TUCSON RODEO - DAY 2

Part of the opening ceremonies each day, after the National Anthem, is the performance of the ladies drill team pictured above. Yesterday was breast cancer awareness day, thus the pink shirts.

The wind blew yesterday, but not quite as bad as the day before. What really changed was the temperature. A cold weather system moved into the area, that, combined with the wind, really cooled things down. Another plus was the increased sales of sweatshirts, so cold weather isn't necessarily a bad thing. I wandered over to the grandstands during the saddle bronc event, and took a few pictures of the action, along with a few shots back towards the trailer.

The Tucson Rodeo Stadium seats just under 10,000 people, and as you can see, it's not even half full. As successful as this rodeo is, it would be even better if the folks would come out, and fill all of the seats. We have watched bits and pieces of the rodeo over the years, and it is very entertaining, particularly the marque events like the ladies barrel racing, and the bull riding. The action below is one of the saddle bronc riders.

















When the junior rodeo action starts at 12:30, our sales start to slow down, and when the pro rodeo starts at 2pm, we don't sell much of anything for the next couple of hours. The days action is usually done around 4-4:30, and then we often sell stuff as fast as we can for an hour or so. Yesterday, just as the last bull was being ridden, it started to rain. Not a lot, but enough to cause people to quickly head for their vehicles. As a result, our after rodeo rush, was reduced to a crawl. Some people took shelter under our big trailer doors, and waited for the rain to slow down, but sales suffered. What is often several thousand $ in sales, was reduced to several hundred $, mostly due to the rain. There's always a silver lining with everything, and the one thing the rain did, was reduce the dust, even though it was at the end of the day.












This last picture is one of the new scanners that we're learning to use. After a couple days of sales, I think we're pretty much there with mastering this new technology. One of the neat things this new device does, is it allows us to look up just about any item, and quickly make the sale, even if a bar code is missing. It's also connected to the web, and sends real time information back to Indianapolis. Even though I was a bit skeptical about having to learn a new system, I can now see that this device is light years ahead of the last scanner we used for years.

The next 3 days are called slack days, and even though there is rodeo competition, the public pretty much stays away until this Thursday. That's when the Pro competition resumes, and is also the day of the big parade.