March 2-3rd:
After the rodeo in Ft. Pierce, about 9:00pm, I headed west to Tampa (which was about 3 hours out of the way). I had to get a rental car there. This is where logistics gets a bit confusing. You see, I planned to drive my rental car to Mayo and film for the TV show, and then take the rental to San Antonio, TX the next week where I was set to receive PRK Refractive Surgery. After the surgery, I wouldn’t be able to drive, so my plan was to fly from TX back down to Tampa where I would then have my actual car, go to the rodeo in Arcadia, and drive myself home. It made the most sense to me! So as I am on the road to Tampa, I’m on the phone trying to get ahold of rental companies. I’m happy to hear that almost every company at the airport was open late. I got ahold of Hertz, tried to use my reward points, and realized they were waaaaaay too expensive for a one way drop off. I called 3 or 4 other locations only to find out the same thing. When I say expensive, I mean about $800 expensive. Not worth the rental! I might as well just fly! By this time, I wished I would’ve starting making these phone calls a lot earlier, because it looks like I’m not going to be able to get a car. I just wasted 3 hours of valuable sleep because of failure to plan! At this point, I’m tired and quite upset, so I just push through and drive up to Mayo. I would figure out a new plan later. I drove until about 5:30am in the morning to find the R O Ranch where we would be staying for the filming of the show, and couldn’t have been happier to hit the pillow when I got there. What seemed like two seconds after my eyes closed, my alarm went off. 6:30 came much too early! Instead of getting up and taking a shower like I should’ve, I simply hit snooze until about 6:50. I finally got up, and was quite pleased when I looked in the mirror. I looked a lot like I did the night before at the rodeo – my makeup hadn’t moved and my hair was salvageable! Good thing I didn’t roll around too much during the hour of sleep I got! I put on a little more makeup, put my fake hair piece in, added in some hair spray and was good to go. I couldn’t believe how easy that was!
Del Shields was the person who invited me to go on the ride. He is DJ Shields’ dad, and DJ dates my sister, Trisha. I hadn’t ever met him before, so it was nice to spend some time with him and I was so excited he thought of inviting me on the show! Tom Seay was the host of the show and I had seen him on TV before. He was very hospitable, cooked us breakfast every morning at his trailer! And he was a pretty good cook, too! He gave Del an awful lot of gruff. He didn’t let up all weekend! Friday night, before I got there, Del had gotten bucked off of a BLM mustang two separate times. Tom wasn’t about to let him forget about it!
The R.O. Ranch is a 2,500-acre equestrian park, located at the northern end of approximately 20,000 acres of public lands. The theme of the park is set in the Florida "cracker" style of the 1920s. All of the buildings and facilities are reminiscent of that era with white board siding and tin roofs. For the show, I gave an introduction to everyone. I welcomed the group to Florida before we started out on the ride. I also did some promo clips, commercial clips and did an interview of the winners of an art contest. I did really well in front of the camera. It made me nervous, but I figured it was good practice for Vegas.
One of the coolest things about the ride was meeting all different kinds of people. Everyone was so nice and a lot of them were quite interesting. There were tons of breeds I had never seen before that people were riding. I had the chance to ride a Tennessee Walking Horse, a Pasafino, and a Saddlebred. I saw a Morgan and a Kentucky Mountain Horse, too! One lady even invited me to go fox hunting with hounds like you would see in pictures! I was so excited. I had such a great weekend and I can’t wait to see it air on RFDTV, but I will have to wait until June for that to happen.
After the filming, I had to come up with a new logistics plan, I decided I’d drive to Tallahassee and rent a car there to drive to San Antonio. I found one for pretty cheap so we were in business! Now, I would just need to figure out a ride from the Tampa airport to the Okeechobee rodeo, and to the Arcadia rodeo, then back up to Tallahassee on Sunday and I’d be golden!
Running Time in a Car: 67h 30m
Running Mileage: 4552
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