At 5am I hopped out of bed to curl my hair and clean my tack (which was covered from the muddy slush we rode in for practice on Sunday). I got to work a little early because I knew I would be leaving earlier to get to the rodeo on time. 11am rolled around and Pat, the Rodeo of the Ozarks pageant director, picked up Rikki and I for the Kiwana's meeting. We joined several other board members and enjoyed lunch at Western Sizzlin while networking with local business men and women. I had an opportunity to speak about my travels throughout the year and the upcoming events at the rodeo.
At 2pm Pat and I had a photoshoot with the Arkansas Life Magazine. I returned to work for about an hour then headed to pick up Sach's trailer since mine is STILL in the shop. Only to get to Sach and Codi's and find that since we used Nathan's lifted truck to haul the trailer last time, the jack was set way to high to set down on a GMC pickup. Sach tried his truck too since it's a "real", aka Ford, but that didn't work out either. We had to stack several blocks of wood on the bed of the truck, jacked it up so that the weight was off of the trailer then set the jack up so that when we lowered it back down it would fit over the ball. This is probably a bit much to understand without seeing the hand motions I'm doing to portray the story... But it boils down to a huge mess that took up way too much time when we were already in a rush. After getting the trailer, Olivia and her horse we had to go Maximus. I think I shall be a professional trailer puller before long because if you saw the narrow turns into my driveway I make, I think you'd be pretty impressed.
Thankfully, we made it to the rodeo with plenty of time to get ready! We ran the rounders routine then lined up for the grand entry. Max did great and had a stunning queens run!
I quickly changed into my rounders gear and we ran through a few more times. Apparently during my speedy switch I buckled Max's rein to the nose band, tie down ring instead of to the bit. The crazy thing was that we ran through the routine to practice with his tack messed up but it didn't bother him once... when we got into the arena for the performance... that all changed. As soon as we ran out he blew up and my control went to zero. I highly recommend never riding with one rein and learned to ALWAYS double check your tack! After the rodeo I was completely humiliated and irritated at myself for not double checking my work but it seems that everything happens for a reason and the following day I found that reason out!
I decided that regardless of the tack problem, Max is a much better queen horse than Rounders horse and it would be easier not to have to switch tack. I got the wild hair to see what my boyfriend's horse was made of. Mr. Cody is a big, lean, sweet-faced, 12 year old sorrel who has done a handful of trail rides in the past five years. I rode him on Friday, brought him to the arena on Saturday then Rounders practice and he was a ROCKSTAR!! Cody loves to be rode and loves to be pushed. He is a bit out of shape but with a few more wet saddle pads he's going to be ready to Rock-N-Roll at Ozarks.
More updates & Photos to come. 9 days until Rodeo of the Ozarks and I invite you to join the fun at Parsons Stadium July 2-5.
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