Greetings From Cody, WY

Greetings from Cody, WY; yes it is indeed named after Buffalo Bill Cody. My foreshadowing from last time will have to go down as an example of how the path to perdition is paved with good intentions. Let me explain…

My long-suffering wife is the travel planner in our family. This is not because I am too lazy to do it; she would not have it any other way. As she put this road trip together, there were a few anchor dates such as the dates our airplane tickets have been booked and the dates when we booked ourselves into lodges where we definitely wanted to stay. The rest of the dates were flexible. After a first cut at a schedule, she then went back and re-did the itinerary so that we would be in Cody on the evening of June 1. The reason is that the Cody Rodeo starts its season on June 1 and she wanted to go to the rodeo.

To be kind, I was unenthusiastic. This was going to be my first rodeo in the literal and figurative sense and you can get the idea that I am not a rodeo enthusiast by recognizing that I had made more than 71 journeys around the sun without ever finding a need to go to one. I said I would write a “gamer” on the rodeo; forget that. This rodeo was nothing but a disjointed series of events with some of the lamest attempts at “comedy” between the acts that one can imagine. The comic was about as funny as a jet propelled wheel chair.

I did make a few notes regarding the events of the evening:

About 20 minutes before the festivities began, an official in a striped shirt came out to test the hinges and the latching mechanism on the gate to the chute where the broncos and the bulls would be herded after their events. She had to have spent 5 minutes swinging the gate and fixing the latch and releasing the latch and swinging the other gate and then repeating it all. As she went through all this here is what went through my mind:

Would that the NFL officials had been so thorough and accurate in measuring the internal pressures of all the footballs in the AFC Championship Game at halftime…

The opening act consisted of 12 cowgirls doing what is probably best described as a close order equine drill. Ominously, Mother Nature took that moment of inception to change the weather from a cool and breezy evening to a howling wind of about 25 mph with gusts to 50 mph blowing sand across the venue. This made the equine drill about as artistic as a lawn mower race.

After these young ladies left the arena something happened that I had never experienced at a sporting event in all my days:

The PA announcer offered a prayer asking for blessings from The Almighty for anything and everything to include the livestock that would participate that night.

After the prayer, the audience applauded; then, they did the National Anthem.

Clearly, I am not a rodeo aficionado but I do want to comment upon one result from the calf roping event for the evening:

Calves 8 … Cowboys 1
Winning time was 22.7 seconds.
Turtle racing is more exciting…

The show is scheduled to last 2 hours. After 1 hour had passed and we had sat through two seemingly interminable “comedy segments” in a horizontal rain that had joined with the wind to make the evening miserable, even my wife figured it was time to go. I put up exactly no objection.

That was my first rodeo. It shall also be my last one. There are plenty of reasons to visit Cody, WY and I will detail some of them in my trip report once I get home. The Cody Rodeo is not one of those reasons.

Finally, here is an observation from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald regarding another equine event:

“The all-out attempts to achieve parity in sports continue. It was just announced that Charles Barkley will be riding American Pharoah in the Belmont Stakes.”

More post cards from the road as time and connectivity permit.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………