I’m blessed with good friends and a great wife. This weekend, we’re all under the same roof.

I’ve got a couple of bareback riders hanging at the house. Some wives wouldn’t understand opening your home to folks that way, but my wife isn’t like that. She understands it’s just part of the rodeo way of life.

But it’s quite interesting sometimes. D.V. Fennell is a longtime and dear friend, and I’m tickled he’s getting to hang with me and my family for a few days.  One of his traveling partners is young gun Tanner Aus, and they’ve got the run of the basement this weekend. That’s why we have beds and a couch in the basement.

So this afternoon I learned a few things I didn’t know. One interesting tidbit for us non-bareback riders is that when breaking in a new riggin’, the mechanism needs stretched. So D.V. enlisted the help of our swingset in the back hard. I’m still waiting to hear how the new riggin’ worked out tonight.

Possibly more importantly, I learned that when traveling in a sedan, it’s sometimes difficult for cowboys to pack anything other than boots, which explains Tanner’s attire much of the day — and even during a trip to Walmart — when he dressed in a T-shirt, swimming shorts and point-toed black cowboy boots.

If anybody can pull it off, I suspect a 21-year-old bareback rider can.