Just Call Him A Bull Rider…

You heard me speak of my good fortune at finding a strong young man to help us move and do heavy lifting for me. This is Jonathan getting his game face on…

Both his daddy and his granddaddy were bull riders.  Jon started riding when he was 5 years old and after 9 years the boy is practically a veteran.  They only let him ride steers, which really ‘chaps his ass’, pun intended, but he will be 15 in April and then can start riding the big bulls.

   One of the neat things about going to small local forums is that I can walk around and watch what the cowboys do to prepare for their ride.  Here Jon is working on the baling wire on his spurs that go under the heel of his boots to help keep them from slipping when he gets hooked into the hide of the bull.

Some riders like to tie their boots on with strips of latigo. They DO NOT want their feet to slip out of their boots causing them to lose their leg grip.

And another example… or two.  Each cowboy has their own routine that they go through, kind of like every other sport, they have their own superstitions.

I thought these chaps were good looking… not much else is on this photo…

This shot looks a little better…

And check out these blue chaps.

Jonathan strapping his chaps up, getting ready for his ride.

Waiting his turn.  There were 21 entries in the bull riding division so they ran out 10 of the bull riders, then ran Jon’s group, the steer riders, then the mutton busters which was won by a GIRL!!!  Wooo Hoooo!!!  Then came time for Jon’s group.

He asked me if I could video his ride for him and I told him I’d try.  I’d only done it once so here is my try at video with my point and shoot camera…

Except for the fact that I can’t figure out how to get it to download. I’m unloading my boxes as fast as I can to try and figure it out.  I know where the video is, it is the verbiage that is killing me.  I give them (those gremlins that reside in my computer) the answers to the questions as best as I can figure out but then I get something like the path is incorrect or the name isn’t right for the transition to be made and my ever favorite,         ” You’re an idiot that can’t figure out shit about computers!”

When I do figure it out I’ll have a bunch of videos to share. Right now I think I’ll go back to bed and cry myself to sleep.

Yes We Saw PW And Her Family…

To be truthful, that’s the main reason I could talk Carol into going.  Not that she doesn’t like rodeo.  She likes the rodeo almost as much as I do.  In fact I’m hoping to get her to go to the Lazy E Arena the next time that the pro bull riders come to town because we both love watching the bull riders.  You have to remember we were both born and raised in Oklahoma.  Besides OU and OSU football, we both grew up playing basketball although I was in OKC playing sissy b-ball and Carol played in a small town where they traveled around to other towns or the other towns came to her school to play and they were a lot tougher than the city schools.  The small towns eat, sleep and breathe girls basketball.  I mean look at coach Sherri Coale, O.U. Women’s basketball coach.  She was a scrappy and tough as nails b.baller in highschool…

But that wasn’t what you wanted to know about, I hear you saying… get on with it already, Helen…

Any of you all that have 10 or 12 year old daughters might want to try taking them to rodeos to meet the young cowboys.

Or you might want to go to try and meet ‘your’ cowboy.

There was an awful lot of ‘eye candy’'… for everyone…

Guys, girls and young’ uns.  There was wranglin’ and ropin’..

And did I say cowboys?

Here they were running the cows for the wild cow milking event down to the chute.

I have to do the proviso thing… these photos are crap, but they are the best I could do with my point and shoot.  The lighting was about the equivalent of shooting up the ‘rectum of an elephant’ to borrow a phrase from my baby brother.    I also tried a few videos… I don’t know if I can get them to post, but I’ll try… Nope… I’ll have to do some work on figuring it out.

Ree is gonna kill me… You see, Ree is Carol’s niece.  SHE  and the kids are the reason I got Carol to go, well, that and we have a van that we can take her in her wheelchair.  Carol’s legs don’t do very good at much walking with all her crappy discs in her back.  So we went to the rodeo, got there and got Carol settled in her chair and went to looking for Ree.  About the time I spotted here she was taking the older boy down for a ‘break’.  I caught up with her and told her that Carol was here and where we were sitting.  She came over and visited for a bit with Carol, then brought each of the kids  (except for the oldest son, he was busy… you know how boys are), to say hi to their great aunt.

  Aunt Carol Sue and the baby boy.

Aunt Carol Sue and the great wild burro rider.

Aunt Carol Sue and Pioneer Girl…

And last but not the least by any means… Pioneer Woman and Pioneer Girl.

Where Was I?

Oh, yes… Corn.  I am having fun with this corn experiment.  But sometime life interferes with my reporting. But I’m here with a report tonight.

The tallest of the good day corn.  As best I can count at this point in time there are 4 ears in development.

  Good day corn is on the right.

The only bad day corn stalk is growing taller, but no sign yet of any silk.

How about these little bitty chaps. They are so cute…

And what, you may ask, do those little bitty chaps have to do with corn?  That’s the reason I’m late with the corn.  We went to the Working Cowboys Ranch Rodeo on Saturday and didn’t get home until after midnight and I was tired.  And lazy all day Sunday… and I’ll be posting about the rodeo as soon as I can pick out the photos and get my brain to writing a good post. 

So adios for tonight.  That’s all the corn I can come up with on this report.