EVERETT McCANN: "I relished rodeo. It was all the things I liked in one concentrated dose of noise and adrenalin. I got to be outdoors and feel free, work with horses and livestock all day, see new places every week, chase pretty girls in tight t-shirts and even tighter jeans, make some real friends for a change, and feel the satisfyingly thick bundle of notes shoved surreptitiously into my hand every Friday evening.

I got to watch the competitors too, and I started to learn some life-lessons the hippies had never taught me.

One guy, Jesse Cole, became my sort-of hero. Slight, wiry, blonde, with ice-blue eyes that bored right through you like diamond drills if you presumed to try to talk to him, he had the shiniest, newest RV on the lot, and strutted around clad head to toe in immaculate black with an appropriately twitchy-buttocked blonde glued to his side. He trained. He practised. He honed his craft, and he won everything. If Jesse Cole rocked up, it was all about who’d be the best-of-the-rest, because you knew damn well he’d ace every discipline he entered. I yearned to be like Jesse Cole, especially when I found out he was only five years older than me. It wasn’t only for the money (and the shapely blonde), but because of the aura surrounding the man. People said he was arrogant, but I disagreed with that. He just knew he was better than the rest of them, and it wasn’t down to luck. He got up earlier, ran further, bench-pressed heavier, and practised more than any of his rivals. He knew he had the package to better them.

After three years on the circuit, and a lot of hard graft, I was in a position to compete on my own account…and I had one goal – to get good enough to beat Jesse Cole."

www.annieholder.com/First-Sight/

#wyoming #rodeo #codycollegerodeo #codyniterodeo #pbr #americanwest #marriedatfirstsight #americancowboy #wyominglovestory #amazonkindle #ebook #paperback #behindthechutes #pickupmen #8secondride #bronc