Rodeo!

Last Friday, the UGA Bloc and Bridle Club hosted the Great Southland Stampede Rodeo here in Athens.  I've never been to a rodeo before, and I really had absolutely no idea what to expect.

First, Erin and Ashley came over to my house for dinner.  We had plans to go out to dinner Tuesday before we went painting, so I was trying to save us money by just eating dinner at home. Both those lame-os cancelled on dinner and painting, so they got stuck with my cooking anyway.  From there, we headed over to the UGA livestock arenas over off Milledge.  As soon as we got in, we of course bought matching t-shirts.

We're cool and we know it

We ended up meeting up with Laura P. and her husband, Gretchen (whose husband was participating in the rodeo), and Lauren Carter and her family..

SES was totally reppin' at the rodeo

The events started with some horse stuff, like roping and barrel racing.  Gretchen said that she never participates in this rodeo because the ground is terrible for barrel racing (her event) and that the night before 6 horses had slipped.  No horses slipped on Friday night, but Gretchen said we need to go to a "real rodeo" some other time because the barrel racing at this one was way slow.

I can' t say Erin and I really enjoyed the roping events.  It was slightly sad to watch the little cow get tied up, picked up, slammed to the ground, and hog-tied (I guess he was cow-tied).  We started cheering for the cows and keeping a tally of how many of the cows made it out the other side.

Cows

One of the other events was team roping, where two guys go out together to try to rope the cow.  This is the event that Gretchen's husband, Casey Hilley, does.  He and his partner were the only team on Friday night to successfully rope their cow.  Go Casey!

The last event was the bull riding.  I'm going to be honest, this is the only event I knew about prior to actually going to the rodeo.  That stuff is crazy!  A couple of the guys made it the whole 8 seconds, which is pretty cool to watch.  Definitely not a sport I care to participate in!

After the rodeo, we stuck around to wait for traffic to clear and to hang out with Gretchen while she waited for Casey.  We got to sneak behind the scenes (thanks to our celebrity connection) and go see Petey, the miniature horse.  He was adorable and Erin tried to horse-nap him to take home to her son.

The rodeo turned out to be a lot of fun.  I'm actually looking forward to going to another one!