The Cowgirl Rides Again

No, I did not ride off into the sunset. No, I did not get bucked off a horse and die. No, I did not get run over by a stampede of wild cattle. The cowgirl is alive and well. It has been a long time since my last post, and for that I apologize. I believe the Frog has it memorized by now. This one's for you, Gracky!

The cowgirl narrowly survived a long summer in the foothills of Central California. For a while there, I didn't know if I was going to make it, but before I knew it, the first rain had hit and the temperatures finally dropped below ninety degrees at night. I have never been around such severe summer weather as is typical in the Central California region. Oh wait, I just realized that some may not even know why I would be in Central California. Allow me to rewind approximately 8 months. It was about then that I could not take another day at my job and I hurriedly responded to the calls of the great outdoors, horses, and cattle. Yes, I quit my job.

I took a position with a horse ranch located at the base of the Sequoia and Kings Canyon Nat'l Parks. My new town boasts a thriving metropolis of 140 inhabitants, a post office, wanna-be convenience store, and most importantly...a bar. We're sophisticated up here, let me tell you. We also have our fair share of wildlife including coyotes (too many to count), bears, deer, wild pigs, and I even saw a wolf! It was a starving wolf. It was eating roadkill. It was a wolf, nonetheless.

After arriving at the ranch, my life took a strange turn of events. I originally took the position as an assistant trainer/breeder/manager. Kind of the Jill-of-all-trades, kinda cowgirl. Oddly enough, however, the very individual who recruited me to work for her, left the day that I arrived at the ranch. Well, not that day exactly, but that is when she broke the news to me. I was immediately promoted to horse trainer. It wasn't long after that, that the breeding manager decided to try her hand at Vet School in the Bahamas (yes, you can get a DVM and a tan at the same time!) and I took over as manager of the ranch. It's not many places that you can work your way up to the top of the totem pole in a matter of weeks. So here I was at the top with no one under me. I had no full time employees to boss around and a long summer of intense heat quickly approaching.

So that roughly brings you up to speed so I can tell you about the summer. I was riding approximately 6 horses/day and working about 15 others. The temperature for 3 weeks straight stayed above 105 degrees. At night we were given a break and it would drop to a whopping 90 degrees. I'm not kidding! I drove home from hauling horses and looked at the temperature guage in the truck and at 10:00pm, it read 99 degrees! I couldn't believe it! To top it all off, I had no air conditioner or swamp cooler in my house so I spent the nights wide awake and sweating bullets. Here are recaps of a typical summer day at the ranch:

4:30am wake up
5:00 am drive to barn area, water arenas, drag arenas, start saddling horses.
6:00 am start riding horses and working
11:30 pm break for lunch and siesta. eat. spend entire afternoon on couch watching reruns of Law and Order.
6:00 pm peel stuck skin from leather counch and drive back to barn to finish the day.
10:00 pm return home, check the thermometer to confirm that it is still above 90 degrees, fall onto the bed out of sheer heat exhaustion and pretend to sleep on top of the covers.

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep, but then one day I bought an air conditioner for my bedroom, and life was never the same. I actually slept at night! I could function during the day without 3 or 4 cups of coffee! I love technology. I have never loved a/c so much in my life! It truly is a wonderful thing.

Now we are headed into the cold winter months. I am sure it won't be long when this here cowgirl is begging for blue skies and warm sunshine. But for now, I very much enjoy a nice gray day of fog and chilly nights.

Until next time...