...or at least it would have been if he hadn't been arrested on a handful of allegations, including reckless endangerment and riding a horse while under the influence of alcohol (yes, that's a real charge) hundreds of miles from the state line.
The first word about Schumacher's arrest in Boulder on Monday, before flooding swamped the city, didn't come from law enforcement. Instead, it was sent out by Twitter user @LostontheHill. Here's her dumbfounded initial tweet:
Boulder police are currently breathalyzing a guy on a horse by Zanitas....
— Lost in Boulder (@LostontheHill) September 9, 2013
This message was followed by photographic evidence of a man later identified as Schumacher getting the aforementioned Breathalyzer treatment....
...and assuming the position for a member of the University of Colorado police department while his dog, a pug named Bufford, looked on: What led to this ignominious treatment? At 2:14 p.m. on Monday, according to the CUPD, a dispatcher received a report of a man in the vicinity of Broadway and Baseline who was allegedly hitting his horse over and over again, and doing so hard enough to make the animal rear up on its hind legs, rodeo-style.By the time officers caught up with Schumacher, he'd made it to Broadway near College Avenue, and the journey apparently took a lot out of him. He's said to have been slumped to his right and was in so little control of Dillon as he crossed streets that police say he was forcing pedestrians off the sidewalk.
Granted, he had his hands full carrying Bufford. And that's not to mention the beer cans in his saddle bag, along with what's described as a small black-powder pistol.
The cops say Schumacher was slurring his words when they addressed them, and that's too bad. After all, aside from his dubious claim about why he'd hit Dillon (he said he was just trying to smack a fly on his head), he had a fine story. He said that in order to be present at his bro's nuptials, he needed to get from Larkspur to Bryce, Utah, and given that he'd lost his driver's license some time earlier, the horse seemed like a reasonable alternative.
Unfortunately, though, Schumacher soon failed a sobriety test, putting his journey on hold due to his arrest on suspicion of four offenses -- the two mentioned earlier, plus animal cruelty and prohibited use of weapons.
At least the ending of this saga isn't entirely unhappy. The short-term cure for drunkenness is time, and by the next day, Schumacher was together enough that the cops sent him on his way with great fanfare, tweeting out the following photo of him aboard Dillon as he headed back on the road to Utah:
What are the odds that he makes it there in one piece? Well, we haven't heard otherwise. So we're hoping he'll arrive at the church on time -- and after the ceremony, he'll pose for photos that don't look anything like the one snapped by the CU police. More from our Schmuck of the Week archive: "'Major Tom Wilson,' scamming schmuck, tries to con people into paying for missing jury duty."
