In which my saddle has seen some long, hard miles and I meet a new friend

There's a natural friction point on the model of saddle I use.

After 13+ years and who-knows-how-many thousand miles, the wear was

becoming substantial.

...and, because I rode more than a thousand miles with busted-up hip joints,
the leather wear isn't even symmetrical!

I sent photos of the worn spots to Specialized this summer, and asked what they could do in the way of repairs.  After all, those skirting pieces are literally attached to the tree with five screws.  Surely they could send me replacement parts and I could install them myself?

Ahhhahahahaha.  No.

The Specialized Saddle Company has long been known for really terrible customer service. I definitely had a sub-optimal experience purchasing my saddle, only mitigated by a local saddle rep who ran interference between me and the company--and my experience was not unique, or even unusual.

Still, this was obviously a known issue for this saddle.  They must have a solution for it, right?

Yeah, no.  

Their solution was "send your saddle to Texas and we will try to figure out how to fix it in a month or two."  (Also, they claimed that they'd never seen this kind of wear on one of their saddles before, which is not even vaguely credible.)

Have I mentioned that, although I really like my saddle, I'm less enthused about this company?

What I really wanted was The Repair Shop, but alas, that isn't very local to me.

We love to watch this BBC show about repairing cool old stuff like pub signs and pocket watches--
they have a staff saddlemaker doing leather work, but (so far) we haven't seen her fix a saddle!

Fortunately, I am a librarian, and one of the things that librarians are really good at doing is figuring out where to look for answers.  

In this case, the place to look was The Bony Pony.

They opened their new store (same location, MUCH bigger store) in August 2020.

The women who run this tack store know everything and everyone.  When I said "I need saddle repair" they pulled out their 3-ring-binder-of-wisdom and found two local leather workers.  One lives closer to me, but is new to the business.  The other lives further away--almost to the Canadian border--but they were very familiar with her very good work.

And so, after contacting Marilyn in Everson to arrange a drop-off time, I loaded my faithful saddle into the car and drove north.

A pole building at the back of a dairy farm isn't nearly as quaint and picturesque
as the living history museum that houses The Repair Shop,
but indoors it smelled beautifully of leather and soap

My phone decided that I needed a "fish-eye lens" picture of Marilyn and her shop.
Because 2020, I guess.  I was trying to get a photo of the saddle stand she built on 
the hydraulic lift from a barber chair!

I don't know about y'all, but the pandemic has left me slightly starving for conversation with new people.  Marilyn has raised and competed with cattle dogs, she rides dressage (on a quarter horse!) and she's a very fun person (as well as being one of the only liberal Democrats living in north Whatcom County).  We talked and talked and talked.  

It was lovely.

The shop also features this extremely charming calico person

Did I mention that she got the repairs done in a week? 

And the total cost was only slightly more than the cost of postage to Texas and back?

And...

My saddle is beautiful again

She replaced the outer skirting (the underside is still in good condition) and installed new billets, and pronounced the saddle good for many more miles.