They didn't always agree, though. Rep. Sandstrom chided his mother for voting for iProvo, the city's $40 million fiber-optic telecommunications network, because he thought government should stay out of what he considered a private-sector business. In Orem, he voted against the similar, larger-scale UTOPIA project.

She defends iProvo and blames its losses on the state Legislature, which passed a law prohibiting Provo's preferred business model for the network.

Her seat will go to Sherrie Hall Everett, who organized Sandstrom's last successful campaign but ran this year to highlight issues west of I-15. Sandstrom would have won, according to her son's analysis of the voting, if a write-in candidate hadn't split the vote three ways.

Stepping away will be hard. She skipped the rest of that ill-fated horse ride but missed only one meeting, and that was because she was on council business in Germany, signing a sister-city agreement.

"I think it's going to be difficult for her," Stephen Sandstrom said. "It's always difficult when you don't leave on your own terms. She's been a little strange since the election."

She has a plan, though, to follow the post-council examples of Mark Hathaway and Paul Warner, who lost re-election bids but have continued to serve on city and community boards and committees.

"I'll find my other niche in life," she said.

Just don't expect it to include anything to do with horses or parades. In eight years, Sandstrom never rode in the annual Provo Christmas parade, though no horses are involved.

"I have parade-phobia," she said.

The rest of the council would tease her beginning each June, counting down the days to the Fourth of July, when 250,000 people line the streets of Provo for the Freedom Festival parade.

"I know how to wave, yeah," she said. "They trained me. I didn't like all that attention."

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E-mail: twalch@desnews.com