go, in 4-wheel drive. 

But after horses, e-bikes are not a bad option. 

Meet GiGi. Aka the Gray Glam. 

Why an e-bike?

Well, my husband has bad knees and was looking for a form of exercise that wouldn’t put stress on them. Biking fits the bill. We already have nice bikes, and we used to bike together, but he is in the camp of “gotta KILL it” when he rides, and I’m in the camp of, “Let’s have fun.”  

Killing it is not fun. 

Actually, it was a combination of things that led me to quit biking because I couldn’t help thinking, whenever we rode bikes, I’d rather be riding horses. 

Nothing has really changed for me, I still prefer a horse and I still want to have fun. My compromise was an e-bike. 

I went with the Aventon Level2 Commuter bike, which makes it easy to use as a regular bike or get a little help with pedal assist. It also has a throttle on those days that you don’t feel like pedaling at all. 

We took it on our first ride last night, and I love it. We have extremely steep hills around here, and my husband (still using our old traditional bike) had to get off and push. I went up and down several times with pedal assist while yelling back at him, “Do you hate me?” 

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I want to circle back to the last post about assertive versus aggressive / passive. 

I’ve been working with Mr Tumbleweed in the mornings, before the heat of the day, and I found myself getting frustrated with the tarp training. 

After some thought, and research, I think there are two toxic brews: complacency and the aggression that comes from frustration. By aggression, I’m not talking about physical aggression, though it can take that form. I’m talking about working from an aggressive head space, one where you lose empathy and move more towards, you should be able to do this. 

The opposite, being passive or complacent, comes from the same part of the brain: fight, flight, freeze. It’s just as bad because your horse thinks there is something to be scared about.  

I’m checking in with myself during our sessions and asking where I’m at on the continuum. If I’m moving towards either toxic brew, I’m taking a step back to what he can do and working in that space to get our partnership back. 

After a long session the day I wrote, then deleted my thoughts, on that post about Assertive Vs Aggressive, I had this aha moment to go back out (with grandson in tow by then because I also needed to babysit late morning) and place the tarp between Tweed’s run and turnout, and release the other horses to pasture. 

As you saw in the video, he went right over the tarp. 

It’s not a real solution. In fact, it’s cheating. But I’m okay with doing this for now to get him past the block in his head—tarp is bad. 

In the meantime, I’ve moved on to other ways of “getting his feet.”