Yah Hoo!

I went to the Calgary Stampede for the first time this weekend. I have wanted to go for years now, but had never gotten to it. This year Jovita wrote the MCAT on Thursday, and her birthday was on Friday, so Scott and I went to Calgary to celebrate with her Stampede-style. We went down Thursday night when Scott was done work, and only got lost a little on the way to Jo's house. Friday morning we got up early to get downtown to stake out a spot for the parade. We decided it was well worth getting there at 7:00, but only after we found the Tim Horton's. The parade was really good. That was the first time I had seen a big city parade, and I liked how there was so many bands and things like that, although no one was giving out candy. There was a very obnoxious family reunion right in front of us chain smoking and drinking the whole time, so that was annoying. Jet and Cord, the cowboys who were on the Amazing Race were the parade marshals. Jovita and I were very excited about seeing them. Cord was actually in the rodeo too, but he didn't do very well on the bucking bronco. There were also a few Olympians in the parade, and lots of Calgary firemen and policemen. I loved how the police all had cowboy hats. After the parade, we waited for an hour to catch the train to the Stampede. We had tickets to the rodeo, and it was really fun. Jim Berry, who is from Rocky, did well in the saddle bronc, so that was exciting.

Saturday we had not planned to go to the Stampede at all, which turned out to be a good thing as it rained all day. We hadn't got back to Jo's until about 3:30 the night before, so we slept in and went and picked up her car in town, and then met up with my other friend Scott. We all went to Scott Beck's grandma's for supper, which was really good. She is super nice, and it was a really good meal.

Sunday we went back to the Stampede. We got there to see the Acrobatic Ice Show at 10:00. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the Olympic gold medalist ice dancers, and Elvis Stojko were in the show. We sat up near the top, and it was amazing. We wanted to see it from closer to the ice, so we lined up again to get better seats for the 2:00 show. We waited for an hour to get in, and got front row seats, but then they told us we couldn't sit there because they were reserved. It was not very well marked at all, and there were no good seats left by the time they kicked us out of those seats, so we left. We went and watched some sheep shearing, and then decided to try one more time at the 5:00 show. We made friends with the usher, and got second row seats. The usher was going to let us move up to the reserved seats if no one came to sit in them, but we didn't end up getting to move up. The show was a lot better from that close, and Elvis Stojko blew Jovita a kiss. After that was hung around for a while just looking at the midway and the marching bands that were all around, with a short stop in the beer gardens. We had tickets for the evening show and chuckwagons. That was really fun; chuckwagon races are so exciting! We cheered loudest for the Pidherney wagon. The evening show was spectacular, lots of dancing and fireworks, and a very long Michael Jackson tribute that I didn't feel was necessary. There were also some dirt bikes doing jumps and stuff, and a really funny comedian.

Jovita had to work today, so Scott and I got up with Jo and went to the mall for a bit, and then came back to Rocky. The first thing Mom and Dad said when I walked in the door was "what did you bring us?" Whoops.