Half Moon Bay

When I was going through old photos for my recent post "Race Track Stories", I came across these incredible shots. One of our Irish peers, John Roch, had taken a job breaking babies at a ranch out at Half Moon Bay just south of San Francisco. John invited us out to see the spectacular scenery and wow, was it ever. The two guys jumped on a couple of babies and made their way down a steep cliff to gallop on the beach.

That's them to the right of the bottom pilings. In the spring, gigantic waves reaching 30 feet tall register on the Richter scale at the University of California in Berkeley, about 40 miles away. It's a world class surfing destination.

As I made my way back up the cliffs, a parachutist had arrived on the horse path and was jumping up and down like a fledgling, testing the conditions in preparation to jump off the edge. I smiled to myself wondering, oh boy, how are the babies going to react to this bazaar phenomenon. Like this happens every day. Michael is in the blue jacket.

Here's how horses are: they made their way past the parachutist very curious but unfazed, then ducked and dived from moi standing at the top of the hill with my camera aimed at them!

"In my opinion, a horse is the animal to have. Eleven-hundred pounds of raw muscle, power, grace, and sweat between your legs - it's something you just can't get from a pet hamster. " ~Author Unknown