Rodeo of the Mid South

Back in September five of us went to a rodeo down in Southaven, Mississippi. It was my first trip to Tennessee's neighbor to the south. What struck me most was how spread out everything was. Houses had big yards, there was open space and it was just completely different than Memphis. I guess you get used to lots of stuff jammed together when you live in a city.


Here's the cowboys waiting around for the first event. To our surprise, the first event had cowboys rope a calf, jump off their horse, and yank the cow to the ground by twisting its neck. This looked pretty violent to all of us, but the calves got up quickly, ran off, and appeared to have their necks intact.



Here's the 'Hall of Fame' rodeo clown who kept everybody entertained. His humor was really the lowest of the low. Brad, my friend who is notorious for making terrible puns, didn't seem to think the clown was very funny. Looking around though, people seemed to enjoy him, especially the kids, and it was an entertaining way to keep you interested during the down time between events and as they switched between cowboys performing in each event.



Some of the action events - they had a team calf roping where one cowboy roped the head and the other roped the back legs. Of course they had two rounds of bull riding, the feature event, which was cool. We saw one really bad wipe out, but other than that, the bulls seemed tamer than I expected.



The intersection of Sam Cooper Blvd, I-40, and I-240. I get on to 240 S here every day going to work.


I flew to Philly on Thursday, October 4th, stayed at home for a night, visited Haverford for an afternoon and had lunch at the track table with the guys. It was great being back (other than the Friday food) and I got to talk to Tom for a while too. That afternoon I drove out to Brittany's apartment in Hershey. I had a great time there - we went out to a bar the night after her test with her med school friends, went to Chocolate world on Saturday, had a fantastic Mexican dinner, then watched/listened to the Phillies loss to the Rocks in the NLDS. It was really tough leaving Hershey and leaving Philly to come back to Memphis. The picture of the Philly skyline was right before I departed.




Coming into Memphis that Sunday night I got a good view of the sun setting over the Mississippi. The difference between the Philly and Memphis airports is striking - one place has southern accents, the other doesn't.