An Awesome Weekend

Red and I went to Fort Washakie on Saturday morning for the Team Roping event. We got there around 9 am, the sun was already beating down pretty hard and there may or may not have been a little too much beer drinking going on...Hard lesson learned, but just cuz' everyone is drinking, doesn't mean you should put foot in mouth :(   But really, we were there for 12 hours!

Anyway, back to the reason we were there: I have always really liked roping, but being to the past few events has given me a pretty good appreciation for it.  Not only is it fun to watch, seeing the different horses and riders style, but just realizing that its really damn hard. These guys and girls make it look easy. Today Red set up a bale and put a steer head dummy up on it and told me to get my rope. I'm a pretty visual learner, but with roping I have found that its all muscle memory for me. I have to do the wrist movements to have them engrained in my memory, I have to feel-out why and how my rope has gone into a figure-eight: still working on how to slide the hondo over the rope to correct it though… I guess I'm just gonna have to keep at it.

Well, hello!

Me and Stephanie, causin' trouble.

Someone's having fun

My new buddy, Sarah, came out from Tensleep, which proved to be a respite and needed break for the both of us. She has been going non-stop, having actually just opened a the ONLY tattoo shop in Tensleep, Bighorn Tattoo <--get there.  She was able to soak in some fun and rest out at the Red Bluff. Sarah, Madisen and myself headed back out to the fort for the Eastern Shoshone Stampede Rodeo and the Forth Washakie Indian Days Pow Wow. It was an amazing day. A man from Salt Lake actually asked me to film his turn roping, so once again I was behind the camera--yay.  

Indian Relay Rider: Pretty sure he won the race both days..good rider

The Lineup

When we got back to work Monday, nothing stopped Sarah from climbing under the cattle guard, as I held it taut with steel chains propped on the John Deere. We had this so jerry-rigged it was a full on liability. Red and Sarah were crouched under the steel guard, me in the Deere sweating from pure nerves about the possibility of a chain sliding off and crushing them beneath the cattle guard. This went on for two hours, them digging out a 9x2 trench to re-fit the guard in. When we finished they were tired, but I was all nerves and pretty wiped out from the stress. They just laughed

All in all, a pretty awesome weekend.