Cowboy up

It's rodeo time in San Antonio again, and today was the kick-off Cowboy Breakfast. In the simplest terms, this is a free breakfast for the entire city of San Antonio.

You can imagine the kind of traffic headaches this might cause.

People get up really early to go stand in line to get breakfast tacos, biscuits and gravy and coffee. It's ain't the greatest food in the world, but hey, it's free, and there's entertainment, so why not?

Last year, I took a personal day to attend and then came home to sleep. Sure, sure, I could have gotten up at 5 AM, gone to the Cowboy Breakfast and still made it to work, but that takes all the fun out of it.

When I was younger, and the breakfast was at Central Park Mall (it's now at Crossroads Mall), I would take the day off because I knew that they country bar opened at 8 AM on the day of the Cowboy Breakfast. Last year, we found out that Dave & Busters was opening at 8 so folks could drink (it's 12:00 somewhere, right?).

This year, though, Monica and I decided to skip it. I actually took back roads to work so that I could avoid the traffic.

Skipping the party and worrying about traffic. My God, am I getting old.

And by the way, I know when you're from up north, you don't exactly think of February as being a month for rodeos, but it works. The rodeo here is a lot like the county fair--lots of animal judging and the like. Imagine all the wonderful smells, and then imagine them in the heat of a San Antonio summer, and you understand why February is the perfect month for the rodeo.