Outages and Rodeos

From Tip of the Week, 16 February 2019 — week two of a six-week outage. Working the outage night shift has me thinking a lot about rodeos…

Maybe it’s because I have heard more than one person say, “This will be my last rodeo.”

Or, maybe it’s the white line marking the highway’s shoulder.

Like the lyric says in the song “Much Too Young,” the white line seems to stretch out endlessly as I drive home in the dark, early morning hours.

These aren’t the only cues that make me think of rodeos. During outages, I always see plenty of cowboy hats and cowboy boots, big buckles, steel horses—and this one’s no different. License plates reveal the great distances some people have traveled to get here.

As it is, I don’t actually know much about rodeos.

The rodeo lifestyle

My knowledge about the sport is limited. I have never climbed on the back of an irritated horse or bull and tried to hang on with one hand long enough to get a score.

But I do know they are dangerous, not just to life and limb, but to families and well-being, too.

“A broken home and some broken bones is all he’ll have to show,” goes the lyric in “Rodeo,” “for all the years that he spent chasing this dream they call rodeo.”

If the songs are to be believed, the rodeo life is a fulfilling, yet lonely and hard one.

The songwriters paint a somber, but romantic portrait of a life on the road seeking the next opportunity to demonstrate their honed skills under intense pressure and dangerous conditions—all in the pursuit of glory and, maybe, a big payoff.

It’s a traveling life that usually requires moving from one venue to the next, which is usually hundreds of miles away. One account I read estimated that a cowboy may attend 125 rodeos a year and travel over 100,000 miles.

But it doesn’t pay well for most participants.

Chris LeDoux was a circuit-riding rodeo champion in the 1970s. He supplemented his winnings by writing and recording his own songs about living the cowboy lifestyle. He sold the tapes out of the back of his truck. Stories say he sold over 250,000 self-published tapes, which was probably more lucrative than winning rodeos.

It was thanks to those tapes that he shot to national fame in 1989 when Garth Brooks mentioned him in his first single, “Much Too Young.” Brooks sings of “a worn out tape of Chris LeDoux” as one of the only friends he has left remaining in this world.

But besides the low pay, rodeo can break apart families.

“Lost my wife and a girlfriend somewhere along the way,” sings the cowboy in “Amarillo By Morning.” In a 2015 interview with Wide Open Country, PRCA saddle bronc rider Bryan Hammons said rodeo is hard on families. He doesn’t go into details, just gives the impression that rodeo is more like a marriage than a sport.

It’s understandable that your family life may suffer. You are gone from home a lot. The pay isn’t so good, and you have to supplement it with other work which fills your time. Loneliness sets in for everybody. Frustration, too, if you are supposed to be sending money home, and there’s none to send.

The outage lifestyle

Outages are a lot like rodeos.

They attract talented individuals from all over the country. Hundreds gather together to give it a go. There’s a lot of excitement. And there’s always another one to attend once this one ends, probably hundreds of miles away.

But unlike a rodeo, the pay is much better. It’s probably not the passion for glory, but the promise of green, that pulls in these modern circuit riders from all over the country.

Contrary to a rodeo, however, overtime pay abounds.

But the lifestyle of the road warrior who moves from one job to the next can still be hard on a family. It can make it hard to maintain communication. The money doesn’t automatically remedy the pain of separation.

I have spoken to several well-paid professionals in this industry who have lost their families from all the traveling. They got the money, but along with it came joint custody and equitable asset division.

But neither has to automatically spell doom for marriages. Chris LeDoux never divorced. His wife traveled with him everywhere. I have spoken with some men here who say their wives also travel with them on these gigs, and they’ve been married a very long time.

So I think it’s important to never lose track of your primary purpose. What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose himself?

If the job is your primary focus, then your relationships will suffer. Your health and well-being may suffer. And then your job performance will suffer.

The job should be subordinate to these other things. The job puts food on the table. And given enough time, it loses its savor if allowed to erode your health, well-being, and relationships.

Keep on trucking. Hone your skills. Employ them in service to others. But don’t let the means become the ends.