Part Two: Professional Bull Riding Is a Thing

So the plan was pretty straightforward, pick up the boy in the early evening from the Boy Scout flag retirement ceremony at the American Legion and then come home and do...ok well nothing. Based on my morning I was pretty down with that.

Then I got a message from one of my oldest friends, who has a cool TV related job and he said "Hey, I'm in town for the PBR and wondered if you'd like to come out and bring the kids?"

It's probably both a sign of my age and my mental state that my first thought was Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. It turns out he wasn't inviting us to swill beer from a can, however, it was far better than that. The Professional Bull Riding Thingamajig was in town and quite near us too. I had never seen such a thing so it was a go.

I went over to the Legion and luckily they were burning up the last flag. We went home and busted a move to meet up with Bryan at Gwinnett Arena. It has a different name now but whatever. They aren't paying me to advertise for them.

Bryan has a cool TV job and they were filming the competition. We learned that like in football if you call for a ruling, these are the guys who review the tape.

Louis and Julia were pretty enamored of all of it, and I gotta admit - Bryan has a pretty cool job for sure. Now for the next part I failed because we got to go in through the back, where the bulls come in and out AND we got to walk by some of the riders (including the world leader wooo!) which was all pretty cool. It was neat to see all of the behind the scenes stuff, none of which I got pictures of because I was so busy making sure my kids didn't get in the way of interviews or any of the people actually working back there.

I have known Bryan for a million years, it was so awesome of him to think of us and it was great to see him. I look like crap in this picture but I don't even care, it was epic.

Then we found our seats and discovered that hey, bull riding is a thing. It's a really FUN thing.

Can I say first of all that 8 seconds is a really long time? I mean, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on how long seconds are just based on cool downs on video games. The cool down on a video game is absolutely nothing like the 8 seconds of riding on a bull that would really like to to kill you. It would really really like to stomp in your head, but not for meanness. Just because it can.

I also learned that there is American Bull Fighting. I was feeling a bit like Hemingway when they said bullfighting was coming up. But then I learned that the version of Bullfighting featured here was really like playing Last Licks with a bull.

Playing Last Licks was a game we'd play in middle school and some in high school where you slapped someone and took off before they could get you back. The idea was to get in the "last lick" or slap. The bull did not seem to dig this game. The bull gets points in this game for acting like a jerk though so who can say?

The kids were really into it. This was probably the most sedate Miles was the whole time. The loud fun music, silly clown and the excitement with each ride had all four of them ecstatic the whole time.

I would not have guessed that Professional Bull riding NOR American Bullfighting would hold any interest for this crew, but they were all completely mesmerized.

It just goes to show you that your day can start off as total crap and by nightfall you're watching cowboys get tossed around like ragdolls on top of really angry bovine. You just never know what your day is going to bring.

We saw more than one guy go the full 8 seconds, I have to admit it's impressive as hell because wow how do you do that? 

It was a fun, laughter filled end to a crazy long ass day. I can't believe how much fun my kids had or how much they liked it but I'm so glad we went. Thank you again Bryan for thinking of us. It wasn't an event I would have expected to like, or for my kids to like, but it was really amazing and ridiculously fun. It was an awesome Saturday night.

And Bryan, you're welcome for me not telling those guys in the truck to call you Boychick. That's the best poker name ever though. Sincerely - Long Liz.

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