When I cannot be an endurance "freak" because of weather or dark of night, I become a puzzle "freak"--jigsaws (in the winter there is always one in progress on a card table) and word puzzles.

I discovered one day that if you make an anagram of AERC, you can come up with three words: care, race, and acre. What an interesting thing as they relate exactly with the three main purposes of AERC!

1. Promote the welfare of the horse . . . care. No matter what kind of "racing" we are doing, we must keep the well-being of our horses first.

2. Promote endurance riding . . . race. One may be "racing" for first place, top 10, mileage accumulation, just to get around the course, or about a hundred other reasons.

3. Promote trails . . . acre. Without trails, we have no sport.

I think AERC is doing a bang-up job living up to its anagrams . . . how about you?

Get in your nominations for Hall of Fame, PardÕners

On another subject: The best part of being vice president is being the chairman of the Hall of Fame Committee. It's that time again. No matter how many times you have sent in a nomination for the person, horse or Pard'ners recipient, you must resubmit it.

The AERC office will forward all nominations to the committee and at the midyear meeting we will attempt to pick the most deserving ones for this year.

Don't worry that someone else has already named someone--the more the merrier. It helps if you tell us why you think the nominee should be picked above all others, either in your own words or by a copy of their record in the sport.

Look in your AERC yearbook for the past winners. That will give you an idea of what we are looking for. Help us award the most deserving folks.