El Rodeo

Before last weekend, the only thing I knew about “el rodeo” was that it’s the name of a delicious Mexican restaurant in Indianapolis. How quickly that changed with a $15 ticket to the Cowtown Coliseum Championship Rodeo at the Fort Worth Stockyards.   

Me and JP. In the heat.

Thanks to Erin, our adventure started at the Fort Worth Stockyards on a balmy 106 degree Saturday afternoon. We started the day off with really big beers. 

 The Millers - pun intended

Then we watched “The Herd” of longhorns go down the main street.

Cow butt

Ignorant of all things bovine, we had to use our phones to figure out whether all cows are female (they are) and whether all longhorns are male (they aren’t – despite the fact that all the longhorns we saw were definitely male).  We then wandered into true country western stores to look at hats and boots (I won’t even mention Jeff picking up the ladies boots for himself….hilarious). We feasted on steaks at Cattlemen’s Steakhouse (except poor vegetarian Erin who ate salad and side dishes) and headed over to the rodeo. While sitting in the stands, Erin and I googled rodeo fast facts to learn a little about what we were going to experience. Nothing on dear Wikipedia could prepare us for what we were about to witness. 

Scary bull.

This is just one of the videos Erin captured. We also saw calves being chased so fast that they slammed their faces into the metal ring. Cringe. In addition to bull riding, we watched cattle roping, steer chasing and some serious bucking broncos. There were even girls out there doing this stuff! My heart was racing for pretty much the whole time, and there weren’t enough 24 oz. cans of Miller Lite to numb the anxiety. I asked Jeff what they did to make the bulls go crazy like that, but quickly plugged my ears when he started to say something about “nuts” and “electrocution.” Nasty. 

 Not the best pic, but hopefully you can tell this cowboy is being whipped around

Speaking of nasty, one of the bars we went to was called Filthy McNasty's. So funny for so many reasons.

Fort Worth was quite the experience, and pretty much summed up all of my stereotypes of living in Texas in just one night. It’s way different from Dallas even though it’s less than an hour away. I also have to admit that I had a blast going into the different bars, walking down the middle of the street with a beer and watching all the true cowboys and cowgirls spend a night on the town. The girls really do wear boots and daisy dukes. I think they could be my friends.