This post is a little late, but I figured I should finally get the photos up.
In December we had to leave the country so that I could renew my visa on the way back in. So we decided to go to Dallas, Texas for the weekend. It seems like a long way to go for 2 days, but the flights were actually cheaper to go there than closer places like Chicago or New York - go figure. There isn't actually that much to do in Dallas, so it is probably good that we didn't waste a longer trip going there.
We drove downtown first thing Saturday morning and walked into the Santa Claus parade, complete with giant inflatable cartoon characters like the one we saw in NYC. I guess this is just an American thing.
As we were in Texas, though, it was giant inflatable characters plus cowboys. Cowboys and flags...
Cowgirls (is that even a word?) dancing with candy canes...
And cowboy marching bands. (There were a lot of marching bands.) We definitely knew we were in Texas at this point.
We had actually come downtown to go and see the Sixth Floor Museum, which is all about JFK and is located in the building that he was shot from. We couldn't take pictures inside (and honestly, it was mostly just reading signs), but here's the outside of the building. The square window next to all of the round ones is the one he was shot from.
There are crosses painted on the road outside that show exactly where JFK was shot. You can just see one in the bottom left of this picture, and the window that the shot was made from.
The "grassy knoll" - Stephen noted that he always thought from descriptions he'd heard that the grassy knoll was a hill some distance away, but really it was more like a median strip about 10m from the cars.
In the evening, we met up with Leo, a friend of ours who lives in Dallas. Despite being the self-proclaimed "worst Texan ever", he promised to take us out for BBQ and to see a rodeo!
First stop was Texan BBQ. It's actually quite confusing for non-locals when you get there - there was basically a big grill with a bunch of meat on it (no signs) and you have to say what you want and how much you want of it. I think I got a slice of brisket and some ribs, plus macaroni cheese and some blackberry cobbler for dessert. The whole thing was DELICIOUS.
Full to bursting with meat and more meat, it was time for our first rodeo. We wandered around the Stock Yards for a while to look around. The rodeo is a big tourist attraction there and happens every Friday and Saturday night, but apparently it's also a big thing with the locals - it's sort of like a trial circuit for people who want to move up in the ranks of rodeo sports, so they come down to participate or to support their friends or just to watch and drink beers. We went to pick up our pre-organized tickets, and joined the longest queue, assuming that it was for ticket pick-up - we were quickly informed that it was actually the queue for participants. I think the lack of cowboy hats gave us away.
The entire rodeo experience was surreal. We weren't really expecting to fit in, but the whole thing exceeded our wildest expectations. At the start, they said that people in the south had a bad rap for not being inclusive of people from other places and they didn't agree with that and wanted to make the night great for everyone - and then they said that everyone was welcome in Texas as long as they worshipped Jesus. Everyone stood while they played a song called "Proud to be an American" ("where at least I know I'm free"), while this girl slowly rode her horse around the ring carrying the flag, and then there was the hands on hearts national anthem.
After that, we got to the actual rodeo. When you think of rodeo, you probably think of bull-riding, but there were actually quite a few different things that happened. They started off with some bull-riding. Despite telling us that he was the worst Texan ever, our friend Leo knew a lot about rodeo. Apparently they make the bull buck by tying a rope around its flank (not its testicles - that's a myth), which basically pisses it off. Riders lodge their hands in under a strap tied around the front of the bull, and they have to stay on for 8 seconds to be awarded points.
The setup includes this scarecrow, who apparently hangs around in the middle of the arena to distract the bull and give it something to charge at once the rider is off. There are also some guys called "rodeo clowns" who wear actual clown outfits and distract the bull once the rider has come off. I don't think you could pay me to do their job - if there was a large crazy bull running around, I don't think I would be waving my arms at it trying to get it to charge me.
Here's some video I took of one of the actual bull rides - it was pretty terrifying actually. At the end, the bull charges the scarecrow, and you can hear the commentator say "Look out Nancy!" - he had been making jokes all night about Nancy Pelosi (the leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Reps and the highest-ranking female politican in American history). Things like "every morning I thank god when I wake up that I'm not Mr Pelosi and I don't wake up next to Nancy", and saying that they should replace the scarecrow with her and see how she went. It was pretty unbelievable.
Some of the other activities during the evening were for kids - they essentially lined up all of the children and let loose a lamb or a calf with a ribbon tied around its neck, and the first kid to get the ribbon won a prize. It was pretty hilarious - the kids ran around like crazy trying to catch these baby animals and having very little luck.
One of the other things they had, and this one actually seemed pretty barbaric to me, was calf roping. My understanding is that the guy starts off on his horse, and they let loose a calf from a gate at one end of the arena, and the guy from the same end a second later. The calf runs straight for a gate at the opposite end of the arena, and the guy has to rope it and get it tied up before it gets there. So he lassos it from his horse, trying to get the rope over its head, and then stops his horse and gets off . This pretty much stops the calf straight away - it seemed pretty cruel to the calf. After this, the horse walks backwards to keep pressure on the rope while the rider picks the calf up and flips it onto its side, and then he ties its legs together with ropes and waits for 6 seconds before it's classified as a win. We saw people doing all of this this in 15 seconds, which seemed ridiculously fast already, but apparently the world record is just over 6 seconds. The lady cowboys also did calf roping, but they only have to lasso the head, not bodyslam it to the ground or tie it.
I didn't get photos of all of the events, but there was also something called "team roping", where a team of two riders roped a calf with one roping the head and one somehow getting a rope around the calf's back feet while it was running - seems impossible but they did it.
It was a pretty surreal experience but we had great fun and definitely recommend it to anyone as something a bit different for a Saturday night :)
