News from the thriving metropolis of Wittmann, AZ

I sputtered to a start this morning and coasted slowly to the coffee pot, let the little dogs out, let the little dogs in, and headed to my computer to read the news while enjoying the first cuppa caffeine of the day. This is my morning routine. It's the only time when my needs come before those of the perpetually hungry critters. If I don't have my relaxed time with the cup of coffee and get my brain cranked up by reading Google News I stand a good chance of totally hosing up the horse feeding.

Today I hosed up the horse feeding. Blaze got what baby Godric gets, Blondie only got hay, Desi darned near didn't get anything and finally got breffast as a hurried after thought. Why? Because I got to my desk, double-clicked my Internet icon and got the dreaded "Internet Explorer cannot display the web page" message.

I rebooted computer. I unplugged everything and let it all sit for 20 minutes then plugged everything back in. After 30 minutes of trying to figure out what was wrong on my end, which entails a great deal of crawling around in the cat hair under office furniture, William called. What the heck is William calling me about? He hardly ever calls me. He emails me.

"Are you awake?" He asked.

"Oh god yes, I'm awake. I'm just unplugging everything in the office trying to figure out why I don't have Google News to go with my coffee."

"Umm well, that's what I was calling about." He paused.

I waited for the other shoe to drop. Many things were running through my brain at that moment, ie. unpaid bill, cat sabotage, dog sabotage, size 14 shoe thrown at cat that somehow destroyed the DSL box, cat murder by electrocution that took out our Internet service, and, at best, some fool with a tractor plowed up the phone lines. I at least knew that the horses weren't involved in whatever disaster had befallen our connectivity. Their barn is an acre away from the phone lines. The most they can do is sabotage their own water and fencing.

"Okay. What happened?" I asked, with my eyes squinched shut as if not seeing would make hearing easier.

"Someone must have taken the corner too fast onto Lone Mountain, spun out and literally crashed and burned into the telephone pole. I mean the whole pole is blackened and the wires have been melted into a ball of black spaghetti. Must have been a big fire, all the brush on the corner is burned and the car is burned down to a nickle."

"WHOA dang!!! Well alrighty then I'll cease the search for chewed wires here."

"Yeah, I think this time we can safely assume the problem is on their end. You really should jump in the truck and go see. It is a most impressive wreck."

My morning was momentarily saved. This was much better than Google News for getting the brain in gear. I fed the horses, hurriedly and ineptly, grabbed the digital camera, and headed up the road. Not much excitement happens in Wittmann, AZ. When it does, it attracts spectators. Some savvy entrepreneur, with more guts than ethics, could make serious money charging admission to highway stops, fender benders and brush fires out here.

By golly the wreckage was indeed as bad as William described on the phone. In the words of a friend who watched his first bull riding event last weekend "I hope he's okay. I hope he's okay. I hope he's okay." Even as I was sending positive thoughts to the driver, I was staring at the 4 closed doors, caved in roof, obliterated front end, evaporated interior and a 20 foot, black ring of charred brush surrounding the car, the telephone pole and our wiring. I thought "If someone walked away from this wreck he needs to stand like Ho Ti and let people line up to rub his belly for good luck, because no mere mortal could have survived."

I don't know if the tape on the telephone pole is to hold the pole together, which would not surprise me, or if it's there to mark which pole needs to be replaced, which also would not surprise me. For one thing, QWorst is known for shoddy fixes and, for another, the people that perpetrate those shoddy fixes may well not be able to distinguish a giant stick of smoldering charcoal from any other telephone pole.


Just in case anyone has forgotten, or there's anyone alive I didn't whine to, it took the phone company FOUR MONTHS to run a phone line 5 acres down the road from the nearest house, to our house when we first moved in. I'm sitting here, gloomily checking for Internet every hour or so, knowing that phone company history has a tendency to repeat itself. It's any one's guess how long it will take them to replace the pole and the melted line.
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OOOh update! As of 9:00 this morning there were no vehicles on the corner other than the burned out car. By 11:30am, when John and I went by to take pictures, there were about 15 other vehicles, mostly QWorst along with one Sheriff's Office car, and an APS truck. They'd managed to get a new pole up already. The stick of charcoal was still there, as was the charred car. Who knows? Maybe they'll get every one's phone and Internet restored today? We can hope.
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Update 2: Well, some of us lucky folks have phone and Internet tonight. My friends the next street over are still incommunicado. A ridiculous number of official vehicles are still camped out on the corner. It would not surprise me a bit to learn in the morning that several other wrecks have prolonged the repairs. Because of all the large camper-like QWorst trucks parked all over the intersection, it's impossible to see oncoming cars until you're t-boned.


Ayup. A busy day in Wittmann.

Why We Love To Watch Bull Riding

Our fascination with bull riding has grown to the point that it's almost the only thing I'm willing to sit down and watch for 2 hours and is certainly the only thing on TV I'm willing to sit through a ton of commercials to see. We may well be the only couple in the U.S. that has never seen a single episode of "Survivor", "Dancing With The Stars", "American Idol" or more than 2 minutes of any given NASCAR event. We are not the only couple in the U.S., however, that can hear the names of 45 PBR cowboys and be able to say "Hey, that's a new guy." Not even I completely understand why we've come to love the bulls, the riders and the eight second clash between them, but there was a progression during which we moved from amazement that anyone could be so foolish, to admiration.

At first, we called them The Darwin Award Tryouts. It's not pretty, but there you have it. Fellas, if it's any consolation, I'm sorry about that initial impression. We can understand the roots of many of the rodeo sports. Calf roping, saddle and bareback bronc riding, team roping and penning, cutting, etc., would have all been typical cattle and horse ranch work. Bull riding, on the other hand, seems like a sport that got it's start with the phrase "Hold my beer and watch this!". Whether it was by drunken bet or some cowboy that got his bluff called after claiming he could ride anything on four legs, seems to be unknown. The only information I can come up with on Google is how rodeo itself got started during a friendly competition between neighboring ranches to see who performed ranch tasks best. This does not explain how bull riding came to be since there'd have been no ranch use in breaking a bull to ride.

One of our earliest impressions of bull riding was the iron muscled riding arm of Adriano Moraes. We started watching bull riding off and on in 2004. Adriano was one of the first cowboys we began to recognize. We'd see that arm and know what rider was attached to it. In close up shots of a cowboy getting set up on a bull, we'd see the hands, arms, or boots of the cowboys standing by the chute. "There's Adriano!" we'd cry out as a massive arm reached over the bars to grab a cowboy by his vest to keep him from being injured by an overly eager bull. Because of that ever ready arm we began to see bull riding as something more than just something you'd do on a dare.

At 38 years old, Adriano Moraes is one of the oldest riders in the PBR. The young Brazilian cowboys who are making big splashes in the world of the Professional Bull Riders, are likely where they are today because they were inspired by Adriano. On the Built Ford Tough Series PBR circuit, he has become the father figure to many. He's been riding professionally since he was 22 and he has both seen and experienced what can happen in a chute, on or under a bull. Adriano is retiring from bull riding this year. There are going to be a lot of young cowboys in the chutes who will miss that strong, quick and loyal arm.

The following photograph taken at this year's Glendale PBR event, captures what we have grown to admire about these men who choose to ride dynamite. Young Pim Rosa of Brazil has just been rescued from the chute in the arms of Adriano Moraes. Directly behind Adriano, his face partially obscured, stands Guilherme Marchi who is the number one bull rider in the country and is stepping into the boot prints of Moraes. The concern, caring and strength on the faces of these young men is why we have grown to admire them. The fatherly strength this photograph captures on the face of Adriano Moraes is why so many young bull riders will miss his presence next year.

Photograph used by generous permission of

The Arizona Republic Newspaper

and Photographer David Kadlubowski

I write because my soul would shrivel if I didn't. Putting bits of myself on a page may seem scary to me at times but I only risk emotional injury. I may never understand why these young men put their lives on the line for their professional sport but I no longer think of them as foolhardy guys with more machismo than brains. These are good men, iron men, forged to maturity through facing their own mortality each time they buckle on a pair of chaps.