Jeff basically was our cook and he was a real good one. The teamwork of Sue and Jeff in the kitchen was great but sometimes, Jeff was out of kitchen, down in the corral or on the trail with us. Well, we always had fun on the trails when Jeff was riding with us. He had kind of a special relationship with some of our horses. I guess his favorite horse was Jupiter but most of the times he had Bill's horse Duke. Those two horses kept Jeff busy and I remember 4 incidents when Jeff had a lot of fun with them. Or did we have fun? .... Who knows?

One day, some of our wranglers and Jeff started out to a bareback trip. Jessi and me didn't go but we saw them up on the hill watching the sunset. After a while they came back when most of the guest were sitting on the frontporch of the lodge. Jeff had a good time with Duke. He came down to the wrangler's quarters and had nothing else to do than showing off. He waved with his hat like in a movie and while he did that, Jeff was slowly sliding off the horse. It was like a slow motion when he fell off. It was a picture. All the guests saw it and had to laugh without fail. It was so funny.

A couple of days later, Jeff, Shane and I went on a long trail ride with some of our guests. Jeff was back in the saddle with Duke again and we really had a good time, especially when we had to pass one of those cowboy gates. Jeff volunteered to open and close it. That was very nice. So he hopped off Duke and opened the gate to let us all pass. After everyone was through he wanted to shut it again. Well, this particular gate was tricky to close and so he dropped Dukes reins in order to concentrate on the gate. Duke kinda liked that idea and walked away. So, imagine this scene. Jeff had a runaway horse. Every time he tried to catch Duke, Duke walked off a little more. We couldn't believe it. It was such a fun game.

After that experience he decided to ride Jupiter again, his favorite horse and not Duke. On one Friday, Jeff took part in the ranch rodeo. Guess what happened? During the barrel race, he fell off his horse. ??? Strange thing ??? But not enough, one rodeo later he fell off his horse again. He was back with Duke and Duke is a fast stopper sometimes, so it looked like that Jeff was kind of flying off Duke. And I was the barrel race again.

Well, anyway, we always had a good time with Jeff and his horses.