Cowboy Up

This weekend marked another first for me - the rodeo! I found myself at the biggest rodeo in the state of California! So big that they pronounce rodeo as "row-day-oh". No lie.

This is the event of the year in Salinas, CA and the entire town goes crazy. I've never seen so many cowboy hats, wranglers and handlebar mustaches in my life! The city was sold out of hotel rooms, all of the store window fronts were painted in a rodeo theme and you could find signs like this everywhere:

I never realized that they had so many events at a rodeo: a stunt horse rider, 5 well trained stunt dogs, barrel racing, roping, bull riding, bareback riding, and bullfighting just to name a few. The bull riders were my favorite by far. Check it out:

These guys are crazy!

Luckily I didn't see any of the riders get seriously injured but I did see a lot of this:

For the grand finale they brought out the bull fighters. These guys have to be the bravest or dumbest people I have ever seen. Dressed up as clowns, they willing put themselves within touching distance of a bull and dance around in front of their faces. All the while dodging the bulls attempts to kill them.

This was the only bull fighter that used the barrel as a prop in his "show". If you look closely, you can see the rodeo clown rolled up inside of that barrel. After I shot this picture, the bull fighter standing jumped on top of the barrel and ran down the bulls back!

It was amazing....and I loved every minute of it!