Cowboy Monson

I have a confession to make. Although I come from “Cow-Town” Calgary, and have lived near the world famous “Spruce Meadows” (a massive equestrian facility) for a good portion of my life, I have never actually ridden a horse before. Well, not until today, that is. Today I set off an adventure that was so cool that I even woke up at 6:45 am to go on it. Despite the fact that early mornings are against my principles, I battled the bitter cold, primitive hours of the day and journeyed to the Giza Pyramids. Once there, I was given a horse of my very own to ride through the Sahara Desert. Our plan for the morning was to ride our horses from the Giza Pyramids, through the sand dunes, over to the Sakkara Pyramids, and then back again. The journey took us about three hours to complete and was quite an exhilarating/painful adventure.

Now that I have successfully completed this excursion without braking any bones, I consider myself an expert horseman. Let me tell you a few of the basics about riding horses in Egypt. First of all, horses don’t have a gas petal. Your whip or the heels of your feet act as the gas petal. Second, horses have three main speeds. Walking, trotting, and galloping, among other things. Walking is easy, galloping is fun, and trotting is just plain annoying. With walking, all you have to do is sit there and look ruggedly handsome. When you trot, though, you have to do a funny little stand up, sit down routine over and over by applying pressure in the stirrups and slightly lifting your butt from the saddle. It gets really painful when you’re out of rhythm of the trotting of the horse. This leaves you with a Ridiculously Excruciating Discomfort (RED for short) in your posterior. I call it the RED butt syndrome. Worse than that, though, is all the rubbing that goes on between your inner thighs and the saddle. I’m pretty sure I’ve worn most of the hair off of the inside of my legs now. But whenever I threw my horse into a gallop (fast running, for those of you who don’t know cowboy jargon) all of the pain seemed to subside momentarily. As I shot through the sand dunes with the wind blowing against my face, bouncing in rhythm with my horse, I felt that all the pain leading up to this moment was worthwhile. Even waking up at 6:45 am. But every time I stopped galloping, my horse would want to trot for a while before slowing to a walk. This meant a severe return to the RED Butt Syndrome.

I could write more about the joys of steering horses, proper procedures for sitting on a horse while it urinates, and how to make it switch speeds, but my muscles are quickly becoming stiff and sore, so I’m going to go take a nice hot shower instead of continuing this commentary.