This month's adventure was the Houston Rodeo. Long story short -- it had highs and lows, but it was never boring.
The rodeo proper is a lot of fun, much more than I expected. It's not just a rodeo. It's really a rural themed festival. There are amusement park rides, dozens of food trucks, a shopping expo, a livestock show, live entertainment, and so on. The traditional rodeo events are much more interesting than I thought they would be and they keep it well paced, almost rhythmic. Every minute or so some combination of bovine, equine, and human fly out of a gate and perform some explosive act, complete with commentary and big screen replays. It's all rather fun.
Once the rodeo proper is over, the stage is given over to a musical act -- usually, but not always -- a country singer. In our case it was Brad Paisley. Honestly, I couldn't name a Brad Paisley song, although he is quite renowned and famous, and not just in country circles; he was a judge on a couple of those American Idol-type shows and pops up on TV now and then. My observation is that he is quite a good guitarist. His music sounds to my ignorant ear like pretty solid mainstream country hit music, which is to say it could be called traditional old-school rock-and-roll run through a twang filter. The sound system was notably awful though -- muddy and distorted.
Post-concert we hit the food trucks which, this being Houston, were heavy on the BBQ and Tex-Mex. Following this a sweep through the market/livestock area where you seemingly could buy anything from simple homemade crafts to high end John Deeres.
All-in-all it was a fun time and I wouldn't hesitate to go again. However…
Getting in and getting out was a gauntlet of hardship. In an attempt to save money we commuted to a tram station and took a tram to the NRG Stadium (home of the Houston Texans NFL franchise). I think since the start of the pandemic, this is the only time I have ever felt truly "at risk." We were literally packed like sardines, crushed together as bad as anything you've seen in those videos of rush hour in Japan. There were signs around saying "masks required" but virtually no one had one on. I lean to the skeptical side about masks and am generally sanguine in interpersonal interactions, but this was the paradigmatic superspreader event -- people packed tight amidst poor ventilation. And people had been taking rides like this many times a day for the entire two weeks of the rodeo. For context, average daily attendance is well over 100k, and the day we were there was about 180k. Nearly 2.5 million people attend the rodeo over its duration. I suppose the fact that there was no outbreak is pretty much verification that the pandemic is over.
Getting home was even more desperate. The line to get back on the tram was beyond ludicrous, so we decided to order a Lyft, effectively negating any money we saved by taking the tram in to begin with. Except the pick up spot for ride-share was close to a full mile walk & shuttle ride away and only achieved by sorting through conflicting sets of directions from various "helpful" people. Then, once the Lyft was ordered the driver requested that we leave the designated pick up area and meet her across the street because the designated area was so backed up with cars and cabs that she would have never gotten through. So we scampered across a city street to some BBQ restaurant where we finally got picked up and driven back to the parking structure where we left the car. At the structure, the signs told us to pay in the office before leaving but it was so late the office was closed, as were the elevators, so we got to trudge up to the fourth floor and hope the kiosk at the exit was working (it was). All in all, it took two hours to cover the 20 minute drive home.
But like all hassles, it fades away in memory and the good stuff remains. Like I said, I wouldn't hesitate to go to the rodeo again, but I will gladly pay through the nose for the most convenient parking there is.
