Travelogue/Travelblouge

Well, dear Imaginary Reader, I am back in the Northern Hinterlands after that week in the Arizona desert. What started out as a half-baked idea ended up to be fully baked after all. Now that I'm back in the Hinterlands Green & Pleasant land, it's time to look back on the week that was.

THURSDAY
The first day of travel. I'm not the traveler I once was, and can actually get quite nervous when I'm airborne. So I play the Lucky Trifecta game: "There's a baby. There's a priest. There's a elderly woman. The plane won't crash."

Of course, I ended up getting stuck in Detroit for about 5 hours, but plowing through thunderstorms are not my favorite way to fly. There's a couple of little boys talking to the pilot. Their mom is an air-traffic controller. Bingo!

I arrive in Phoenix about two hours late, but not to worry. The Alaska Grrls are waiting and we all go back to the hacienda and have a glass of wine. In the pool.

FRIDAY
Ms T- Alaska Grrl #1- is buying a house near Missy's -Alaska Grrl #2-neighborhood. Ms T has flown in from Alaska for the inspection. Like many Alaskan females, she can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, get a facial and run her own irrigation drip line. She will also F* a man "if I don't have anything better to do." Missy refers to her as a "man-eater." The inspection goes well. The Inspector only has two small bite marks on him when they are done.

I love the desert palette, so simple: brown, pale sage green, and who knew that the desert floor could have so many colors of brown. The orange brown of the sandy pulverized rock. The flat brown of the sun-hardened stones. The pinkish-brown of the rocks and boulders. The soft grey- brown of the shade where cottontails and lizards and quail sit and nibble and rest, brown refuge from the sun.


FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Ms T bemoans the fact that we have been here a whole day and haven't met any cowboys. You know, real cowboys. So let's go to a cowboy bar. We pile in the Lexus and try The Horny Toad (not horny enough) The Spotted Donkey ( just a bunch of jackasses in there) and finally end up at The Buffalo Chip. We do Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who will be buying tonight. Missy loses.

Inside the barroom, there is a cowboy band playing. It's more like a restaurant inside. Then MsT, ever on her toes, notes that many people seem to be walking out a side door. We follow them and find a large outdoor area, with full bar, closed captioned tv screens of the band inside, and a complete cowboy buffet. People are sitting on bleachers around a corral with about five bulls who are lounging about in the dirt. We greenhorn girls are puzzled. "It must be like choose your own lobster" I offer.

NOTE: I strongly advise you to NEVER partake of a side order of "cowboy beans." Remember Blazing Saddles. Just sayin.

After a few Patrons, we start talking to strangers. We find out that this is a bull-riding bar. Wednesday and Friday are qualifying nights. If you make the cut Wednesday, you come back on Friday. If you make it on Friday, you come back the next week for the next round. At the end of the month, some lucky cowboys go to Vegas.

We decide to stay. Though all of us have been to the rodeo, we can't pass up the chance to see real live bull riders. By now the bleachers are pretty full. The air is full of anticipation as people try to drink their beer and cocktails before the ice melts. Did I mention that it was about 98 degrees at 10 pm? A girl - about 16- comes into the ring and the bulls all stand up. The start moseying over to the paddock gate and exit the ring. They seem to know the drill. A friendly lady explains to us that the rider must stay on the bull for 8 seconds in order to qualify.

Then she tells us how the bull arrives at the bucking stage which makes this such a riveting sport. What, in particular, they do to the bull to get him to buck so enthusiastically.

So, dear Imaginary Reader, any guesses why bulls buck up and down? Is it because they are annoyed with having someone on their back?

Noooo.

Is it because someone pokes them with a stick before they open the chute?

Nope.
(That was my guess, though.)

Is it because someone ties up their "bull junk" with a rope?

Yep.

This was something we grrls could not get over. All those years of watching rodeos on Wild World of Sports and ESPN, the annual Summer Rodeo in Soldotna, and never did I think that tying up bull balls was the reason this sport existed. I mean, who thought of that one?

So instead of watching the rider, I tried to see how in the deuce they would get that 1500 lb bull to hold still while someone practiced a clove hitch in a sensitive area, and did the bull get the rope off? As those immortal bards The Black Eyed Peas have asked time and again: "Whatcha gonna do with all that junk? All that junk inside your trunk?" Well, tie it up with a rope. Apparently.

I was so astonished by this piece of information that I couldn't wait to get home and call CSO and tell him. "Poke them with a stick?" he sleepily answered when I posed my question to him, then "Whaaat?!" When I had arrived back in the Hinterlands, I called my sons and told them. They too were amazed, as well as sympathetic to the bull. "I''d buck if someone did that to me" my youngest insisted. OKThatsnicedearTMI.

And so we left after all but one cowboy had qualified. MsT is insisting this will be the beginning of a long and productive friendship with the Buffalo Chip. Missy is rolling her eyes and hoping bull riding season ends in August. And as for me, I am back in NY, where the games are simpler: Baseball. Kayaking. Swimming. Beer Pong.