You Can Be My Cowboy

Yesterday I went to the Chili Cookoff. It was pretty fun. I would much prefer to go to these things with someone but being there alone has some advantages. For one thing, I had relatively no problem making my way up through the crowd toward the stage. This is a lot easier to do when there is just one of you. Especially if you are a woman. By the beginning of the last performance I was equivalent to third row, center stage. There were some old drunk people sitting in lawn chairs beside me who I heard tell some other people they had been camped out at the gate since 5 a.m. and don't touch their stuff. So I suppose it is safe to say that it didn't pay for them to get there early unless getting trampled and being drunk to the point of puking by 11 a.m. was the goal. However, I didn't stay for Hank Williams Jr. (read: I committed redneck blasphemy.) There were several reasons. I had eaten nothing and drank very little and the temperature in the crowd of sweating stinky nearly naked people was a only a tiny bit above tolerable by 4:00 p.m. I was wearing a tad more clothing than the average female in attendance also. It wasn't Coachella worthy dehydration causing, heat stroke inducing temperatures but it was a tad muggy and as much as I dig country music this was not The Cure. I wasn't going to risk fainting to make sure I was within spitting distance of Hank Jr.

I had seen Big and Rich from what I considered a mildly disappointing distance because they were who I really wanted to be up front for and I was late getting there due to traffic insanity. Thankfully by the middle of their performance I had made it to a pretty good spot and was completely enjoying Save a Horse right along with the rest of the crowd who were my age and younger dancing between the aisles of lawn chairs and blankets. I saw Keith Urban from what I considered an okay distance but would have appreciated being closer. I didn't try to get much closer to the stage when he was on simply because I am 5'2" and sometimes being close to the stage yet far enough back from front row and behind tall people wearing hats isn't the best vantage point. Plus I was standing on top of some ramp thing that was covering up electrical cords running from the sound board to the stage and that was making me a whole two or three inches taller. The fact that I had somehow been moved completely to the front of the stage by the crowd by the time Hank came on didn't deter me from thinking it would be a good idea to try to escape the place in front of the swarm of roughly 50,000 people that would be in front of me when I turned around to leave at the end of the show. That combined with the level of drunken fighting breaking out and spilling of beer randomly on people and haphazard lit cigarettes waving around a lot of chemically treated hair made me think that it would be a nice time to depart. I had enough foreign DNA on me as it was. I also would be walking about two blocks from the park to catch my ride home. So, given all those factors I went ahead and left. I was satisfied with my day though. That is what matters. I had to curb my temptation to grab a funnel cake on my way out. Bastard funnel cake making people.

Both Big and Rich and Keith Urban were great shows. I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the crowd got into Big and Rich since they aren't the typical rebel flag waving sort. Cowboy Troy was as large as they promised and the two foot tall guy was there to do what? I don't know. Be there. Montgomery Gentry played between them and I could give a rat's ass about them. I saw them a few months ago with Brooks and Dunn and was not impressed either time. I thought it was kind of humorous to hear the same people who were yelling for Big and Rich screaming and going crazy for Montgomery Gentry and then turn around and leave the crowd to go find more beer when Keith Urban went into his second or third song mumbling about how they had "had enough of this shit". I thought Keith was pretty good. He is a good performer and he is a hell of a lot better looking than I had thought he was going to be.

My loveliest souvenir has to be the sunburn I am sporting distinctly from my cheekbones down into a large V shape into my cleavage where my shirt was open. I figured with the hat and all the clothes I really didn't need sunblock. I am a tad stupid at times. Now I look like a freak to boot.

So that was that.