Come Zonk with Me, Let’s Zonk, Let’s Zonk Away

I was away the weekend of the Des Moines Classic, called to the steamy and stormy state of Missouri to the bedside of an ailing relative, who fortunately has improved greatly in the past week. So I missed all the coverage, being preoccupied with cooking and cleaning and toting folks to the hospital in my rented roller skate, as well as completely cut off from the higher numbers on the local cable network. I flew back at the crack of dawn on Friday, narrowly avoiding being blown completely away by multiple tornadoes that came roaring up I-44 from Oklahoma. I lived in the South and Midwest from the day I was born until I escaped to Wyoming in 1991, and I still have good friends and relatives out there, but as far as I’m concerned, the Midwest has the worst weather in the world. Hot and humid in the summer, cold and damp in the winter, with the added excitement of tornadoes that charge through the neighborhoods, mostly in the middle of the night. You folks are better men than I am—I’ll never live there again, unless Barn Cat gets a job offer that includes a chauffeured limousine and an air-conditioned bubble to get me from the house to the car. That might reconcile me to breathing through a wet washcloth for the foreseeable future. Then again, probably not.

By the time I landed back in God's Country, I was in serious PBR deprivation, so as soon as I could fire up the computer, I e-mailed the inimitable AZPonyDriver for an update, which she delivered with absolutely hilarious aplomb. I then checked my DVR and was overjoyed to see I’d managed to record the Saturday night session in Des Moines. I watched it while swilling down massive amounts of coffee, made the right way, black and strong.

But I was pretty disheartened later when I clicked on the PBR website and was greeted by a continuous loop of three horrific wrecks—in Chicago, Chris Shivers getting his face smashed into the chute, and in Des Moines, Austin Meier being knocked out cold and poor Kasey Hayes falling right on his head and breaking his neck. Even though I'd seen the latter already, it was absolutely gut-churning to see it played over and over. It’s incredible that he managed to walk out of the arena on his own power. I always root for the bulls, but nobody wants to see a competitor come within a hair of being wheelchair-bound for the next 40 years.

Still, it appears to have been a good weekend. By dent of having stuck to three bulls while everybody else fell off, our dear friend Guilherme won the event and has pulled farther ahead in the overall standings. One suggestion, though—Page 499 deserves a better name. Surely you boys aren’t running out of imagination yet. And the folks over on the TWOP forum board have a lot to say about the points fairy, who appears to be miraculously changing scores after they’ve already been posted. I plan to look into this phenomenon when I get the chance.

That said, we have weathered a weekend without the PBR and are looking forward to San Antonio, when we plan to park ourselves in the club chair and torment the neighborhood with our shrieks and profanities. Now, that’s the good life and no mistake. In the meantime, I have decided to give all the kind folks who have been moseying over here a place to express themselves more immediately on this site, so I am adding a Zonkboard where you can comment to your heart’s content. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you to be polite and respectful of others’ opinions. Enjoy!