Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders : A Year Inside the Professional Bull Riders Tour
If you watch enough television and switch channels often enough, there's a good chance that you've come across something called the Professional Bull Riders tour. If you're like me, you put the remote down for a while, at least long enough to watch a bull toss a cowboy into the air like a ragdoll. As you sit safely on the couch, perhaps having skipped your usual Sunday round of golf because your ankle is still a bit sore from when you stepped on your son's toy car while walking through a dark hallway on your way to get a midnight snack, you can't help but wonder what these cowboys are thinking. What is it that would possess a man to climb aboard the back of a two-thousand pound animal with four stomping hooves and a set of goring horns?
In his recent book on the PBR tour, Josh Peter has all the answers. By spending the entire 2004 season jumping from one event to the next and getting to know the riders as well as the sport, Peter comes up with a well-writen book that simultaneously serves as a primer for novices (like me) and an insider's guide for fans. (No need to take my word for it -- here's an incredibly cool video excerpt that you should check out.)
He includes enough history and background information to provide context for the events of the season he chronicles, but the strength of the book lies in the personalities of the bullriders. Though it might be tempting to lump the riders together and view them all as daredevils, Peter makes it clear that these men are athletes no different from any you might find in the NFL or on the PGA tour.
We meet men like Adriano Moraes, the Brazilian rider who came to the United States with nothing and became a world champion; Justin McBride, who couldn't seem to parlay his prodigious talent into a championship; Jody Newberry, the painfully honest cowboy who found controversy in last month's PBR Finals; and dozens more. While the idea of hanging onto a spinning bull with one hand might seem a bit more extreme than swinging a nine-iron, it quickly becomes clear that great athletes -- and these riders certainly are great athletes -- are fairly similar regardless of their sport. There are some who allow outside influences to waste their natural abilities while others achieve success through an obsessive attention to detail that borders on psychosis, but somehow they've all arrived at the top of their profession.
Before reading this book I certainly never expected that I would take in interest in bull riding, but Peter's book is compelling enough that I've got a two-hour show just on the bulls waiting for me on my TiVo right now. So if all you want is to find out what makes a bull rider tick, or even if you're a fan looking for behind the scenes material on your favorite sport, this book is definitely for you. I promise you won't be disappointed.
And what about the fried twinkies? The buckle bunnies? You'll have to read the book to get answers to those questions...
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