Black Hills Stock Show & Rodeo

January 31-February 3rd:

This week I flew back to visit my old stomping grounds for the Black Hills Stock Show & Rodeo held in Rapid City, South Dakota. The weather came as a bit of a shock, going from 75 degrees to -3 degrees, but everything else was just as I remembered it. I had been coming to this rodeo since I was a little girl, and in fact - it is where I saw my very first rodeo queen. I always dreamed of getting to carry flags here one day, and what a great feeling to have that dream finally come true. This was also the first rodeo where I got to interact with other visiting state queens, which was really fun. 

The horse I was assigned to ride was called 22, or TomTom. He hadn't been used in a rodeo before and I was well warned before I got on him. Sutton Rodeo was the stock contractor, and I seemed to remember their horses being fairly rank for flag horses. Courtney Peterson, MRSD 2012, was in charge of the flags - and she suggested I wait until about half way through the first perf to go out on my trusty steed. We followed right behind somebody else, which seemed to help. For the second time out, I would be on my own, waiting until the girl in front of me was about half way around the arena before I started. This time didn't go quite as well, we started humping up about a quarter of the way around the arena. The crowd had a great reaction, and we came out of it and made it the rest of the way around. It was hard to get this horse moving; he just wanted to slow up and duck his head down and hump up on me. The second time out my strategy was to really spur him to get a little speed and keep his head up. Unfortunately, it didn't work out quite as planned. We didn't really get to going until about half way around, and he was spooked at every banner, despite my desperate spurring action (which caused my flag to pop out of my boot), and of course made a big deal about the photographer in the corner of the arena, spooking and jumping. What a handful, I thought. Of course, they'd give him to me! But when Courtney reassured me it's because of my riding ability, it made me feel a lot better - until the next perf anyway! For the next rodeo, ol' TomTom had to rear up as we were coming out of the arena. My flag popped out of my boot again, too. Wayne Brooks happened to be the announcer again so it was nice of him to cover while I was holding up the flags with a story about my service and deployments overseas. This time, I welcomed the attention because I finally figured out this horse wasn't going to do anything I couldn't handle. Each time around we got a little better and better, until the end of the 3rd rodeo - where I believe we have a 5 star flag horse added to the Sutton Rodeo string! 

Other than the rodeo, the queens got to do a lot of fun activities. We visited Mt. Rushmore one day and on the other days we went to autograph signings at Wal-Mart and even got to go to a banquet before the rodeo for some free grub! The best part about the BHSS though, was seeing everyone I knew. It was so much fun to come back as Miss Rodeo Florida! Everyone was very proud of me and very supportive. 

On my way to the BHSS, I was lucky to fly standby and get on all of the flights I had scheduled to be on. On the way back, however, was a whole different story. With two morning flights canceled, the standby list was hopeless. I ended up staying an extra night and buying a ticket back to work the following day, and missing one more day of work than planned (woops)! It was nice to get out of my hotel room in Rapid, though, and get to spend one night at home. It might be awhile before I see my own real bed again!

Running Time in a Car: 32h 28m
Running Mileage: 2201