Random Memory

Last Wednesday when I was on the bus for the Mystery Tour (I wrote about it on Weds evening – scroll down to find it), we drove through the town of Leicester. When I saw the big water tower with “LEICESTER” boldly written on it, I was transported to a flashback memory!

Back in the late 70’s / early 80’s – I would have been in my early 20’s – I went to a jamboree in Leicester. It was a festival with several local bands playing all day long with lots of food and fun! Let’s just say that the “incident” in my memory bank was influenced by a lot of good country music, dancing, and beer…enough said on that!

With a significant amount of liquid courage surging through my veins, I gave in to my friends daring me to ride a mechanical bull….if you ever saw the movie “Urban Cowboy” with John Travolta and Debra Winger, you know what I mean…..or if you’ve ever been to a rodeo or similar event in the 70’s or 80’s – they were pretty popular back then! If you DON’T have a clue what I’m talking about, here’s a couple photos (there is NO photographic evidence of my time on the bull….I often thank the universe that Social Media and cell phone cameras weren’t invented until AFTER my wild stage):

A mechanical bull is a motorized thing that sorta looks like a bull and bucks and rotates while the person on it tries to stay on by holding on with only one hand. They use them to train bull riders.

Anyway…..the combination of urging from my friends and probably a tad too much liquid courage resulted in me agreeing to tame the bull! I could do it! I saw Debra Winger do it — it couldn’t be THAT hard, right? So, I signed the release form — I probably should have seen the writing on the wall when I had to sign a legal document that released the organizers of the event of any responsibility should I get injured and that I understood the risks AND that I claimed to be sober at the time of the ride!!! (ooppss)

As it turned out…..it was not the graceful, dare I say sexy, ride that Debra Winger portrayed in “Urban Cowboy” (I’ll post a clip after my story to remind those who saw it and so those who didn’t see it can see it). Nope — I got on, the operator started out slow and easy and amped it up once it looked like I got the hang of it…..what seemed like a decent amount of time ended up being a matter of seconds……I flew off the bull into the arms of the “spotter” standing beside the bull (I was a right good bit more “petite” back then, so he was able to easily catch me in mid-flight). My friends told me that it looked like I just “let go” after the first few seconds and “flew off”! All I knew was that I was riding and doing fine and all of a sudden, a strong, good looking guy had me cradled in his arms like a baby! 😉

I was fine – no problem – wasn’t hurt – just embarrassed about how totally UN-graceful I performed on my first (and only) ride on a mechanical bull! I went about the rest of the day and we all got a good laugh out of it.

Then…..I woke up the next morning…..man, was I sore!!! I could barely walk…..the insides of both my legs were covered with dark purple bruises from my “you know what” to my ankles and it took a couple weeks or more for the bruises and the pain to go away so I could walk like normal and not like I still had that bull between my legs!

I learned a lesson and never did it again…..but, it was fun at the time…..and it makes for a great memory and story that I lived to tell about!

Here’s how Debra Winger did it in Urban Cowboy: