![\"\"](\"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/bullpic.jpg\")
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December 8, 1998 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I think I know how Chris Chandler must feel in the morning.<\/p>\n
Only my soreness on Monday didn’t come from some Colts from Indianapolis. It came from two bulls from Barrow County.<\/p>\n
“How did you get talked into doing this?” asked David Goins, 29, of Winder, as he looked me up and down. “Bull riding is a dangerous sport. I’m not going to lie to you.”<\/p>\n
Goins, Jackie Patton, 21, of Winder, and Guy Liles, 28, of Roswell, the coaches for my whirlwind encounter with the sport of bull riding Sunday at Diamond A Arena in Auburn, didn’t lie to me.<\/p>\n
In fact, they seemed eager to inform me of their personal encounters with the perils of being a rodeo cowboy.<\/p>\n
The trio is an insurance company’s nightmare: broken arms, ribs, jaws, vertebrae and ankles; dislocated wrists, elbows and shoulders; stitches and staples just about everywhere.<\/p>\n
I was already anxious. Hearing their extended medical histories didn’t help.<\/p>\n
Still, they are some of the lucky ones. It is no secret that bull riding has claimed the lives of more than a few experienced cowboys.<\/p>\n
As I laced my riding boots, fastened my spurs and buckled my chaps, I recalled the odd stares people gave me when I told them that I planned to go bull riding. They looked at me as if I was crazy. They looked at me as if I was dead.<\/p>\n
“That’s the one thing I told myself I would never do,” said many of my friends and colleagues, either shaking their heads in disbelief or backing away from me for fear whatever sickness I had was contagious.<\/p>\n
As my ride time drew closer, I was thinking that perhaps I should have set similar limits for myself.<\/p>\n
Guy handed me my protective vest and said, “It won’t stop him from killing you … ”<\/p>\n
” … But believe me, they help,” added David, before recounting the time when a bull stabbed a horn through his vest, breaking four of his ribs.<\/p>\n
I laughed a nervous laugh. Then I heard my name announced over the public address system. My bull, Big Sky, was waiting for me in chute number one.<\/p>\n
The chute, the small steel cage where the cowboy mounts the bull, isn’t a place where you want to spend a lot of your time. There’s no telling what a bull might do in there. There’s no telling if the cowboy will make it out in one piece.<\/p>\n
“The most dangerous spot in the whole arena at any rodeo is the chute. That’s where the bull can kill you,” said Guy as he walked me to my chute.<\/p>\n
Big Sky, a blonde, hornless bull of about 1,800 pounds, was waiting for me. Jackie assured me that he was a relatively calm, veteran bull. Good for beginners.<\/p>\n
I straddled the beast, and squeezed my gloved right hand under the woven handle on the rope tied around Big Sky’s chest, right behind his huge shoulder blades. I wrapped the loose end of the rope around my hand and gripped it tightly. I inched up until I was almost sitting on top of my hand.<\/p>\n
I tried to remember everything I was told. Push out your chest. Keep your elbow in. Tuck your chin. Hold on with your feet. Squeeze with your knees. Look at the bull’s shoulders.<\/p>\n
Guy simplified things for me. “Hold on until the back of your head hits the ground twice, and then you let go,” he said.<\/p>\n
“When you hit the ground, scramble, run and get on that fence,” added Jackie.<\/p>\n
I really don’t remember much of my time atop Big Sky, perhaps because I was only there for 2.32 seconds.<\/p>\n
I don’t remember hearing my coaches. I don’t remember hearing the crowd.<\/p>\n
All I remember hearing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d louder and louder \u00e2\u20ac\u201d was the beating of my heart. Or was it Big Sky’s?<\/p>\n
I remember nodding, signaling the rodeo clown to open the chute. And then I remember my back loudly colliding with the earth, the air being forced out of my lungs. A true “chile wop,” I later learned.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/bullpic2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I staggered to the nearest fence.<\/p>\n
“So how do you feel?” someone asked me.<\/p>\n
I spit out some dirt and gasped, “Great.”<\/p>\n
Somehow I got talked into going again. I rode a bull named Repo for 2.69 seconds. The bull made a turn and I didn’t. The fall was softer this time.<\/p>\n
I landed in a heap of bull dung.<\/p>\n
I ended my rodeo career after that ride, walking away with a bruised back, a sore wrist and some smelly blue jeans. Nothing time and a little Tide can’t take care of.<\/p>\n
But I got a glimpse of what keeps cowboys like David, Guy and Jackie coming back for more. It’s the rush.<\/p>\n
Five of the most exciting seconds of my life were spent on the back of a bull.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
December 8, 1998 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I think I know how Chris Chandler must feel in the morning. Only my soreness on Monday didn’t come from some Colts from Indianapolis. It came from two bulls from Barrow County. “How did you get talked into doing this?” asked David Goins, 29, of Winder, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,8,38,6,34],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}