Shifting gears a bit from yesterday, I decided to do something a bit more adventurous. There is a lot of hype around riding a mechanical bull. So much so that when I told my gramma (because I love her) that I'd be doing it, she insisted I let her know I was ok when I was done. My family is adorable.
So its got a reputation for causing serious injury and/or death. So what. I mean, anyone who has seen the movie Out Cold knows that bull riding is, actually, highly seductive.
As for us regular folk, it was not quite as exciting (either for me or for the crowd). It was, however, really fun. I was both nervous and cocky before I got up on the bull. Why? I blame Jimmy Fallon. Its a universally acceptable way to deal with any problem. But this time there's a good reason. You see, Fallon had a couple of professional bull riders on his show the night before I went to ride. I had just gotten a mini-lesson in riding a mechanical bull from Jaad while we ate cake and then I came home to a visual tutorial on the Jimmy Fallon show.
The pros demonstrated the exact technique that Jaad had described to me less than an hour before. The pros took their off-hand (whichever one they didn't write with) and looped it under the part of the saddle they were supposed to hold on to. Jimmy I-laugh-at-my-own-jokes Fallon, by contrast, took his stronger hand and grabbed the saddle on top. No looping. He lasted a hilariously short time.
So I walked into the bar, called the Fifth Quarter, confident that the universe intended me to wow people with my first timer bull-riding abilities. I hopped on, looped my left hand under the rope they had for holding on and flashed a smile at Bob, who was taking pictures. (Yes, I'm aware that means I now owe people two sets of pictures. Both will be forthcoming.)
I stayed on for about 20 seconds and thought to myself, "man, this is so much easier than it looked on TV. It feels like its in slow motion." At which point it stopped being in slow motion. I was off in about a second and a half. On the bright side, I conquered easy mode. I didn't think that was much of an accomplishment until later in the night.
As the line piled up I watched all sorts of people take their turn on the bull. There were a lot of guys that look like they fell out of the Jersey Shore taking their turns. The operator gave them all what-for very quickly. There were also a lot of girls who jumped right on and couldn't make it through the easy mode portion of the ride. Katya, on the other hand, made pretty much everybody in the entire bar, male and female, look bad in comparison. She stayed on a solid 30+ seconds, with the bull going as hard as I saw it the whole night. Impressive.
I would highly recommend trying this at least once for anyone who hasn't. It was a lot of fun and if you go to the Fifth Quarter and tell them you haven't done it before, they'll generally let you ride on easy mode for a few seconds to get the feel of it. That's all for now. I'll fill y'all in tomorrow on what I do today.
woohoo! Bull Riding!
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