Wednesday, September 05, 2007

9:20 pm Wednesday September 5, 2007

Our last afternoon in White Sulphur Springs was spent at the rodeo grounds attending the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) Labor Day Rodeo. For those of you who have never attended a real, small town rodeo you don’t know what you’re missing! What fun it is! From the entrance fee ($12 each-but it was for a good cause) to the Souvenir Program ($3.00 then they gave them away in the stands about half way through the events ~~~~) to the concession stand ($2.50 for each hotdog but we had to eat, right?) Phil’s wallet was considerably lighter but we decided it was worth every nickel when all was said and done. Our new camera, a Panasonic DMC-TZ3 with a 10X optical zoom did a fantastic job at stopping the action for us!

Check out all the pink shirts on the cowboys. They are participating in the Tough Enough to Wear Pink campaign in the fight against breast cancer. In 2006 the PRCA rodeo, affiliates and other Western industry presented a check for $1 Million dollars to Tough Enough to Wear Pink founder and breast cancer survivor, Terry Wheatley.

It was nearly 90 degrees in the shade but we were so transfixed with the nonstop action, we hardly noticed until I stood up to stretch during a technical problem with the PA system and my shorts were totally wet and stuck to my body! Yuk!! I went through some embarrassing contortions to straighten out my clothing but since I didn’t know a soul in the entire audience I decided “oh well” and went back to watching the triumphs and the “aw shucks” as the cowboys and cowgirls gave us their all. Can you imagine how much it must hurt to fall off a horse (or a bull or a bucking bronco) at a dead run?

Later that night we saw the one local cowboy from WSS who participated in the bull riding at the restaurant where we ate dinner. He was pouring down painkiller from a tall, brown bottle—I hope someone was with him to drive him home!

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