Sister's Rodeo

"Can we go for Phil’s trail on Sunday?" me

"Oh, no I brought tickets for Sister’s-Rodeo" Yogesh

"Ummm.. ok" me

I Practically hate the social gatherings here and I didn’t wanted to ruin my Sunday afternoon . Here all the social events revolve around beer, period. Particularly I don’t hate people drinking beer, but I hate it when I am drinking just a lemonade and they give me look like ’oh.. so you are pregnant?’ because I don’t look like a minor and there cant be any other reason for drinking a lemonade!!!!!

So sisters is a small town near Bend, and Rodeo is the ‘small town’s world famous event’ :D(same as 'akkha mumbai mein world famous'). Ever since I have heard about this word Rodeo, I always miss spell it a as ‘Ghodeo’ :D You will know why, when I will give you details about the event :P 

When we reached at the event, right from the parking lot it felt like true Oregon so sunny, so dry and so rustic. And when the event started, from the first announcement I started digging it (this is the latest addition to my dictionary, please refer urbandictionary.com)

Let me tell you something about the event, it’s a cowboyiesh side of Oregon. Big horses, raging bulls and rustic cowboys! 

There were different events like team bronc riding, tie-down roping, steer wrestling, saddle bronc riding, team roping, bull riding and barrel racing. Except bull riding everything else was ever unheard of for me. That’s the reason I got so excited and started writing about it :D Though these all aren’t very dashing games, they go on like Clint Eastwood’s movies, very slow but at the end you have a something to say about. They don’t go like a flash through your memory. 

In the start there was a grand entry. Around 30 horses and their cowgirl riders. Those girls were wearing the cowboy dresses, spur shoes and of course cowboy hat :)  It was a nice presentation with the ‘final countdown’ track in background. The best thing about that presentation was all those girls where doing that voluntarily; they were raising money to help cancer patients.

This isn't the photo of the grand opening. Actually we came for rodeo directly after trail.. so when the grand opening was going on both of us were eating, in one hand nachos and in the other pepsi and I could not spare a moment :) . So i dont have any photos of the opening. :(

Next was tie-down roping, so here comes the real thing. Initially when these people came to West side of America, there were big ranches, but due to dry weather the grass could not grow thick so big herd of cows require an even bigger region of ranch which is practically impossible to cover on foot. So these people started maintaining those herd on a horseback ride. 
The goal of tie down roping is for the rider to catch the calf by throwing a loop of rope around its neck, get down from the horse and restrain the calf by tying three legs together, in as short a time as possible. And to make your score valid, the calf should not make any movement for 6 seconds after its been restrained. The winner did it in 8.32 seconds :D

The upgraded version of this tie-down roping is, there will be two ridders, one of them would throw a loop around the calfs neck and the other one should throw it through its hind legs and restrain the calf!!! And ya, just one chance to throw the loop!!!

After that there was steer wrestling, in which the rider has to chase a young bull, dismount from the horse, wrestle the steer, ground it in the minimum possible time.

Then Bull Riding , I think everyone knows and see the pic J

In the Next pic, the in the clown is sitting in the barrel. Since the last 2 days the clown was pissing off the bull on the last day he finally charged him :D

Then saddle bronc riding, its same as bull riding, but just replace the bull with the wild horse, bull’s power with the horse’s speed + power …

  

And the last one was barrel racing. Again all the cowgirls were there in this event. There were 3 barrels in the arena and the rider has to go round them and come back in minimum possible time. It sounds simple but to turn the horse in such a speed with keeping the barrel on ground takes a hell lot of expertise. All these girls were participating in this race were local and were participating in this event since they were 10 or 11 J

It was such a thrill to watch this event. I am always fascinated by the speed of horse, and yea me too had dreams about horse rider but it wasn’t ‘sapanon ka rajkumar’ but it was me riding a white powerful horse through a big ranch with mountains behind it. In some way I lived that dream :) before this I haven’t seen such a powerful horses and so fast riders.