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26 July ~2012

Cheyenne is like the new year for me - midsummer, right before I take my annual pilgrimage up North with the dogs.

It used to be a family time, when Janet and I would go up there with the girls and spend several days. We started going up there in the 1980's.

Now I usually go solo, or meet my daughter up there for the rodeo. Afterwards I wander over to the Art show and look over the all new paintings each year. My favorites are always the ones of the Wyoming Mountains, or old ranch hands with their dogs, or kids with their border collies.

In the evening before the night show I hang around the Bucking A Saloon, on the rodeo grounds.

If I still drank it might be a problem to spend so much time in bars/dance halls as I do. But I have been sober for over 12 years now, and find the taste of nonalcoholic OlDouls to be just fine. Funny how I don't get into fights in these bars anymore, since I stopped drinking.

No, I go to listen to the music, and watch people (ladies), and dance.

This year the band that opened on Saturday at 5pm was New Old West, one that comes to the Grizzly Rose pretty regularly.

Few couples were dancing when the band first started, and I just stood over by the edge of the building. (wallflower). It takes a good song to get me moving to find someone to dance.

The band played one with an easy triple step beat, and and I started through the crowd searching for a woman I had seen earlier - young, with a white sundress and western boots on, tan and slender, with brown hair tied into long braids - the most beautiful woman in the whole place. I found her midway back through the crowd, standing with her girlfriends. I asked her to dance, expecting to be turned down.

Instead she smiled and said she would love to dance.

I am shy by nature, but twenty plus years of triple and two step has changed that, at least around the dance floor. I had a wonderful time, with her, and then with some friends from the Rose that showed up. (the best song/dance was 'play something country). I left after the band's set and then drove down I25 to the Grizzly Rose, where I stayed til past midnight.

It is a good life I have - through my quiet weeks, then socializing and having more fun than should be allowed on Friday through Sunday, weekend after weekend. It is something I am sure grateful for, and I don't think I would change anything about the path that got me here.

Here are the photos I took at the parade and rodeo earlier in the day, on Saturday.

 

Listen to Play Something Country by Brooks and Dunn. (enter userid of music and password of music2012 - lowercase, without quotes).