Spoiler Alert: The Rodeo Clown is Okay

It's been a few months since I've had the chance to cross something off my Life List, so I was really excited last week when I was perusing through the community calendars and noticed that the Texas A&M College Rodeo was coming up! Despite living in Texas for 21 years, there are a few things I've never experienced: I've never worn a cowboy hat, I've never owned real cowboy boots, and I had never been to a rodeo. (Oh, and I've never ridden a horse to work. LOL.)

So on Friday night I got dressed up in my best "I don't know what people wear to rodeos, but this feels legit" button-down top, skinny jeans, big earrings and some slouchy boots, and my friend Sara and I headed to the arena! (She had been to the Houston rodeo before, but said this was nice because you could get a lot closer to the action than you could at some of the bigger events.)

When I typically think of rodeos, the first thing that comes to mind is cowboys riding horses or bulls. That was pretty accurate. (And a lot of people fell off, which scared me because I didn't want anyone to get trampled!) Luckily this guy stayed on his horse:

But there were way more events than that, some that I'd never heard of before! Like this one where they have baby cows run out of the chute, and the cowboys have to lasso them, flip 'em over and hog-tie them as fast as possible. If they don't lasso the cow in the first try, they're disqualified and the cow gets to trot away. The cows were cute. :)

I thought it was pretty impressive, because I guess I never realized that lasso-ing was a real thing. Though I kind of felt bad for the poor cows getting flipped.

Sorry for the blurry pictures, I haven't figured out how to take clear action shots with my point-and-shoot!

There was some barrel-racing, where the cowgirls have to ride really fast around three barrels on opposite sides of the arena. These girls were racing the length of a football field and turning circles around barrels in under 17 seconds!

There were two really crazy moments while we were there: First, there was this event where the riders had to ride really fast up to where this little goat is tied up, and then they had to jump off their moving horses, flip the goat onto its back and hog-tie it. Anyway, one of the goats was not having any of this, and managed to escape its rope and run out of the arena under the metal fence, so a bunch of cowboys had to chase it and bring it back.

Second, there were two rodeo clowns (wearing red and light blue shirts). According to Sara, their job is to distract the bull after the rider gets thrown off so the bull will move away from the fallen rider, who can then move to safety. But then this happened:

Which was only funny after the guy got up, indicated he was okay, then jumped over a smaller bull that was charging at him.

Have you ever been to a rodeo?