Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Bucking Horse Sale

A little over a week ago, I went to The World-Famous Bucking Horse Sale.  It was rainy outside, and it was a bit cold outside.  There were large puddles.  My shoes were not made for the rain/puddles, but I still enjoyed myself.  I started out by going to the sheep shearing contest.  At the contest, I learned that if you sheared the sheep right, the wool came off in one big piece.  You all may have already know that, but it was news to me.  After that, I watched the beginning of the sheep help contest, but I only made it through one round before I decided to go check out what the vendors were selling.
I was sad when I discovered that most of the sale items were jewelry.  There was also some gear for horse riding, but since I don't have a horse, I didn't really look to closely at what they had to offer.  There was very little for sale that actually said Bucking Horse Sale on it.  Most of the stuff was stuff you could find in a store.  I was a bit disappointed in the wares for sale.

After that, I drove back to my place and then walked back to the watch the sale.  On the way, I stopped by the food vendors that were set-up downtown (not at the fairgrounds), because my coworkers had told me that the Island Noodles were great.  They were okay.  I think they would have been better if I would have put more sauce on them.  I ate them as I finished my walk to the sale.  Once I got to the fairgrounds I decided to take advantage of the fair food, and I got an order of fried oreos for myself.

Image Courtesy of Mytidewatermoms.com
They were delicious.  Fried candy bars were also for sale, but after my first and only experience with those a few years ago, I vowed to never get one of those again.  Just too sweet or something.


Having had my main dish and dessert, I settled in for the show.  The sale was interesting.  Some of the horses really bucked; others, not so much.  Some of the horses went for a couple of hundred dollars; one horse, $4,000.  It was so wet and muddy in the arena, that they were running out of clean, warm cowboys to ride the horses.  They announced that if anyone in the stands wanted to give it a try, they could come on over.  The announcement was a bit of a joke, kinda; but one of the members of the audience did take them up on the offer.  Unfortunately he didn't stay on his horse for too long.  Too bad Jet or Cord McCoy weren't there.
Image retrieved from flickr.com via Bing
The funnest part of the day was the wild horse race.  (Note: As it was not raining in the video and there is no mud in the arena, you can see that the video I linked to was not from this year.  The date on the video will also give that fact away).  I've never seen a wild horse race before.  For the races, there are teams of three individuals.  The first person holds the horse's lead rope.  The second person follows the lead rope in an attempt to get near the horses face and hold the horse still.  It is the job of the third person to get the horse saddled and ride him around the arena.  The first team to get their horse saddled and ride it all the way around the arena one time wins.  It was so funny to watch, especially in the mud.  One of the teams was getting some nice mud skiing in, although they weren't doing too well at staying upright.


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