Live and Breathe Rodeo

It is a way of life for me. When I’m on the road, heading to a rodeo or sitting behind the slides, I feel relaxed and right at home. There is no other life that I would like to live besides the one I am living now. I travel all over the United States and see so many different places that I thought I would never see. Big cities, bright lights, beautiful horses and fast women.

I have been riding and going to rodeos since I could walk. The first rodeo I ever rode a sheep in the Muttin Bustin contest in Florida and I ended up riding my sheep the longest and it was in the local paper. My dad, my uncle and most of my cousins ​​are also into the rodeo life and that’s why it runs in my blood because I was raised around it. Now that I’m older, I drive to rodeos almost every weekend and compete to make it to the finals at the end of the year, where you can win up to $250,000.

In rodeos I mainly ride bulls and ropes as a team. Bull riding is something I’ve always done, but it takes a lot of guts and pain to become a champion. I broke my tailbone, tore my back muscles and had many other injuries, but in this sport you get over those pains if you want to win. Succeeding in the rodeo life is very difficult because you don’t sign a contract and while you compete you get paid. Not so at all. We have to pay our own gas to travel up and down the highway, pay our own entry fees, and if we don’t compete or win, we don’t make money. So no matter how much pain you’re in or how tired you are, if you need money and you want money, you have to put all those things behind you and move on. I also do rope team in which two people participate. There is a header that ties up the steer’s horns and a heeler that then ties up the steer’s hind legs after the header catches. I mostly ride big rodeos, but I can switch sides and heads from time to time.

The rodeo life is not for everyone. It takes guts, love and glory. You have to be dedicated and accept the fact that you are not going to win every rodeo. Many people think that they are cut out to be a cowboy and live the rodeo life, but there are a few that make it to the end. It’s a hard life to live and most cowboys, especially bull riders, are exhausted and broken by the age of thirty-five from all the riding every weekend and the broken bones and bruises with the that you have to deal with day after day. As they say, “No pain, no gain!”

This is how I live my life traveling around the rodeo to hopefully make a name for myself and make a lot of money in the rodeo world. I have to go, I have to go, I have to rodeo!