Bonus: The Casey Tibbs Match of Champions

You may have heard that much of this part of the country was being smacked in the face by triple digit temperatures at the moment.  In fact, many of my DC friends reported that they'd seen South Dakota on their local news as an example of how hot it has gotten.  And indeed, it has gotten VERY hot.  So hot that I got out my Bob Ross sunshade for my car, and people are scrapping over shady parking spots as I haven't seen since living in Little Rock.

Now, I've been many places where they say "Yeah, but it's a dry heat!" and you get to such a place and all you feel is sweltering humidity.  Like when I went to Tucson in 2011 and it turns out Tucson has a monsoon season and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.  Well, here in Pierre, all you hear about is the humidity from the dam, lake, and river nearby.  So we were fully prepared for death by humidity.  Fortunately, the central air in our house works great, and we have an amazing basement that is nice and cool, and we thought we'd just hang out there till the heatwave passed.

However, the opposite of what we were told turned out to be true.  We've actually had very little humidity. It has been a very dry heat.  We've been in and out all weekend.  Bob Ross is still getting us through the hot car, but otherwise, we feel pretty good.

Consequently, last night we decided to take our chances and attend our first ever rodeo.  Now, if you've ever been to Pierre, I can just about guarantee that you've heard of the grand master of them all, Casey Tibbs. We haven't been to his museum yet, but he has a big statue across the river in Ft. Pierre and a giant museum in his honor.  He was apparently one of the best rodeo riders to ever live, and he went on to become an actor and stunt man.  He is a big deal around here.  And once a year, the local Stanley County Fairgrounds (where we went to the auction mentioned in an earlier post) hosts the Casey Tibbs Match of Champions.  It's a biggie.  And I was darned sure going to go.

We went over at 5pm when we were told there'd be a steak fry dinner and the gates would open.  However, the actual riding didn't start till 7PM, so we agreed not to sit in the heat aimlessly for two hours and went back home until closer to time.  After we got back, we enjoyed dinner in the barn with hot dogs and BBQ sandwiches all around.  We got our souvenir programs and armed with bottles of water, we hit the stands.

I didn't appreciate what a big deal this was till it came time for the colors to be unveiled for the National Anthem. Look at this tough customer.  Any idea who he is?

None other than the lieutenant governor, Mr. Larry Rhoden, who I wouldn't have known if I fell over.  The number three bronco rider in the world was competing last night, and they had kiddos as young as 8 (!) competing.  

The cowboys lined up and ready to ride

 

Now, here's what you need to know...  

1.  There is a lot of downtime in bronco riding.  Like, the announcer was so long winded that at least three times in the second round, the horses got bored and wouldn't come out of the chutes when they were opened.  So for instance, even though it was 104* outside, they had some dignitaries that they put on an old wagon and drove in circles around the arena not one but seven times.

So by the end of the second round, needless to say, Leah was over it.  She did say she enjoyed watching it when the action was happening, but she had reached her limit with the guy announcing and the princesses riding by with flags from the electric company and grain companies.  So we did leave early, but not because we didn't enjoy the bronco riding.

2.  I started learning to keep score.  This is not overall that difficult, because the scores are announced at the end of each 8 second ride, but there are two special acronyms in scoring, one being NS for "no score" which means the rider did not reach a full 8 seconds, and the other being RR for "re-ride", meaning the horse was uncooperative and the rider gets to try again.  There were four re-rides in the second set of riders, to tell you how grumpy the horses were getting.  Each rider can get up to 100 points--50 for their talent and 50 for how the horse does--something to do with vertical leaps and some other horse things.  The highest score we saw was an 87, and that was by the third overall bronc rider in the world.

3.  The standard wear of the American male at a rodeo is a blue plaid button down shirt, a cowboy hat, and jeans.  I will absolutely not be going with Gregory again until he conforms.  There were cowboy hats as far as the eye could see--all white straw.  

So that's what I learned as a first timer...

Here are some pictures I took.  I got videos as well, but I'm not fully confident on whether Blogger will let me post them.  I'll put some on Facebook if not...

The cowboy on the spotted horse was competing.  The two homeboys in purple are the ones who get him off the crazy horse after his turn is over and calm the bucking horse down.

Eventually, we left around 8:30PM and decided to get some ice cream.  We went to Ft. Pierre's alternative to Zesto: the Cool Spot.  We weren't so impressed.  It took forever to get ice cream, but it was good!  Then I decided to take the scenic route home and showed Greg and Leah the Oahe dam area.  We stopped at the scenic overlook and checked out the sunset over the Missouri.

Then home we went and cooled off and headed to bed!  It was a really fun thing to do together, and we enjoyed ourselves so much, which I did not expect.  I thought we would attend rather ironically, but it was so good!  We are really immersing ourselves in the culture here and there are pleasant surprises around every turn.