Horse Power

Example One: What do you do when a black stallion is galloping full speed ahead and you happen to be standing on the bridge that he is obviously intending to cross without concern of obstacles? Run right?! Well that is exactly what Ben and I did last Sunday evening when a neighbor’s horse, who had been tied down all day long, was running for his freedom, which just happened to be on the other side of the bridge we were standing on. Unfortunately, rather than continuing to run for our lives once crossing the narrow foot-bridge, Ben and I simply stepped to the left of it and watched in amazement at the speed and strength of the horse. Then, all too sudden, we both noticed the long rope and metal stake that was whip-lashing to the left of the animal as he crossed the bridge. The result = Ben has luck and Jessica does not! Yep, the end of the rope and possibly the stake, but I’m not real sure, managed to wrap around my lower right leg and foot just as quickly as it unwrapped itself. Before I could grasp what actually had happened, I found myself flat on my ass and noticing how my right foot is a heck of a lot bloodier than my left foot’s big toe (which I had stubbed about 20 minutes earlier) and pretty certain my ankle has been unnaturally torn into two. Once the shock wore off, I quickly realized that my ankle was not quite in two pieces, but my foot was indeed bloody. A piggy-back ride home later, I was now feeling a new sensation; the burning of homemade vodka on open wounds. Now that’s a random chain-of-events (I excluded some details for length reasons), but it’ll be worth my scars and getting to tell a story like that when somebody asks where I got them. “Well, when in Moldova beware of…” Luckily I had on pants, so my leg only had/has spiral bruises with minor rope burns; my ankle turned out to be just a bad sprain; and the bloody foot, well it’s been healing quite nicely the past 8 days.

Example Two: Two days later I was headed to Drochia with Lidia and Marin in their 34 year old Lada (Lada’s dominate post-soviet countries). The car, obviously not running up to par as it felt like we were in a tractor that was running out of gas, decided it was not going to go any further once in the midst of climbing the first hill just outside of Chetrosu. After ten minutes of attempting to jumpstart the rusted-red Lada while it would roll in reverse downhill, Marin turned the car around and had Ben and Lidia start pushing it back towards Chetrosu. Stopping for a think-break in the valley of two small hills, Marin asked a passing tractor to pull us but was unsuccessful. No worries though! Along came a one-horse drawn carriage. After connecting the two, umm, “mobile units” I found myself in the backseat of a car being towed by a horse and its carriage!!! MAN ~ why did I not have my camera handy! What was so funny is that no passerby (we were on a main road) or pedestrian found this scene abnormal. I guess I’ll pay better attention when commercials go on about the horsepower of an automobile….