yeeeeha!

For the past two weeks the Black Hills Stock Show and Rodeo have been the big thing happening in town. It seems like an odd time of year to have such an event, but we DO have our very own INDOOR rodeo arena, and NOTHING else is happening in this cold, so why not?

I have a friend who moved here the same summer we did, who is embracing the local culture better than I. She wanted to take her kids to the rodeo. Somehow she talked me into taking S along with them. She got tickets for the big finals on Saturday night! I thought S would be turned off by the violence of it all, but no; she loved everything. Her favorite horse was a small palomino with a mane and tail that reached the ground. It was ridden by a fancy lasso artist from Mexico who did some spectacular rope tricks while riding and standing on the palomino.

She liked all the roping events and especially the “bull fighting.” When I saw bull fighting on the line-up I thought we were talking about true Spanish bull fighting and I got a little sick inside. Fortunately it turns out there’s an American rodeo event called bull fighting where it’s a rodeo clown verses a bull and the clown gets points for dancing around and distracting the bull and no bulls are killed. A few clowns got tossed in the air but it’s an entirely different thing when you are wearing full body Kevlar and padding than being gored in silks and velvets. In the end S had such a good time that I got suckered into buying caught up in the excitement of it all and bought her a sparkly white cowgirl hat bedecked with a blinking light-up tiara.  Yippee kai yai yea cowgirl!