Vernes hell ride

Coolgardie — 1999-09-25

This is Verne’s story about his failure in trying to break in camel “BOO”:
“After Tom had saddled Boo, I was ready to ride on him. Well, I got into the saddle and Tom ordered Boo to get up. Tom led Boo around in the pen, without him taking the slightest notice of the burden on his back. Tom and I agreed that, till now, Boo hadn’t registered me. I decided to wave firmly with my hand and he suddenly came off like a rocket. He jumped up and down and hopped like no wild nag in the world would do.
I have trained a lot of camels in my time, but with Boo I had tremendous problems staying in the saddle. At every jump I beat my knees against the steel frame of the saddle and I thought to have broken both kneecaps.

The saddle suddenly slipped aside but I still hung on like a tick so as not to get under Boo’s wildly kicking feet. Quite unexpectedly the saddle slipped back to the right position again, which for a moment made me believe I won the game. But then he went on with the terrible jumps till I really couldn’t hold on any more. I was slung out of the saddle, not without knocking against it with my eye before. Whimpering I lay on the ground, thought I’d never be able to run again.

Minutes later it turned out that I had a hole in my right eyelid, which must have been a result of the severe crash with the saddle. When I looked in the mirror I was horrified to see my eyeball through the hole in the lid. Immediately Tom took me to the hospital at Kagoorlie. My kneecaps fortunately were only bruised and not broken and my eyelid was sewn up again. At long last I was glad to have survived this hell ride“.

After Tanja and I have heard this story, we Boo see with different eyes. It will show within the next months whether he becomes a good expedition partner or not.