Resting my feet for a walking and standing marathon tomorrow

Clicking the pics expands the images, and your mind.

I've seen several of these horse trailer/RVs heading for the rodeo grounds now, so I think I can finally assume they're having a rodeo tomorrow.

Last night and this morning, the horse trailers started coming into the Fairgrounds in earnest, so it looks like the rodeos finally going to happen. And just yesterday, I was reading on the Internet about all of the Arizona school events that were being canceled all over the state because of the Bat flu, which had me worried that once again, this rodeo would be canceled at the last minute. I'm pretty sure it won't,  but I never underestimate the power of the teachers union to get whatever they want.

I sorta wanted to go to Popeyes for lunch today; it's only a couple of miles away. But I didn't want to go bad enough to have to deal with putting the top up and down on the bronco. So I blew the Popeyes lunch off, figuring I'd go to Popeyes again when I have more than one reason to go somewhere. But, unfortunately, it seems like my life revolves around whether or not I want to put the top up and down on the bronco, and I don't like the bronco having that kind of control over me.

I went by Popeyes the other day, and once again, the dining room was closed, but the drive-thru was open. So I figure the only way I'm going to eat there is to pick up lunch at the drive-thru. This leaves me with two choices: either walk through the drive-thru, which I haven't seen anybody do, or I can drive through and hope the camper will fit.

A sign at the drive-thru says there's a height limit of 9'6". So I measured the bronco with the top down, and it was eight-foot something, so it looks like I will fit as long as there's no width requirements or really sharp turns because the bronco is wider than the truck.

Some truck camper folks routinely take their camper off the truck if they are going to be somewhere for a while. But I've never done that, and that includes when I had the Hallmark pop-up truck camper mucho years ago.

Disconnecting it from the truck, jacking it up, and taking it off is not all that bad, but putting it back on again is kind of challenging. But staying at the Fairgrounds for a month would've been a good time to do that, except the only reason I need to take the bronco off is to get lunch at Popeyes, and that just didn't seem to be worth all the effort.

Theboondork

The rough stock is arriving. And It wouldn't be a rodeo without a bunch of ill tempered horses, and a herd of freshly escaped from the insane asylum, bulls.

 You don't just knock on ranchers doors and ask them if you can borrow a few unrideable horses and a dozen deranged bulls. Nope that doesn't happen, you call a stock contractor and tell him what you need and he delivers them to your doorstep, that's his job.

Now Let me disabuse you of any thoughts about animal cruelty. The stock contractor makes his money off renting you these animals for your rodeo. Normally their a small family business, and his stock is his living, they feed his family, and he and his helpers are there at the chutes, around the arena, and in the pens, making sure no harm comes to his stock. He can't make money with an injured animal, so he makes sure no harm comes to them.

Sunset from my boondocking site last night. This isn't my favorite place to take a sunset picture, but sometimes I'm too lazy to walk to the rodeo arena to get a better picture.

But this time I'm trying to save my feet for what might turn into an eight or nine hour walking and standing marathon tomorrow at the rodeo.

This horse is getting around the barrel just the way it's supposed to be done

This is something I see every once in a while but is the first time I've been in the right place to get a picture of it.

If the horse is knocking over the barrel, it's perfectly legal for the  rider to try and keep the barrel from falling over. The barrel is only counted as being "over" if it's laying on its side.

This has to be done in literally a split second, and won't work if the horse continues to push the barrel over. She can't let go of the rein or she WILL be in trouble, and she's leaning over about as far she can go.

F-16 that flew over my head the other day, so what you see is the bottom of the plane, and he was flying fast and far away. He still has munitions on his pylons so I assume he's doing some target practice.