Dani's Dirt

I started my morning off like this…

Which prompted my need to answer. Sometimes my vague tweets need explanation, and sometimes it takes a lot more than 140 characters to do so.

I’ve been to over a hundred rodeos and have put more rodeo miles on my car then most people put on their vehicles in the entire time they own it. These are both facts, not exaggerations. However I’ve never actually competed in any rodeo event… ever. (I’ve always wanted to do Cowboy Mounted Shooting, it’s my favorite.) You see, I almost married a Bullrider once. Also, another fun fact about myself. The weekends of two years of my life were spent traveling to rodeos in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas.

Now while I can say I loved every minute of spending my weekends in the stands at various rodeo grounds across the four states, there are two things I was not a big fan of: Team Roping and Slack. It became a joke among Bullrider’s family about my favorite event, “Team Roping” or staying for the slack, “just for me.” Since Bullriding is the last event in a rodeo, I always had to sit through the team roping and usually part of the slack while waiting for Bullrider to appear in the stands after the rodeo.

(Slack, for any of you who may not know, is kind of the “overflow” of the rodeo. For all the contestants who didn’t get drawn in the main event. It’s mainly calf roping and team roping, and occasionally barrel racing.)

Enter 2012 with me, Bullrider and I went our separate ways, my love for rodeo stayed. Also, throw in the that Best Friend comes from a rodeo family, and one of my family’s friends is a well-known Team Roper.

Yup, I said it… Team Roper.

So, last night I put on my boots and headed to the next town over from Middle-Of-Corn, Kansas to sit in lawn chairs beside the arena with the Crow family, and watch Terry rope.

However, his name wasn’t drawn into the main rodeo, so you can imagine the look on my face when reading the draw on the internet at work yesterday, and realizing I was heading to the rodeo for the sole purpose of watching the slack.

As I jabbered away to Julie about my job and random life thoughts through the barrel racing and bullriding, it struck me how much time changes things, but yet in a lot of ways stays the same.

I can say I actually enjoy Team Roping now (if any of Bullrider’s family is reading this, I know… Hell has frozen over.) and I even didn’t mind staying for the slack, at all. (Double whammy.)

One thing about staying for the slack, it runs late. So I’m sipping on half a pot of coffee while formatting news for work this morning. In my sleepy state, I’m looking through my photos from last night and  I feel I should tell my readers that this was my first time to attempt running horse and swinging rope photos… in the dark. It’s a work in progress, that I’m trying to quickly improve, I’ve had several requests for my photographer presence at weekly calf ropings around Middle-Of-Corn, Kansas but refuse to let someone pay me for a job unless I know I am ready for it. That being said, any advice or tips on action or night photography is greatly appreciated.

Happy Wednesday ❤ Dani B.