Yee-haw! It's the Calgary Stampede!

It's that time of year when Calgary transforms into a veritable ranch. The business men of downtown disappear and are replaced with jeans, boots, bolo ties, and stetsons. I'm almost surprised that I don't see cows and horses alongside the cars while sitting in traffic. The Calgary Stampede and Exhibition, coined the "Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", is acknowledged to the be the largest spectacle of its kind. This is where the cowboys come, from all over North America, for the BIG prize money, up to $50 000, in their respective competitions.

As a child growing up in Calgary I went to the Stampede pretty much every year. Back then I anticipated a day of eating junk food (corn dogs and cotton candy are perennial favourites) and rides on the midway. The Stampede grounds are typically filled with people roaming around, carnies calling for you to play their games, and lines winding around the more popular rides. Usually the day is hot and you can enjoy the sunshine (and sticky cotton candy hands) until it sets around 10pm. Calgary is very far north so as a result, we have long summer days and short winter ones.

Going to the Stampede this year, after a 2 year absence, was great! I felt like this time I took much more notice of those people dressed top to toe in cowboy regalia. You can feel the western spirit in the air. The sheer volume of stetsons is amazing! The aroma from the barbeque pits are tantalizing and it seems you just have to have that $4 lemonade the vendor selling (or conversely, that $6 Budweiser). In the distance you can hear the screams of fright and fun coming from the more daredevil rides on the midway.

I also took in the Chuckwagon races for the first time in my Stampede history. Nowhere but the Stampede can watching men control four horses while sitting on a modified chuckwagon be exciting. I especially enjoyed watching the outriders smoothly jump onto their horses. It's good ol' redneck,western entertainment at its best. It's a pity I missed the rodeo and calf-roping competitions (where the cowboy must run down an escaping calf and rope at least three of its legs together). Don't worry, the calf is not harmed in the process, just frightened.

Accompanying the Stampede every year are the various venues for free Stampede breakfasts. This includes, two pancakes, sausage, juice, and some live country music. The lines are long but for the city of impatient Calgarians we're suprisingly willing to wait our turn in order to take part in a good western morning meal. There aren't many places to sit but we make do with what we have.

This western-style revelry goes on for 10 days and when it's finished the booths and rides pack up and move on to their next destination (which I think is the more inferior Klondike Days in Edmonton). Stetsons, bolos and boots are packed up, cowboys go back to being businessmen and the city returns to its normal rather mundane self.