This year wasn't my first rodeo, but last year was.
I learned many lessons from last year's rodeo that I applied to this year. I didn't wear black because I knew it would not be black by the end of the day but rather a dusty shade of grayish brown that would take days to get rid of. I brought a bottle of water to wash the dust out of my throat. I didn't think of doing anything with my hair other than tying it back. I cut myself off of the amusement rides after two, especially after bursting into tears on the second, fully convinced I was going to die, even though the ride was allegedly a family-friendly one meant for parents and children alike.
Perhaps the most important lesson of all, however, that I applied to this rodeo that I did not yet know last year was to be careful where you parked. Frodo's journey to Mount Doom doesn't hold a candle to the hopelessness and despair felt while wandering fruitlessly through unending rows of massive, over-compensating pickup trucks looking for what seemed to be the only respectable little car in the entire field.
In fact, I vividly recall giving up the search last year and finding a grassy patch to collapse on. My only option had been to wait until all the trucks had left the area and my vehicle was the only one left.
So I sat there, dehydrated, dirty, and morosely calling my mother to tell her of my parking troubles. It took about an hour for everyone to clear out and there, at last, in the setting sun, sat my car, as if it had been there all along. I suppose it had, though I'm pretty sure I'd walked by that spot at least half a dozen times.
This time, I came to the rodeo prepared.
I parked my car, climbed out, closed it up and locked it, and then pulled my beloved Blackberry out of my pocket.
Then, with a fiendish sense of glee and accomplishment, I fired up my CarFinder App and hit “Park.”
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Lose your car in a parking lot? Never fear. There's an app for that.
I had never had the occasion to use my CarFinder app before. There aren't many parking lots in Bonnyville that can't be conquered with a quick glance on my tiptoes or a few minutes of bewildered wandering.
I made sure my phone had filed away the specific coordinates of my car and then shoved the phone in my pocket, slung my camera bag over my shoulder, and bravely walked towards what I knew would be a long, hot Sunday afternoon of rodeo.
It went better than last year. I didn't feel quite so lost and confused, my clothes hid the dirt better than the black had the year before, the water bottle I tucked in my camera bag kept my mouth relatively free of dirt.
There were a few shaky moments – like when I was up against the fence with my camera, looking for the perfect shot of a bucking bronc, when said bucking bronc dusted the cowboy on its back and took off, careening wildly, blindly – straight towards me.
My shriek and scramble back from the fence was hardly dignified, but what can you do? Pick yourself up out of the dust, brush off the seat of your pants and tip your nose up and manfully ignore the chuckling older cowboys watching from a safe distance away.
It takes a lot of guts to get on a bucking horse, I'll give cowboys that. But it takes a little bit to climb up on a railing to photograph it, too. My dignity was mostly intact.
After the rodeo ended, I hung around for results and interviews, wilting in the heat, brushing hopelessly at the dirt on my pants and secure in the fact that as soon as I had what I needed, I was out of there. No fruitless search for my car in an endless field for me, not this year.
While I was there waiting around for over an hour, however, every single spectator in the place filed out, climbed into their truck or their SUV, and left.
By the time I trudged out to the parking field, there wasn't a single vehicle in sight – except mine.
I was tired, I was cranky, I was dirty, and now, thanks to a cruel twist of fate, my CarFinder app was useless! What kind of world was I living in?
I yanked my phone out of my pocket, scowling like I'd been betrayed in the worst possible way, and called up the app I had been so smug about before. I turned it on, hit ‘find car,' and found out I was exactly 21.5 metres away from my car, which was in a northeast direction.
Which I knew, given that my car was the only one there.
Still, I faithfully followed its directions, marching in a grim path straight to my car.
Strangely, when I arrived, the app claimed I still had a little over six metres to go, which got me thinking, for a moment, that somehow my car had been shifted a few metres before I realized the far more likely explanation was that the Earth had rotated a little over six metres on its axis since I parked.
Directions and physics and perhaps even logic have never been my strong point.
Either way, I learned my lessons from last year, applied them to this year, and learned a few more along the way.
For instance, don't get too close to the rodeo railing. Don't take laughing cowboys personally. And relying on a CarFinder app out of spite in an empty parking lot will probably get you nowhere – except maybe six meters east of where you want to be.
