Australia Bo A visit to the Calgary Stampede | Sheepskin snowboots

uring the annual Calgary Stampede, a massive urban rodeo and cowboy-culture exhibition, an oil town of more than a million people turns over to cowboy hats, tall boots, blue jeans, pearl snaps, and garish belt buckles. For some, the nod to country style is in ct a way of life. For others, it is cowboy Halloween &8212; costumes minus the character. My first night at the Stampede, a group of friends and I closed down a massive yard party, then wandered to an Italian restaurant that had set up a South Beach-style lounge under tent cover on the sidewalk. Before long, a scuffle broke out. Someone threw a punch; someone else swung a stool. In a blinkAustralia Boots a dozen guys were bum-rushing one another and crashing over the ropes into the couches of the VIP section, kicking, pushing, punching, yelling. A peacemaker walked over to try to talk sense and got a stool swung against his temple. My friends and I edged to the door. A moment later the man at the middle of the attack strode out, pink <a href="http://www.8shoxonline.com/products_all.html"><strong>Nike Shox Wholesale</strong></a> as a ham, his ce running with blood. Police sirens dispersed the melee. Our broken table and drinks lay strewn on the ground. The Australia Bo A visit to the Calgary Stampedelife of a professional rodeo cowboy is a hard one. The season is set up a little like a pro golf tour, except there are hundreds of events and most pay poorly. In the riding competitions judges score the form of both the cowboy and the animal. If a rider hangs on for a full eight seconds, half his points come for his own execution and half come from the animals performance, which represents the degree of difficulty. In steer wrestling, tie-down roping, and team roping scores depend simply on speed. It is routine, then, that a rider travels hundreds of miles,Wholesale Australia Boots buys his gas, buys his meals, sleeps in his truck or in stale-sheet motels along the way, arrives <a href="http://www.8shoxonline.com/products_all.html"><strong>Shoes Nike Shox</strong></a> in Rapid City or Tupelo or Tonganoxie, puts in his ride, maybe wins a check, and is back on the road before his name has stopped echoing off the aluminum bleachers. Generally, he will be paid &8212; or not &8212; for between three and eight seconds of work. Outside of profess splitting a total of 2 million and riding the top horses and bulls in the business. Its the best of the best on the best of the best, is the way Wyoming bareback rider Kelly Timberman sums up the Stampede. From July 7 to 17, the Stampedes cumulative attendance was nearly 1.2 million. That averages out to a number close to the attendance at this years Kentucky Derby &8212; for 10 straight days. Rodeo events transmogrify frontier chores into spectator sport, and because of that theyre popular in many places where people still work closely with horses and cattle: Australia, Brazil, Canada. In North America, the rodeo is often just the centerpiece to the sort of itinerant carnival that celebrates and sells a ding notion of Western life. Anyone can pull on some boots, admire the horses, and walk through the same straw as real cowboys. It is ritual and spectacle and rite, all in the same harness. Surrounding the Stampede Park Race Track are permanent grounds reminiscent of a county ir. Whack-A-Mole and ring-toss stands share real estate with food vendors slinging the deep-fried, chocolate-dunked, sno-conical Tour de Diabetes that seems mandatory at these happenings. Nearby, gut-slugging collapsible rides evoke r times of traveling circuses and laissez-ire tort law in the hearts of some, while evoking chicken schnitzel and fried Oreos in the mouths of others. Theres no rodeo quite like the Stampede. The capstone to the season is the National Finals Rodeo, in Las Vegas, where the top cowboys ride against each other for prizes worth more than 5 million. There are other major events &8212; RodeoHouston, Cheyenne Frontier Days &8212; but the Stampede is a thing apart. Most rodeos collect entry fees <a href="http://www.geiwoyizhiyan.com/read.php?226#topreply"><strong>cheap Austra Wholesale | Sheepskin snowboots</strong></a> from dozens or hundreds of cowboys and pit them against each other for a few thousand dollars. In Calgary, just 20 roughnecks are invited to compete in each of six events,