Bull Session

“From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt. The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. It’s an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister. It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.” The excellent Sally Jenkins in WaPo (Gift Article): Riding the baddest bulls made him a legend. Then one broke his neck. “For what reason does anyone mess with, much less provoke, a 1,700-pound bos taurus, a creature that is all chest, haunches and horns and that exerts a ground force reaction of 12 times its body weight when it stomps you with its back legs? That in its prime has such a fighting instinct that if you merely float a piece of paper into a pasture, it will try to gore it?
Every other activity at a rodeo has some passing relationship to ranching skills. Breaking wild horses and roping steers are necessary for managing rough stock. But bull riding is just a dare. It has no other reason for being.”