PNER History

Interested in the roots of PNER, stories of fabled riders? As collected, we'll add links and information here.

1975 PNER Handbook

The SANDYBAAR story: Harold "Sandy" Sanders and his little Arabian stallion, Sandybaar,
were a horse/rider TEAM. Sandy and Sandybaar rode 2549 miles together and without a
single pull. They never rode an LD, all rides were 50 miles or more. Back then the miles
were not rounded off to the nearest 5 thus the odd amount of mileage. Oh yes and Sandy
was an "older" gentleman, diabetic. His wife, Virginia, always took great care of the both
of them. Sadly if you look up Sandybaar on AERC today he doesn't come up. You can find
it in old AERC Yearbooks of which I have all of them. But I also rode with them and know
they existed. Plus the duo placed in the AERC National Top 25 in 1975 and 1976. I first
won the award in 1993 with Zapped+/ and I can't recall the folks that patterned the award
after the spirit of Sandy and Sandybaar but it always means more to me than most of the
awards. It's a good part of PNER history.

-- from Karen Bumgarner