Neighborhood Summer Picnic

Don’t you love going to the neighborhood summer picnic? You know the one, all your neighbors get together with burgers and dogs cooking on the charcoal grill. Lots of watermelon, salads, soda, mutton busting, and bull riding. Whoa there! You read that right. I have been to some great summer picnics, but I never imagined that I would have the following conversation with my son on our way home from one.

Me: So, what made you want to get on that bull?

Sean: Well, with my life I just want to try stuff, you know.

Me: Yeah?

Sean: So, I just went for it. Its like that quote from Red Dwarf that says “If you go through life without feeling, if you go through life never experiencing, you’re no better than a jellyfish. No better than a bank manager.”

Me: Yeah?

Sean: If you don’t try things you will never know if you like doing those things or not.

Me: So how did you like riding the bull?

Sean: It was pretty fun. I don’t think I want to do it professionally.

Sean Falling

This was a summer picnic to remember. Pre-dinner activities included a wading pool, horseshoes, pony rides, horse drawn wagon rides, knife and axe throwing, log sawing, archery, steer roping dummy, a mechanical bull, a bounce house, a frozen t-shirt competition, and camel rides. If you stopped right there that would be an excellent party, but no there is more.

After a great dinner the rodeo activities commenced with a flag ceremony to open the rodeo followed by goat dressing (putting clothes on a goat), mutton busting, stick horse barrel racing (bring your own wild stick horse), a hula hoop contest, goat tying (think calf tying for kids), cow ribbon tying, a skit from the rodeo clown, bull riding, and chicken and pig chasing (if you catch it you take it home).

The kids had a blast! Tani took Kalea, Melina, Lelia and Tarena around to participate in the different events. The girls rode ponies, and wagons, shot bows, sawed logs and loved it all. Tarena and Lelia enjoyed the bounce house and fishing for prizes in the wading pool where Tarena caught a toy dog that she would not be separated from. I cooked a ton of burgers with some great guys which I enjoyed because I was able to say hello to everyone as they came to get food. Sean and Tianna visited with friends, shot bows, and Sean rode the mechanical bull as a warm up I guess.

The rodeo was awesome! I laughed so hard at parts that it made my sides ache. Tani thought that the mutton busting was scary with the little kids riding on the sheep. The high point for our family came when the next bull rider was announced as Sean McNees. We were all surprised! None of us knew he was even interested, and I had to scramble to get over and take pictures. He had a great ride though. When I was at the fence taking pictures our neighbor Kurt Byington leaned over to me and said, “You know that the rider is supposed to weigh less than the bull.”

On the way home I could not help thinking of a quote myself “Ted, you and I have witnessed many things, but nothing as bodacious as what just happened.”