Day 150 – Fort Worth, Texas – January 1st, 2005 The first day of the new year started very gently. We had a big family breakfast with bacon and eggs and pancakes at around 10:00am. The first time I had had bacon and eggs for about a month. Just thought you might like to know. We spent a good few hours raking leaves up in front of Anthony and Carolyn’s (my brother and sister-in-law) house where we are staying. We found a lizard, another grass snake and assorted bugs. During the afternoon Sammy was seen skateboarding, rollerblading, playing basketball (every drive way has it’s own basketball hoop) and doing baseball catching with proper baseball gloves. Julian was mostly no where to be seen (the girls here have a game cube and a PS2, apart from computers) except for about half an hour when he was helping with the leaves. We do ration him with electronic devices and we have had many days of none at all. So he did a little catching up today. Even Daddy had a game a Quad Bike Racers. 

We went for an early supper at 4:30pm to a sort of Tex-Mex style restaurant. All of the restaurants (in fact all the retail businesses) are chains or franchises. There are no individually owned and operated restaurants in this neck of the woods. Texans spend a lot of time and money eating out and it is all done in fast food or medium fast food restaurants. This means the menu is decided by a guy in New York, the food is processed in Oklahoma and put into a micro wave oven in any one of the 350 outlets that they have. One chain we went to called the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) which has nothing international about it at all, has 1,500 restaurants in the US. I know MacDs has loads more but this place was quite an up market establishment. That’s one heck of a lot of restaurants. It’s kind of weird (for a European person) to go to a place to eat where there is not one person on the premises who has anything at all to do with the purchasing, preparation and presentation of the food you are eating. The only thing left to chance in the restaurant is the service, which of course is absolutely first class. In most restaurants (if indeed they can be called that – prepared food outlets is what they are) there are 2 or 3 people always at the front door to meet and greet you. Got a bit off the point there. The food was actually OK but you never really know what’s in any of this stuff, it’s always got loads of fat, cheese, cream, and if it tastes really good, MSG in it. Julie and I have both concluded that when we agree it tastes good it’s because of the chemicals they chuck in not the ingredients. Of course since the ingredients don’t need to be listed like they do if you buy a prepared meal in a supermarket, they really can do what they like to the food. Only the guy in New York knows what’s in it. It used only to be in Chinese food but it is now being used in every style of cooking (micro waving as we have here) to flavour enhance what might otherwise be a bland offering. We often come home buzzing from it. 

After our prepared food supper we went off to the Fort Worth Stockyards. This is the old part of town. This was were in the old cowboy days the cattle were driven to be sold, slaughtered and taken by train to all points in the Union. Now it is redeveloped into the local tourist attraction with loads of gifts shops, prepared food outlets and attractions. We took the boys to a really good maze and then onto a bucking bull machine which they both came off in under 1 minute (pretty lousy deal for $5 if you ask me). This was all a prelude to the real reason for coming here which was to go to the Rodeo. This was being held in a nearby stadium which we were told, was nearly 100 years old. It was like every cowboy in town was here. I guess you can call yourself a cowboy if you wear a Stetson, a pair of jeans and cowboy boots. Doesn’t matter that you are a hot shot downtown attorney or that you wash cars for a living. If you have the gear you are a cowboy or indeed a cowgirl. They all turned out in their gear except of course the tourists from England! See Cowtown Rodeo website. There is a promotional video on their home page which will give you a flavour. 

The show was fantastic. Pure adrenalin all the way. Riders need to sit atop a bucking bull for 8 seconds. Contrary to my earlier belief, it is not how long they sit on the bull but how well they have performed. There are judges that mark you on style and ability and give you extra points if you have a particularly difficult bull. They all looked pretty difficult to me! You just need to sit on him for 8 seconds to qualify then you jump off and run like hell. We weren't prepared really for the extreme danger that these guys put themselves in and also the force that they use to subdue the animals. It really is amazing and quite disturbing to see how a massive bull can be lassooed and dragged out of the arena without his neck being broken. We also saw a cowboy get severely injured when a bull trod on him and then jumped on top of him in a belly flop kind of fashion. After 10 minutes of ministering to the poor guy on the arena floor (he clearly could not move a muscle) they put him on a stetcher and carried him off to hospital. I could imagine the boys thinking "why would anyone do this?". I was having the same thoughts myself. This cowboy must have sustained some broken bones (ribs?) at the very least or at the worst broken his back. Are we all having fun? Hhmmmmnnn. 

We were sure that if this kind of thing was happening in the UK some liberal with nothing better to do would have banned it as being cruel to the cowboys. They would have done this only momentarily before setting up a save the poor bull campaign. Then suggesting that chasing them with horses was very undignified, only to find out that shooting them with a 12 bore was perfectly acceptable. I'm not sure where we are with all this but I think we have all "done" rodeos for now.