Stampede

For ten days of the year, Calgary turns into cowboysville. For someone who’s closest experience with horses was the radish type you put on your Sunday lunch, it was going to be a new experience.

As we stood in line on the Friday night, I started to feel like I had missed something. Was there a certain dress code here? As I looked across I saw all types of cowboy hats, brown ones, straw ones, pink ones, rude ones. I looked up at the glowing sign above us and then realised why. We were going to cowboys.

The evening presented a number of challenges from the normal nightclubs. It’s difficult to get drunk without money. After queuing for an eternity at the cash point, I then realised that the Visa adverts were in fact misleading. Maybe I could get money out in a jungle in Africa, but I couldn’t get my money out here in cowboys. The solution, though slightly dangerous, was to put my credit card behind the bar and hope there wasn’t too many Cowboy Coopers in the place tonight otherwise I would need to a horse to ride me back home.

“You mean you have never been line dancing?” came the question loaded with shock. Well I had, it’s just dancing in a church hall when you were thirteen with a chequered shirt hardly counted. I guess things had moved on a lot since then as well. After refusing the request to give it a go, I stood back and rejoiced in my decision after taking the opportunity to observe the boisterous crowd take their bow. In theory, but certainly not in practice, you are meant to step and move in certain direction in the timing of the music whilst someone is shouting down the microphone. The result of this drunken spectacle was inevitable. Missed timed steps, bruised toes and a lot of confused faces. I would have fitted in well.

The next day was once of recovery. Having spent more money at the bar than fifty two step lessons, the day continued as it started. A Red Bull induced blur. As I walked around the malls trying my best not to bump into everyone, I struggled with even the simplest things. Buying food. Now, as with many things, Canada seems far advanced when it comes to sorting out a hungry stomach. There will always be something to eat, and more times than most, a number of types of things to eat. Unlike your spotty grumpy thirteen year old back home, there are a number of smiling faces happy to serve you. They form a conveyor belt, one person takes your order and your money, and another goes off and finds the relevant items. You therefore rarely have to wait. Well you do, you stand and gaze trying to choose the number of different items on the menu.

After walking past one of the most famous singers in Canada and not realising it, I made my last purchase. A brown cowboy hat. Despite being assured that the pink label didn’t mean it was a girls hat, I walked out confident that I could pass for a local. All I needed now was a bit of straw and to learn how to ride a horse in a day.

It was going to be impossible. I mean where would I find straw around here?

‘Welcome to Stampede 2005’. We had been slightly delayed getting to the park via the sea train. It seems although most things in Canada are better, there was one thing that they hadn’t given much thought to. Placing a big red handle with the words ‘Only pull in an emergency’ whilst four feet in the air is like saying to a kid in a candy shop “Don’t eat any of them”. The train came to a halt. “No, Amy, you mustn’t pull that lever, bad girl”. Her mother leant down to the intercom, “I’m sorry, it’s my four year old daughter”. The packed train shared a mixture of tuts and “If I was a kid I would have pulled it as well” comments before finally a man came aboard and reset the emergency system.

Calgary Stampede is like one big theme park combined with an outdoor show. There are Karaoke competitions, more apt to Country Idol to pop idol, exhibitions with pigs and cows and a number of side attractions all with a country theme. Being a world wide attraction, there were a mix of people swarming around the park, like myself, with absolutely no idea where or when they were going next.

As the evening grew older, it was building up to the finale. The Chuckwagon races. Seeing chariot racing with four horses created bizarre images. Not as strange as the rules for the race. Unfortunately it wasn’t a case of first horse wins after going one circuit of the track. Oh no. First of all the outriders have place a barrel on the back of the wagon then mount their own horses. I tried to picture it as a rush to get out of the supermarket car park on a busy Saturday afternoon, it sort of made sense after that point. The next part is to make sure you manoeuvre your wagon and your four horses around a barrel, again, it’s like the old granny trying to reverse park without hitting her side mirrors on my car (for the second time), if they do, they get deducted points.

So, we had lots of big cowboy like men sitting down on their wagons whipping their horses and generally making a lot of noise. The crowd stand to their feet. I could'nt understand it. Why cheer for someone when you are not betting any money on it. I then started to appreciate that maybe peoples lives over here didn’t revolve around betting and making money on horses. Maybe they were just really into their horses. Strange.

Just before the end it was time for my defining tourist moment. Not content with wearing a cowboy hat with a ‘look at me, I’m a tourist sign’, I saw in the distance a large man with a red coat. I had flash backs of Due South. Surely not. I had just seen a Mounty. Rushing over like a Japanese tourist in Buckingham palace, I grabbed the Mounty round the waste like some long lost brother whilst someone snapped away. After smiling for me for the picture, I decided it would be best to let him get on with his day job. Making the streets of Calgary safe again from Cowboy impostors like me. Maybe they should do a television show about a Mounty? That would be long over Due, especially in the South of Canada.