The End of the Whirlwind

I can't believe it's been nearly three weeks since I blogged about the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and the International Livestock Congress. I guess time flies when you are having the time of your life! These last ten days have been a whirlwind. I want to recap with you all the events of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Beginning with Wednesday, March 7th, those five days are as follows:

The best interns came from A&M, of course...

Early Wednesday morning headed into Houston, only to arrive bang on at rush hour. Poor planning and no forethought aside, rush hour turns Houston's 610 beltloop freeway into a never ending parking lot. No joke, ladies and gents, it took nigh on 2 hours to go the 14 miles I needed to traverse before I got to my exit. And there was no sign of the reason for the delay. None. That’s a pain right there. Anyway, after I extracted Christine (Dad named my truck) and myself from the freeway fray, I unerringly found my way both to my downtown Houston Hotel accommodations AND to Reliant Centre, where the HLSR was under full swing. I say unerringly, but I had some help from Nuvi (I named my GPS). She yelled and hollered and barked orders for the entire trip, but she and I made it all the way, together. So I arrive at the rodeo grounds, find the Superintendent’s office, and meet my fellow interns. There were six of us altogether, four from Texas A&M and two from that other school: Texas Tech. We eyed each other warily for a bit but essentially each school found the other to have sent reputable individuals, so it was quickly down to work. The first thing we did was check the entries for errors or grounds for disqualifications. Sounds like a not bad job, easy, quick, right? Nope. Wrong. While there were six of us interns, there were 2000 heifer entries. That’s a whole damn bunch of little names, little tattoos and little birthdates on a spreadsheet being compared and contrasted with names, tattoos and birthdates on each entry's registration paper. I had a headache and sore eyes when I finally turned the last page of the Simbrah papers and declared myself finished. It only could go up from here, I thought. I was wrong.

They sent us back to the hotel around five pm on Wednesday afternoon, to freshen up, nap and eat. We were given an address before we left and we were told to be there at ten pm Wednesday night to begin the staging of trailers for unloading. Dutifully, we arrived at the given coordinates to find an astonishing sight. Trailers lined up 20 deep and six or seven rows across, in a wide open gravel parking lot in the middle of nowhere. One of the superintendents took three of us interns, one of which was me, gave us a green card and an orange card, both of which needed to be written on by us, and instructed us to visit each truck, in order, and give them a green and orange card. This didn't sound so daunting at first. We started at around ten pm, six or seven rows of approximately 20 trailers was around a hundred and forty vehicles, divided by three was 46.6 trailers each. Nothing, really. Again, I was wrong. Those trailers were only the first bunch, and were soon followed by hundreds more. Each needed two cards, and by now we had lost the young lady we were working with, so it was only two interns. We did get some moderate help from a group of volunteers, but until they figured out the pattern they more of a hindrance than a help. Finally, the last trailer pulled out at around three pm Thursday. That means that the other intern and I had walked for seventeen hours, and I had been wide awake for almost 36 hours. My feet had been reduced to bloody stumps, there were holes in the bottoms of my shoes, and I was covered, head to toe, in a fine talcum of gravel dust. It was awesome.

If I remember correctly, we finally were allowed to sleep at about 8 Thursday night, and by god, sleep we did. It was an early morning though, up at 5:30 to get to the grounds through traffic by seven. Friday started the shows proper, and I started the day in the office dealing with all manner of problems and concerns from the FFA, 4-H leaders, and Parents of the juniors. I never once talked to an irate or upset Junior member. Considering that there was around 2000 of them, that’s pretty damn impressive. And the parents just need to calm down. It'll all be OK! Typically the kids knew what was going on and how to deal with problems better than I did. I couldn't take much more of being some east Texas Mother's emotional punching bag, so I jumped on the chance to escape into the showring. The first show I was a ringman for was the American Registered breed show, or the All Other Breeds with Brahman Influence. Lots of odd looking cattle in that show, good in their own right, but weird looking to me. Next was the largest show, the Beefmasters. 47 entries in the first class was a lot of cattle to keep moving and organized. Over Saturday and Sunday, I ringed six more breed shows and the Supreme Champion show. I walked all over both rings, which were covered in bright green shavings. These shavings dyed everything The bottoms of my boots, the cuffs of my pants, the corners of my eyes, and other more unpleasant places like the insides of my ears and nose... I was a leprechaun from the inside out.

In short, however, it was a fantastic five days, I made awesome contacts, had a lot of fun, and saw some pretty fantastic cattle. Would I do it again? Most certainly!