An Epic Minecraft Journey - on horseback!

I've been playing Minecraft for a few weeks now and find it so strangely addictive that I will play for hours longer than I intended before some stimulus jars me out of my reverie and I detach my stiff, clammy hand from the mouse and stumble off to bed.  I never run out of goals to accomplish in Minecraft, whether it's "find gold to make a nifty watch", "check out the view from that mountain" or "build a massive fortress base with secret exits, glass observatories, and a tree growing up through the middle".
My addiction only increased when I discovered the excellent Mo'Creatures mod, an add-on that introduces a variety of creatures ranging from bunnies to songbirds to wolves to sharks.  And, oh, yes, horses.  Horses you can tame and ride.  My latent horse-crazy tendencies were spurred and I had to have a horse to ride around Minecraft.  You need all sorts of stuff to tame a horse, like a saddle, and lots of food bribes, but eventually I had tamed my very own horse, a blocky black horse that I named Squares.

Squares the Horse. Interests: Hay, sugar cubes, bread, bouncing around madly, neighing.  Dislikes: bears, lions, wolves, boars, and trees.

Squares is pretty cute in a polygonal sort of way, but I soon discovered the downsides to getting around by horseback.  Squares doesn't fit in openings smaller than approximately the size of an aircraft hangar, so Squares doesn't do forests.  My home base is almost completely surrounded by forests (except for a small boring and bare patch south of my base) so this puts somewhat of a limit on his usefulness.   He is also about as easy to steer as an elephant on a unicycle.

Me.  Interests: torches, mountains, waterfalls. Dislikes: skeletons, creepers, and farming.  I know it looks like I'm out having a wee in the fields or something, but the key combo for taking a screenshot on my computer includes the crouch key, so every shot of me is going to have me squatting like a fool.

So when I discovered there were such things as flying horses, I knew immediately that I had to have one.  Pegasus (pegasuses?  pegasi?) are rare, though, and in all my time hanging around my base I've never encountered one.  I am tired of waiting around for one to flutter to my doorstep, which means it's time for an Adventure.
Squares and I will travel north together (the only direction that's not forest or ocean) until we find a pegasus, and then I will fly back on the pegasus and Squares will do, well, whatever he wants.  I'm playing on easy because frankly it's going to be tricky enough steering this madly careening barge of a horse around and keeping him (and me) safe from predators, and I'm barely experienced enough with Minecraft to keep myself out of harm's way.

Me crouching fearsomely in my house at night, clutching a sword and attempting to look hardcore

So I've spent the last few days building up the supplies I'll need: sugar cubes (horses eat bread too, but sugar cubes stack conveniently and I think can also be used to heal myself), hay bales (made from wheat, which is a real pain to farm), a horse saddle (reserved for the pegasus), and lots of grilled pork for the inevitable injuries I'll be sustaining.

I think I'm ready.

Next: Turns out I wasn't ready yet.