About me!

[cmbj67]

Not boring at all, I'm interested

[bftlovesRDA]

Stoneridge wrote:

I looked under the bonnet and the accelerator cable was snapped off, I promptly fixed this with a plastic and metal twist tie and we were once again on our way LOL. Looking back it was so hilarious, so many of my friends have called me "Lady MacGyver" my whole life, but to me all I do is logic and I cannot understand why anyone else cannot do stuff like that.

After reading that, I definitely would call you "Lady MacGyver" - and know I could not do that or much of the stuff you describe.....so you inspire me (and others, I am sure) to be more "do it yourself".

And, by the way, I am "listening" too - pulling up a chair to read ("listen") to any of your stories you care to tell....

[Stoneridge]

Another one, Im my younger days I owned two horse trucks in conjunction with a girlfriend of mine, I was however the one who held a licence to drive them - called an HT licence over here. (HT = Heavy Traffic) We named these trucks, the first one which we owned we named Billy Bedford, he was a MK2 bedford flatdeck with a horse box body on the back, the second one after we sold old Billy was Freddy Ford. Hence another story begins, this one is with Freddy Ford. We had decided one weekend that we would truck our horses to a friends grazing and have our horses winter out over there, this was about 30km (sorry don't do miles in NZ) away from our current grazing, anyway all went well we got Jade and Copper loaded in the truck and set off - thinking it will only be about a 20 minute journey as Freddy was quite a late model vehicle than what Billy was and a much smoother ride to boot. We traversed the Greenhithe bridge (spooky and narrow back in those days), I always imagine that bridge to be dodgy and even to this day I still think that as I drive over it everyday on the way to work. Anyway all worked out fine as we reached the bottom and proceeded to head for the North Western Motorway (I'm not sure what you call them - Highways?) We get half way along the motorway and doing great, the horses were nice and quiet with my driving and it was going to turn out to be a glorious day......we couldn't be more wrong! As chance would have it we were minding our own business when all of a sudden oil came out of nowhere, Freddy's temperature was rising and we had vehicles going 100kph past us as we slowed right down to a stop on the side of the motorway with what I could only describe as two horses in the back getting really jittery with the smell of cooked engine oil everywhere. We jumped out of the cab and released the bolts and tipped the entire cab up, what a mess, something had burst or exploded or god only knows what else. At this point in time we had only a few kilometers to go and the horses were making us really nervous and worried especially Copper (my girlfriends horse) as he was not a great traveller on the best of days. I turned to my girlfriend and expressed my concern for the horses and our welfare stuck on the side of the motorway with traffic racing past us at what seemed to be breakneck speed, with the thought of "it's all right traffic travellers, no need to help a couple of ladies in distress" My thoughts were that someone or something is going to get killed here if we don't act fast, with that thought in mind I asked my girlfriend for help to get our horses out of the back to try and settle them down - then it occured to me, hang on a minute our petrol driven horsepower is a bit buggered but our four legged horse power is in tact. With that we actually saddled our horses and rode down the rest of the motorway (this is a Highly Illegal thing to do) and finally arrived at our friends place to enable us to get help as this one was really beyond me. We were safe, horses were safe, Freddy got fixed and all was right again with out little world. Thinking back to all those years I reckon we must have been as mad as bats but we sure had some great times with loads of memories and we did things that I just don't know if I would do again.........actually when I think about it, then yes I probably would do things like that again, for some reason it's in my blood!!!! Logic kicks in first, then I look back later on with a OMG did I really do that! Afraid so, I really did. I have more stories, will post one every now and then so watch this space.


Billy Bedford - apologies for the terrible photo.

T

[Annelies]

Love the story!! Thanks Stoneridge

[Stoneridge]

Thank you everyone for the encouraging and kind words. I'm a bit perplexed as to why anyone would be interested in my stories or as the case may be - what I use to get up to. However so long as I keep hearing that you would like to read a little more then I shall keep telling them. Here's is one which I was telling one of my girlfriends today over lunch. I will run out of stories regarding my escapades at some point in time though. BTW I may have not mentioned it but my name is Tracy. (no e in that) LOL

We had Billy Bedford booked in to have a fair amount of his electrics re-wired as he was old and the electrics could be dodgy and somewhat unreliable, as chance would happen Billy's electrics always played up at the time that we most needed them not to. So we had been out riding our horses all day long and we had Billy parked inside our paddock gate so we figured that when we had finished riding we would be just about at the correct time to take Billy for his electrical booking. We had another awesome day riding all over the countryside and the weather had been ok all day long, we had checked the weather reports for the day and the forecast was for initially fine but clouding up and some quite mean rain fronts coming across later in the afternoon. The weather was fine for most of the day and we had a great ride, we arrived back at the paddock with our horses, unsaddled them and gave them their dinners whilst brushing them down. The clouds starting rolling in and we decided to put their paddock covers on quickly as the weather was looking really ominous all of a sudden. As we were finishing up and the horses had finished eating their warm dinners I handed my horse Jade a carrot, right when she took a bite of her tasty carrot there was an almighty crack of thunder, this really scared the crap out of jade and she dropped the carrot out of her mouth, she stood her ground and stayed close to me while she devoured the rest of it, looking a little bit wide eyed but she was ok and so was Copper. I must mention at this point that my Jade was somewhat bombproof, the same could not be said for Copper, I think he lived on his nerves and I was always thankful that he was not my horse. God only knows how Karen dealt with his head all the time.........anyways, we took the halters off of the horses and let them free for the night. We packed our bits and pieces into our cars, locked our cars up and got settled into Billy's cab. By this point in time the weather was quite nasty, it was raining, the sky was really dark and grubby looking, just not great weather at all. We figured that we were ok as we didn't have terribly far to go, just to a friends place and we would wait for Billy to be re-wired while we were there. We traversed that awful Greenhithe Bridge again (I hate that bridge!) And it wasn't long until we were on a road named Don Buck Road, this road is one which consists off all downhill with a steep gradient and just to make it a bit more interesting the whole road has hair pin corners, left then right, then left again - it is basically a nightmare where you really need to drive it breaking most of the time. We get halfway down Don Buck Road going around these hair pin corners with the rain absolutely pelting down and then all of a sudden Billy's window wiper fell off, it just literally fell off and sat right in front of me on the bonnet, unfortunately it was the window wiper that I needed the most, the right hand side, my window wiper!!!!!! (Right hand side is the drivers side in NZ) I think at this point in time Karen and I looked at each other for a split second in disbelief. It is impossible to stop on Don Buck Road without a major vehicle pile up so I looked at Karen and said "well buddy, one of us needs to get out there and put that back on before I end up going off the side of the road" Karen said to me "I guess I'm it huh" my reply was, "well unless you can drive Billy for me then yes you would be correct" This is where it gets absolutely crazy and we look back and say "what the hell were we thinking" Poor Karen climbs out of Billy and eases onto the bonnet, I'm still driving at this point but holding up traffic as I'm going really slowly, I didn't like the idea of me killing my friend. Karen managed to grab hold of the window wiper in the pouring rain and force it back onto the wiper socket. Perfect, it worked and I had my precious window wiper back and could see the road correctly again. Karen eased back into the cab giving me the look of a thousand daggers and soaking wet, I cannot type what she said as I think it may be illegal to put into print. Billy's new wiring was done, we got home safely and Karen has informed me that she will never ever forget that day. Does she forgive me.......no idea, I think she does nowadays.

[cmbj67]

Interesting story (Karen was good to manage to do that ) and I even learned new words reading it, keep them coming.

[Stoneridge]

What new words Claudia? Now you have me interested. I understand that many kiwi words could be unknown to other nationalities as my ex boyfriend was from Northern California and still lives here in NZ but hundreds or kilometres away from me. Rob didn't always understand what we term "kiwi speak" which is why if anyone is wondering I tend to put a few bits in brackets if I think it could be unknown elsewhere apart from NZ. I hope I don't offend anyone in doing this, I merely don't know what you call everything especially in the USA. Rob use to mention Jiff a fair bit but here in NZ Jiff is a scouring/cleaning liquid and as I understand it - Jiff in the USA is peanut butter.

[Stoneridge]

Interesting story (Karen was good to manage to do that ) and I even learned new words reading it, keep them coming.

Yes she was exceedingly! The mere fact that she had 100% trust in me and our friendship along with my capabilities to make sure she was safe is an absolute treasured moment in time for me and there are more to come where I put poor Karen through a few more - shall we say obstacles to put it mildly. LOL.

[Stoneridge]

Did I mention our Adult Riding Club fiasco with Mulled Wine, a forest ride and then attempting to make some kind of a sane trip back home driving a truck laden with horses and half cut Ladies on board.... don't try this one peoples! It was never going to be a good look and very difficult to stay upright on a horse while the ground appeared to be moving and the horses weren't. I recall on this occasion Karen had her air-head horse again (Copper) and I swear someone must have given him some mulled wine, never seen a horse go hell for leather backwards up a steep bank before like he could with rider in tact. Nobody could fathom how crazy he was - I've said it before and I'll hasten to say it again "I'm glad he wasn't mine" He would have probably gone to Bombay Pet Foods if he was mine, I don't think my nerves could handle him. There's an enormous amount of trust that you must have when you have hundreds of kilos of pure horse power underneath you and I demanded trust and respect going both ways with all of the horses that I have had over the years, it's a two way street! there is no domination from either human or horse, it's always got to be an understanding and a partnership or else it doesn't work. Getting back to Copper there was just something missing between the ears for him. Sadly!!!!

We had another one of many great rides that day, Copper's crazy antics aside! Poor old Copper had another problem though, he was what we term a scrambler, horsey people will know what I am saying here but for those that don't - a scrambler is a nightmare, they literally cannot get their footing in a horse float or truck and they can pretty much destroy a truck or float in an instant from the inside out. We discovered that Copper was fine so long as we never stopped AT ALL. If we stopped and then started driving again - basically all hell would break loose with him in the back. This meant that wherever we went or wanted to go to we needed really sound strategic planning, we knew we could not stop for anything, not traffic lights, not round-a-bouts, not pedestrians, not gates.... nothing at all. As you can well imagine this caused many headaches. So long as we didn't stop then Copper was fine, we devised a plan of creeping up to every possible stop anywhere and everywhere we went and if there were gates involved then I would drive at an almost stalling speed while Karen would jump out of the truck, race to the gate and open it as I drove through it, then close it behind me and then she would run back to the truck and jump back in, she got a lot of exercise haha. Hmm, nothing like having fun with horses and overcoming obstacles. I think many would have given up on him but we were determined not to do that. We had to find ways because Karen loved him so much - most of the time anyway!

[cmbj67]

What new words Claudia?

Mainly words related to the truck engine when you explained how you fixed it, or horse-related. For example I didn't know what halters were, I mean I didn't know their name even in italian, let alone in english Or hair pin corners, etc.

I like to learn new terms