Tim McGraw and Rodeo Day 1

Jeff and I went to opening day of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo last night. As usual with us, it was kinda crazy. On the way there, we got behind a Jeep which proceeded to spatter my newly washed car with clumps of mud, hood, windshield and everything. And of course, I'm out of windshield washer fluid, so I still have clumps of mud on the windshield. Luckily, the driver side was not that bad. As an employee of Hermann Hospital, I have access to the Smithlands parking lot and can park there for free. It is not terribly far from the rodeo (it does require a little bit of walking), but we parked there last year and had no problems, and it beats paying $12 to park in the parking lot at Reliant. Well, I guess you have to be actively working for your badge to work and since I haven't worked at Hermann in almost a year, my badge didn't work. So, on to plan B, whatever that was. We could park at Smithlands for a measly $10 and ride a bus to the stadium, but we've gotten caught in that trap before and we'll never do that again. All is well on the ride over there when everyone arrives at different times, but everyone leaves at the same time and you get stuck waiting with thousands of other people to get on the bus and it just takes forever to get back and it's not worth it. So we found a public parking garage just down the street and it only costs $5 to park! Cheapest place yet. Plenty of parking spaces available and covered as well. So we made our way to Reliant and looked around at all the things that had this year. We mainly tried to get out of the wind and cold. The temperature dropped pretty significantly from earlier in the day. Inside the arena, you would have thought it was 90 degrees outside. They had the air conditioner on full blast. And we were sitting pretty close to the top, so we had a steady blast of air blowing on us the whole time. We had to keep our jackets on for the entire show! So we never really got out of the cold. Then I was sitting next to 3 high school girls that talked, laughed and took pictures of themselves during the whole rodeo and concert! I couldn't believe it. You pay good money to see a big name artist like Tim McGraw and talk the entire time. You might as well have stayed home and saved your money. But other than those things, we had a great time. We have seen Tim before and he always puts on a good show. The only thing that kinda bummed me out was that Faith didn't come out and sing with him. We're going to see her tonight, so maybe he'll come out and join her for a few duets. That would be really cool. Hopefully it will be a little warmer today. We're leaving a little earlier and the sun is shining so hopefully we won't freeze as bad. The walk back to the car last night was pretty chilly! Check back tomorrow on an update from Rodeo day 2!