Multnomah Falls

Today was great! We had to go into work to finish some load in junk. We were done by 10am. Dani, her husband- Matthew and I drove to Multnomah Falls and spent the entire day hiking up the mountain through breathtaking views and waterfalls. We picked the 6 mile trek and we made our way up one side of the mountain and down the other. The waterfalls were unbelievable. The scenery was straight out of a picture book. Trees were 100s of feet tall, moss was growing everywhere, ferns were climbing up tree trunks, leaves were the size of basketballs and the waterfalls took my breath away. Fun fact for the day- Multnomah Falls is the 2nd highest yearround waterfall in the country at 620 feet. What a day! In the distance we could see Mount Hood. What a beautiful place to live. I may not leave.....

Tonka's Birthday Party

Here is the link to Tonka's bday party news article. we invited the public in. had cake, party hats, food for animals and people, a giant sized birthday card and lots of fun! even tonka the 24 year old elephant had a giant birthday hat on :)

http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_6695923?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com&nclick_check=1

Train Run # 11

wow- eleven train runs already! the rest of my week in san jose was pretty much uneventful. friday was one of my friends bdays so we all went out to a local bar close to the train. the local bar always ends up becoming where all the circus hangs out after work so it kind of loses the local feel. i swear, sometimes it is just impossible to escape the people you work with! good thing i like most of the circus folk. after being on the road for almost 3 months now, i am now able to offend in 3 different languages :) something mom should be proud of. i always wanted to be bilingual. what languages, you ask? well- german, polish and bulgarian. we left san jose early this morning after a week of shows. peta was crazy in this town as well. they are really starting to get on my nerves. during the animal walk back to the train, one of the ladies was taping the elephants and she wasnt paying attention to where she was walking and she walked right smack into a huge semi! haha. then she yelled, "THEY PUSHED ME!" no lady- you are just that dumb. i was looking at one of their flyers that they hand out to people coming into the animal open house and it said that "ringling hires inexperienced people for the animal staff, sometimes directly out of homeless shelters." seriously. what is wrong with these people. i am waiting for a water stop right now. they said 30 minutes 45 minutes ago. that is how the circus works i guess. we are heading to portland- i am so exicted! i cant wait to see mountains! we just got my plane ticket this week for the wedding- i get to be home from tuesday to sunday. that is going to be just glorious. i also get to fly home for thanksgiving day :) i cant wait! well.... i will be stuck on the trian until tuesday night. i will probably spend most of my time sleeping and waiting for water stops.

Hello from San Jose!

Well another new city! Can you believe i have been with the circus for 11 cities now? how crazy is that! we had a very long load out day on sunday in... where were we.....oakland. i went overland this week so following the animal walk, i piled into a car with 5 other people and drove to san jose. thank god it was a short drive. i checked into a hotel at about 1:30 AM and got 5 hours of sleep before i had to get up again for load in. i started the day with a coffee from starbucks with 3 extra shots of "wake your ass up!" me and 3 other people put up the entire tent, 14 horse stalls, 3 pony stalls, put 7 bags of shavings in each stall, filled water buckets, unloaded hay and made everything home for the animals again. we had the animal walk around noon. because i went overland, i got to go home right after the walk. Peta has been on our butts like crazy the past few towns. in oakland we caught them throwing water bottles at the animals. they do that so they can get a reaction out of them, catch it on video and say, "hey look! their animals are crazy!" they forget to leave out the part where they are chucking crap over the fences. crazy people i tell you. i had yesterday off and spent it catching up on sleep. i slept for 15 hours straight. yikes! today was opening day. looooooooooooooooooooooong day. i was at work from 7am to 9pm. ugh. same peta people were there. today it was one of the elephants birthdays...tonka. she is 24 years old today. so we threw her a birthday party complete with birthday cake and party hats. it was so cute! how many people can say they went to an elephant's birthday party? sometimes i really do love my job. well.... early bus again tomorrow. woo hoo........ have you ever felt overworked and underpaid?

chow!

A Short Trip Into San Fran

Yesterday we had a morning practice. afterwards we had a long break so a few friends and i took the train into the heart of san fran. what a neat city! i got to ride a trolley. you should see the hills there! my god, all i could think was "wow, i would not be able to drive my 5 speed here." i dont know how people do it. we took the trolley right up to the golden gate bridge and alcatraz. we had lunch at a fantastic sea food restaurant. i had the best fish and chips i have ever had in my life. i bought a few post cards and a magnet to go along with my collection of other cities i have been to since the circus. i even passed a homeless man holding a sign that said, "why lie? i want beer" needless to say, i gave him money. it was a short trip into the city but it was well worth it. we only had one show last night. peta has been crazy in this city. last night they were throwing water bottles at the elephants trying to get a reaction out of them. they are so damn crazy it drives me nuts. today we had 3 shows. tomorrow we have 3 shows plus load out. i am also driving overland to san jose. what a week- it sure has flown by.

chow!

Best Day of My Life!!!

Yesterday was amazing. We had the day off and the animal crew was given free passes as well as private tour of the discovery kingdom animal park. wow- where do i begin. first we got to play with dolphins. they did tricks and we even got to pet them. they feel like wet hot dogs. haha. next we saw the african and asian elephants. we were up close with them, touching them, hugging them, feeling their ivory tusks. how cool. after the elephants we got to see a killer whale! i have never seen one- so i was super excited for that. we watched the vet do an xray of one of his teeth, and afterwards he did some jumps and flips with a dolphin. we got a big group picture with him too. after that we had a private show with sea otters and cali sea lions. we got to take pictures with the big sea lion. everyone barely put a hand on him- i hugged that sea lion like he was my best friend. :) next we got to feed giraffe, play with a 6 month old baby cougar, feed an anteater hunny, touch a blood python and play with a baby zebra and camel. i dont think anything will ever compare to how cool yesterday was! after i got back from the park i went to the oakland a's baseball game with some friends. we got seats in the bleachers, ate too many $1 hot dogs and drank too many $8 beers. what a blast. life is good!

Let Me Explain How A Water Stop Works.....

I wish peta would show up for a water stop so they could see how much we do for these animals. let me try to explain this so you all can understand.... during train runs, while everyone else is getting wasted, animal crew gets to be on call 24 hours a day. for instance- this morning i was woken up at 6am and told the water stop was ready to go. when we get down to the stock cars where the animals are, i see that the train has parked on a 30 foot hill- almost straight up with all rocks- not grass. great. next step- climb up into the car where the 100 pound bales of hay are housed. we throw them over the side and of course, because we are parked on a 30 foot rock hill, every single bale rolls down the hill. great. next step- drag the 100 pound bales of hay back up the hill and lift them about 9 feet in the air onto the stock cars where the animals are. now in order to fully comprehend the next step i have to explain how the horses are kept in the stock cars. for safety reasons they are in very narrow, but long stalls with doors that you lift up to get from stall to stall. when you open the door to one stall there is about 1.5-2.0 feet of clearance to crawl under to get to the next stall. we crawl in so we are just under their heads. we repeat this with all 13 horses. so back to the next step- i get to get on my hands and knees, push a 100 pound bale of hay through to the last stall. i crawl through shit, piss, bugs, dirt, not to mention the entire time my pony tail is being nibbled at because the horses are so excited that 1. they get to eat and 2. there are people there. so- after i have crawled and made it to the end stall i give each horse enough hay to last 12 hours. then i crawl back where i came from and repeat with the next line of horses- they are split into the paints and fjords on one car, fresians and arabs on another car, and ponies are housed in a different car. you should see us when we are done with the water stop. we look like we have just crawled through a sewer. i would love for peta to come on the road and join us for a week. then maybe they would have respect for how we treat our incredibly spoiled, well loved animals. well. i am going to go back to bed. trainmaster said we are about 4 hours out from oakland. hopefully they spot all the cars on time so we can do the animal walk and have tomorrow off.

chow!

Adios San Diego

sad to say, but i am leaving san diego. i had such a blast here and am really bummed to be leaving here and my family. yesterday inbetween all the shows i went to a flea market just across the street. it was a dollar to get in and they had all kinds of neat things. bouquets of flowers for 5 bucks, shoes, clothes, fruit, veges, jewelry, etc. you name it they had it. i stayed in last night since today was a load out day. the fam came and got me in the morning and we had breakfast at denny's. my mom was all excited because she had just stolen a ringling poster from a gas station with bello on it. and as she was picking me up, bello just happened to be walking outside. so she got to meet famous bello and get his autograph. when she asked if his hair was real, his response was "yea i put viagra in it". haha. we just finished loadout and i got back to the train. im finally all showered and ready for bed. i would love to eat some dinner, but all the power just went off. i guess that is just life in the circus for you. well... i cant think of anything else to say, so i am going to wait for the darn power to get back on so i can eat me some lean pockets.

Still Having Fun...

The past few days have been a blast. Yesterday during my break, my family came to pick me up and we drove to Mission Beach where we ate lunch and rode a rollarcoaster right on the beach. It was so old and rickety and so much fun! Everyone came to the show last night and fell in love with the circus. My mom even got in a fight with a PETA person! Now you know where I get it. As nervous as I was, I didn't mess up in the ring- Thank God. After the show, we went to Big Dick's restaurant so Andy and Carl could try to win a lobster dinner. They almost got the sucker a few times, I think the game is rigged though. They had him out of the water and everything before he managed to squirm away. Today we had 2 shows. My mom and Pat came and picked be up inbetween shows and took me grocery shopping. We had lunch at a mall and I got a new Razor phone for $10. I dropped my old one this morning and it broke in 2 pieces, so I figured it was time for an upgrade. Tomorrow we have 3 shows. Ugh. I really hate Saturdays. I used to live for them, now I could really just live without them. Well, time for bed~

Chow

I LOVE San Diego!

San Diego is great. we are parked right in the heart of downtown, within walking distance of great bars, restaurants and boutiques. yesterday was marilyn's last day so we walked around downtown and had drinks and lunch at big dick's restaurant. andy, teresa and my mom flew in yesterday. i gave them the grand tour of my house and where i eat. everyone had the same look of shock as i did when i first saw my room. we went to old town and had dinner and drinks. it was great to see familiar faces again. i got dropped off last night back in downtown and met up with a bunch of friends for marilyn's last night. the bar we were at had one of those machines where you use the metal claw to try to grab the objects. usually you try to get a stuffed bunny or maybe a cool hat. at this bar- you tried to catch a live lobster and if you do they cook it for you for free! haha we had a lot of fun with that last night. today was opening day. 7am bus. ugh. i got to skip practice to bring marilyn to the airport to send her off back home. we were both in tears and now my buddy is gone. boo. everyone was asking me today where my sister was. everyone there thought we were twins. apparently when people have blonde hair that means they are twins. well it has been a long day. tomorrow my family is coming to the show- YAY!

chow

Off to San Diego!

we are done in anaheim! the other night at the show- gene simmons was there! and he came backstage and i was about 10 feet from him. very neat. today i got to take pictures with asia, the elephant. i am so in love with her. not too much happened while we were here. i tried a few local restaurants and found that the service here was crap. i also came to the conclusion that people in this city are dumb. my horses are going to have an identity crisis one of these days- every single day more than one person would call our paints and champ the mini cows. and the worse part was that the parents DIDN'T correct them! and the best one i heard was a girl call gunther, my white mini pony a PIG! oh man. some people are just stupid. we worked a 13 hour day today. we get to get up at 4am to finish load out, do the animal walk and then we are off to san diego, which means mom and andy and teresa and the rest of my crazy family! i cannot wait to see familiar faces. on that note- i am going to sleep.

chow!