I forgot just how wacky life is when the boss is your next door neighbor.
JULY 5: First day back on the grind in Ölfus, and boy it did not disappoint. Elisa was sent into Reykjavik today since Axelle had the day off, so it was me with Sabira and the jr guide--and I got to use Elisa's guide saddle. I can officially kiss my days off goodbye as Ölfus never gets a day off--gotta love 4 total days off during the (soon to be) 8 weeks I will have worked here woo hooooo. It really isn't that big of a deal and we're not physically dying each day (the work is generally not too intensive) but the principle of it is kind of wack considering everything that's happened this past month. I had a 9am private tour this morning and took Herkules--its kind of nice to be back with my OG guide horse, and I forgot how easy he is to ride. I barely have to shift my body and he'll turn or stop or whatever I want--and it was an Icelandic family visiting from the US (weird connection but it was actually really cool). We took the 2 hour loop and I got to ask the dad the meanings of all of the horses names which was so fun, but the girlfriend of the son (who was on Biggi) really struggled getting him to keep up, as well as the mom on Mosa. We arrived back before Sabria and the jr guide got back, and one moment I'm chatting with my tour in the coffee house, and the next I see a saddled horse galloping down the 1hr trail towards home, riderless. I excused myself and quickly cut across the pasture and across the creek to get in front of the horse (a kid horse no less too) that the fallen rider and owner's granddaughter were sprinting after. I feel like the sprinting made the situation seem a lot more dramatic than necessary, but I walked up the horse and got it no stress, and gave it back to them before I realized the owner's wife was calling my work phone--only to tell me the disaster that had struck with Sabira too. It turns out the jr guide and Sabira had split up and one part of the group wanted to speed up and one didn't, and the jr guide would take whichever group was going for the shorter riding time for safety reasons. When she had closed the gate to head back down the 1hr trail the customer's horse had just bolted and she fell off pretty early on. Meanwhile on Sabira's faster group, a customer who had riding experience fell when her horse stumbled and got her foot caught in the stirrup--spooking her horse and causing him to run several meters down the mountain trail while dragging her along. She hit several rocks and required the owner's wife to drive and get her to go straight to the hospital. We found out later that she broke 2 ribs...yikes. Since everyone was pretty shaken up I untacked for them and let the horses out before going up to the house to decompress and report to Elisa the wild happenings.
The manager had, of course, gotten wind of the incidents and scheduled a safety talk with us over zoom for tomorrow--to which the jr guide is not planning on attending (qué un sorpresa) and Sabira became instantly very stressed about. I know I have to attend, but Elisa and I are somewhat annoyed that we'd be dragging them into the meeting since we're the ones handling our tours well and cleaning up the messes on the guide side of things. Oh well. The day didn't end there though--as the stress from the morning built up and scattered on our trio of the day (more Sabira than me though) while we tried to consolidate horses into one pasture. After many emotions and colorful labeling from some of us, we ended up splitting up to finish doing our daily tasks, and truly I couldn't even respond as I was too busy deciding whether to giggle at it all or not. Half of me isn't bothered by it, because things to seem a lot bigger and tougher when you're in the moment, but at this point in the day I was just tired of playing clean up all day. As a result I consolidated the herd alone, and then got Sabira to join me in herding the bumpy pasture home to prepare for tomorrow. We'd just finished when I received a call from the manager asking why we had been reported for bullying our third coworker & spewing profanity (to put it both vaguely and nicely). I informed him the events of the day, and that I vividly remembered a very unexciting order of events that had unfolded before me, but in no way were they as dramatic or exciting as I was being shared with on the phone. This led to a very long conversation with the manager where I had to explain my role today as the mediator of the trio today, and that I unfortunatley don't know much other than what I saw go down. I'm not sure how much my words mean to him in comparison to the initial sharing party, but I let him know if anything else I don't consider myself one to throw profanity at younger members of the human population, and as Sabira barely uses the word in conversation with me I couldn't vouch for her--but could assume. He seemed very stressed, and a for a while I felt very bad for him that he has to do recon on everything today...from physical tour injuries to emotional employee war zones.
As if that wasn't enough--the Reykjavik girls took the van in town to get ice cream and it broke down. Elisa was about to head home to go to the store with me when she had to go rescue the girls. Turns out the clutch had been used incorrectly too many times (they think by a temporary coworker that was a reykjavik driver for a couple days) and it destroyed some part of the van. My head just hurts for the manager right now--it bet he hates his job today. By the time Elisa finally got home I was over it all. Good grief. Hats off to the manager today--couldn't be me.
JULY 6: It's beautifully cloudy today. Some of my favorite moments here are when the clouds have just snagged over the mountain lip, and you know the cold and rain is on its way, but you can see the gap of time you have to grab a blanket, some warm groceries, and hunker down. I'm kind of glad since I need a rainy day after the shit show that was yesterday. After I gathered and tacked the horses for the morning and was making coffee when the Owner's wife came in to say hi. I really like her quite a lot, and feel very safe when she's around for some reason lol. I offered her some coffee, but she just came over and gave me a big hug. I *think* it was because of the hurricane yesterday that I had to discuss with the manager on over the phone. Either way it made me smile and a bit more optimistic of my last week here--I'll miss the owner's wife the most out of all of the adults. She always had a way of making everything feel ok. :)
We have all short tours in line for today, and I'm taking Gáski for both. I'm so excited to have my buddy again, and he looks so much fatter than he was when I left Ölfus! Look how cute he looks :). He's not the biggest fan of rainy and windy, but he was precious none the less. In comparison to yesterday, today was very very boring, but that's just how we needed it to be. We had one bigger group that we had to herd additional horses for, but we have a Disney group Friday so I'm fine with the 9 person tour we had today--it was just like a mini reykjavik. Elisa was working in Reykjavik again today, so I got to use her saddle again--which is a big deal because she has the comfiest saddle, which was the style I had been using in Reykjavik and fell in love with--but came home pretty quickly after so we could go to the store and for ice cream. I needed both desperately, and we took out time enjoying being away from the farm. When we got home I made us some pasta and we started watching Euphoria...which I'm not sure Elisa is really a big fan of, but I wanted to watch it (it just felt like it matched the energy that was going on lol) and she didn't protest--plus it came as a package deal w the pasta so really a win for her. I'm looking forward to the Disney tour, because I think we're getting horses from Reykjavik tomorrow in preparation (since we herded some home that will be sent to Reykjavik I believe). Fingers crossed they bring ones I love. :)
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