Hey Team,

I learned another very important lesson today. No matter how dopey and stupid and slow cows look…they’re not. It’s just a scam perpetrated by the entire species to lull us into a false sense of superiority. Unfortunately for me, every once in a while one of these little critters decides to show it’s true colors.

Enter Cue Ball, an unassuming cow-shaped cow that doesn’t appear to be particularly bright or large but nonetheless managed to make me look like a complete idiot in short order.

My date with Cue Ball started out innocently enough: tied to a hitching post with a brush in my hand Cue Ball managed to seem pretty calm. Scratching under the chin elicited a response not unlike your average puppy even.

After a good thorough “getting to know you” period, Cue Ball was led out into a nice soft field with plenty of open space to run and I was handed the harness rope.

“Okay, good luck.” The smile on my Aunt’s face was less than comforting.

“Okay, new friend, I’m not looking forward to this anymore than you are.” I tried to bond with the cow. “It’s okay, I don’t want to hurt you and you don’t want to hurt ME. HA!” I jumped on Cue Ball’s back and committed fully to staying on that cow as long as humanly possible. I laid out flat across it’s back grabbing for anything that felt like it might help me to hold on until the cow got tired and slowed down enough for me to gracefully dismount.

This all happened in approximately a one and a half second span.

By the second second I was somersaulting through the dirt trying to figure out what had just happened.

Not the most auspicious start to my cowboy career. And to make things more difficult, Cue Ball didn’t seem to be too impressed by the performance either. In fact, I spent the next five minutes trying to corner the stupid cow, which was much harder than you’d think despite having a bona fide horse-mounted cowgirl on my side in the form of my cousin Lisa.

Turns out cows are FAST.

The second ride went a little bit better. I must have traveled a full 20-25 feet before being forced head over heels into the dirt one more time.

Did I mention cows are fast?

Now that Cue Ball’s hatred of me had some time to fester it was becoming painfully clear that things were not going to get any better (the painful part comes in when the cow drags me into a fence as I hold onto the harness rope for dear life so that it doesn’t get away).

I don’t think it was so much a disease…but this was one mad cow.

Unfortunately the second ride didn’t make it on tape so I decided one more try was in order. As would be expected this one ended very quickly with me doing a barrel roll through the dirt…again.

From then on Cue Ball wouldn’t have anything to do with anyone. This was no stupid cow and it definitely wasn’t happy. Despite lots of running and cornering on everyone’s part it seemed the best thing to do was give it some time to cool down while I left the arena to lick my wounds and ponder my accomplishments.

That was awesome! It totally caught me off guard how big and strong (and fast) cows were! It was WAY more challenging to ride a cow than I thought it would be and that made the whole experience that much more of an adventure! But ride a cow I did and Ka-COW (you see what I did there?) number 40 is off the list!

Thanks to everyone that helped with the cow riding adventure today! My Aunt Wendy provided Cue Ball and of course I already mentioned Cousin Lisa, the girl on horseback and happily Momamtrekker and Popamtrekker were able to be part of one of the items on my list. And Jess made her second appearance on the list crossing excitement!

Okay, I’m done.

Brett.

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Fun!

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 3:31 am.