As promised, I finally have a much-belated post about going to Cheyenne Frontier Days as part of our summer trip to Denver. "The Daddy of 'em All," as it's informally called, is the week-long rodeo/fair that serves as the central summer gathering for southeastern Wyoming. I guess as far as rodeos go, it's one of the bigger ones. We went on a whim after reading about it in the paper that morning, and Erin and Ari joined us. After a scenic drive up through Ft. Collins and lots of dry plains country, we got to Cheyenne and eventually found our way over towards the fairgrounds. The crowds were descending on the place from all directions but not only did we find a parking place close by, Kate snagged us 4 great tickets from the officially designated scalpers' area (saving us at least 30 minutes in the slowest moving line of all time).
The events were varied but generally were either the bucking style - where a cowboy is trying not to fall of some type of thrashing and leaping and gyrating beast, the roping style - where a cowboy on a horse will try to lasso and/or wrestle to the ground and tie up a calf, or the racing style - where a cowboy or girl will try to race his horse around a set of barrels or the like. It was not only an interesting cultural experience, but an engaging event. What struck me most - well, aside from the sheer insanity of it all and how there was only one injury that seemed serious as a result of it all - was how the announcer in the stadium really added to my enjoyment of the experience by offering a continuous narration of the events along with little nuggets of wisdom, insight, commentary, and humor. Unlike most impartial and sterile-sounding announcers at typical events like baseball or football games, the guy here was a chatterbox who wasn't afraid to call out a rider for bailing off a bull early or inciting the crowd to boo the judges for a set of low scores awarded to a popular rider. And as a novice observer I appreciated when he offered explanations of the intricacies of calf-roping scoring or rules. For example - when you jump off your horse to "bust" a calf you have to 1) stop before wrestling it to the ground (can't just knock it over) and 2) you have to flip it to a particular side. Kind of refreshing.
Here's some photos from our great vantage point in the crowd:
Oh yeah, I almost forgot! The day's events ended with the "Wild Horse Race" which I found out later is somewhat controversial among the PETA types (as is the whole concept of rodeo events) due to the rough handling of the horses that I guess has led to many equine injuries each year these things are held. Anyways, in the wild horse teams of 3 cowboys are given a never-before-ridden bronco on a 30 food lead, and the goal is to "reel" it in, get a saddle on it, and then ride a lap around the track on it first. It is insane. And they start if off by blasting a cannon, which does little to calm the already frenzied wild horses that are trying to figure out why they have a bridle on and why someone is tugging on them. Mass chaos ensues for the next fifteen minutes or so.
Also, if you let go of your horse at any point your team is out of it, which led to the highlight of the day for us - watching this poor, stubborn guy get dragged a few hundred yards through the dirt as his team's horse decided he had had enough and was ready to split:
Kudos to the guy for holding on while the crowd cheered him on until just after he went out of sight. Anyways, I think I'll stick to softball and road biking for my sports.
