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I went out early this morning in a futile attempt to beat the wind. My neighbor has an American flag blowing in his front yard, and I use it as a wind meter. If the flag is just flapping, the wind is tolerable, if it is wickedly whipping, the wind will be like riding in a vacuum hose, if it is sticking straight out like it was starched the wind will take your skin off.
When I left the house at 7:30 a.m. it was barely flapping. But the wind was cold. I wore silk long johns, a long sleeve tee-shirt, a flannel shirt, and my collection of polar fleece that is a blue color coordinated combo of socks, gloves, neck sock, vest and riding tights, and over all of that I wore a heavy winter coat. My nose was cold.
I saw one person in the Corrales bosque. She was bundled up like a cotton bale walking a Shepherd puppy. Above us the cottonwood trees swayed in the waves of wind. The last of their leaves fluttering a crinkly song that seemed to tell my air-headed Arabian, Arrow, to run, run the horse-eating boogie man is in these woods. I reveled in the false sense of security that my helmet gave me, and off we went trotting past the gray and brown grasses and bramble. The black birds called out warnings and flew from tree top to tree top. The Rio Grande silently flowed along the bank, and we saw a small white bird whose wings were shaped like boomerangs.
Arrow is coming off a rest, so we slowed down and walked.
We rode for a brisk hour and turned around and went home.
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