Rodeo Houston (Texas-Sized Post)

I managed to snag some free tickets from work to go to the RODEO last night! I don't know if I explained this before, but the Rodeo is like the Park County Fair on STEROIDS! There is the Rodeo happening in the football stadium, a giant carnival outside the stadium, and a few building full of shops and livestock. There is also food on STEROIDS.

The Food

Sweet Diana and I hit up the food first. When I say on STEROIDS - I mean it. Although here instead of calling it STEROIDS they say "TEXAS SIZED" which after driving 12 hours through Texas to get here - I do know that Texas-Sized is an accurate descriptor of the food I saw!

I personally grabbed a $12.75 TEXAS SIZED turkey leg and dug in. It was great!

Obesity's Genusis

But when you get 1/2 halfway in, you start feel grease dripping (dripping) down your chin, which may or may not be a figment of your imagination, but regardless you feel gross after chowing down. 

My did I really just eat that? selfie!

All the progress I made before I had to stop.

 All this food made me laugh at sweet Todd in Africa. Here I am surrounded by good eats and fattening desserts and he's eating cow's foot. Poor guy!

Post Meal - Pre Dessert Pic

 Fried Desserts:
   Okay team - I feel the need to report on the urban legend of Fried Twinkies (on the left below). They are not that good.  If you ever get to a place where they sell fried anything - go for the Oreos - they are 10x better than the twinkie and apparently the fried snickers. TRUST ME. Definitely worth your $6.

The Rodeo

The Rodeo part is pretty typical of all Rodeos I've been to - except for the venue. It's so massive. It's a Football Stadium transformed into a Rodeo Grounds. It is awesome. We were lucky enough to get seats on the first level and on the same side as all the action. So bulls still looked huge from where we were. 

The Venue!

 One thing unique to this Rodeo was the calf scramble. All these high school students who are either FFA or 4H(pictured in white below) get the chance to catch a calf and put a halter on it. If they are able to do this - they are awarded different scholarships. The kicker is that there are more kids than calves, so it gets sad when people are trying so hard and not successful. It's a neat idea, but last night it was so violent (which I'm told was a rarity).

Kids were getting stomped on and pulled around. For those of you familiar with the Lewis Branding Event held each spring these calves were noticeably bigger than what we typically brand, but not by a lot. And they were feisty - which I know is not a rare thing - so maybe the violence shouldn't surprise me?

The technique used the night I was there was to grab the calves tail and pull hard. When the calf had kind of given up, you would then jump for it's head with all your might. One girl literally had her legs wrapped around a calves neck while she sorted out the halter. It was psycho and hilarious. But people were crying and fainting, ankles were twisted, hands were seriously rope-burned, and noses were bloodied. One kid got the halter on then his calf started going CRAZY and the kid fell over - still holding the rope and got stepped on like 2 or 3 times - on his HEAD while being dragged around - and still he held on. #realcowboysliveinHouston

The people in black vests help herd the calves towards the kids dressed in white.

After the calf-scamble, they did some mutton-busting (kids 4-6 years holding on to a sheep as it runs to the fold/herd of other sheep (is it a fold or a herd?) until they can't hold on anymore). I kept thinking about sweet Aubrey trying it - I couldn't decide if she'd be game or not. It was so fun to watch, and the little boy that won, by holding all the way to the herd/fold was so cute. They asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up: "A team roper" in his sweet, polite "yes ma'am" way. It was adorable.
And added to the fantastic event that is Rodeo Houston! 

Because this is already TEXAS-SIZED, I'm going to finish my Florida-Georgia Line performance review in the coming days - which happened after the Rodeo Festivities! Check back soon!