Crew Member: Horse Master with Julie Goodnight Day 1

The week following my birthday, I treated myself and went to work as a crew member for Horse Master with Julie Goodnight.

I thought I'd gotten a pretty good behind-the-scenes look at HM as a cast member, but, boy, was I wrong. My week started with playing hide-and-seek with Dale Myler at DIA. I flew in from Texas and landed about the same time as Dale, so Heidi asked me to meet him and she would meet Steve when he flew in a couple of hours later and then we would all meet up for a late breakfast and caravan to Salida.

Of course, nothing quite went as planned and by the time Dale and I met up, Steve was just a couple of minutes from landing. Since Dale had a rental car and I had parked my car in the long term lot, I thought I'd run out, pick up my car and meet him at the rental car place. Only, I had never been to the rental car place so I had no idea where it was. So I had the brilliant idea of going back to the terminal, locating the rental car shuttles and following them. It worked and I was pretty darn pleased with myself for thinking of it.

What I didn't think about was that the rental cars might be separated from the general public, so even after I met up with Dale, I couldn't have him follow me to the meeting point. That's when things went horribly wrong and we ended up playing hide-and-seek for the next hour. I'm suprised that our cell phones didn't blow up for all the calls flying back and forth.

I was so worried, because I was supposed to be meeting Dale on behalf of Julie and Heidi. Talk about pressure. I mean, he's Dale Myler of Myler Bits. The man has forgotten more about horses than I'll ever learn. Turns out, not much phases him and he was as laid back as possible and not at all frustrated about not being able to meet up according to plan.

Finally, we all got met up and headed to Julie's place, where the work began in earnest. We put together the "goodie buckets" for each of the cast members. The sponsors did good! Each cast member received a Cosequin bucket, a Troxel helmet, a Spalding Fly Predators' barn knife, a Circle Y Saddles luggage tag, a copy of one of Julie's instructional DVDs and a ton of other cool things.

At this point, I thought I was supposed to be the Hospitality Grip, but found out before the crew meeting that I was to be the Horse Grip. I can't say that I was heartbroken to be moved from essentially being a hostess and Chief Cleaner-upper to being Chief Booger-wiper.

At the crew meeting, I was re-introduced to Lucy (Assistant Instructor) and Cheryl (Wardrobe Wrangler) and met Sharon (Key Grip) and Yvonne (Hospitality Grip). Heidi, Lucy and Cheryl have been with the show since the very beginning and, in a way, so has Sharon. Sharon was one of the very first cast members in the first episodes. Yvonne had originally applied to be on the cast, but her application wasn't accepted (no, I don't know why). However, she did jump at the opportunity to work as a crew member.

Lucy was kind enough to host both Sharon and me at her place. I'd like to say that the "bachelorettes for the week" lived it up, but the truth is, we were so all dog-tired at the end of each day that we were in bed before nine.