My First Rodeo

So even though I lived in TX for 26 years, I had never been to a rodeo until yesterday. I went with some friends from work to the Elizabeth Stampede. It's a small town about 10-15 miles from where I work, and every year they put on a big rodeo. They had a small carnival area with lots of booths selling stuff, snowcones and carnival food, and even a mechanical bull. We bought "Texas Taters" - which I've never heard of before, in Texas or elsewhere. They had a setup with a drill, but instead of a drill bit it had a long screw attached to it. In front of the screw was a knife. They stuck a potato onto the screw and then when they turned on the drill and pushed it forward the potato was cut into thin slices by the knife. Pretty creative use of power tools! The potato slices were then fried and served with cheese (classic carnival food combo - fried with cheese!).

After we ate we found our seats - on the top row of some homemade-looking bleachers. There wasn't a back to the bleachers, so during the rodeo people would jump down (about 7-8 feet) to get more snacks or beer. The rodeo itself was pretty fun - they had calf-roping, calf-wrestling, bull-riding, barrel-racing, and a really cute event called mutton-busting (I think). Little kids would try to ride a sheep, like a junior bull-ride. One little girl stayed on for several seconds! It was a fun experience and apparantly just as popular in Colorado as it is in Texas.