Last week the Texas Parks and Recreation Society had a park equipment rodeo in the Holiday Inn parking lot in Midland, Texas. Teams from Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, Odessa and Midland competed in skill contests involving mowers, pickup trucks, trailers and backpack blowers.
The trailer event consisted of teams of two contestants starting in a parked pickup truck . They then drove to a trailer, hooked it up, pulled it to another location, backed the trailer into a stall, then unhooked it all the while trying to avoid dislodging tennis balls balanced on top of posts. The driver stayed in the truck the whole time, and the passenger was the one who got to do the really exhausting part of the job.
One quibble I had was about the harshness of the rules. It seemed that the participants had to hook up two safety chains connecting the trailer with the pickup. But, the chains had to be crossed. One team had the trailer hooked up, and the referee shouted "STOP! You guys are done." Well, they had failed to cross the chains, so they were disqualified. That was tough on the participants. A better result might have been to simply tack on some penalty time to their actual time. But, they didn't ask me.
Capping off the rodeo was an event that required the participants to propel a tennis ball through four hoops using a gasoline powered leaf blower. Slow and steady turned out to be the winning strategy.
So, the next time I'm sure the teams will remember to cross the safety chains in the trailer event. And to the referees, the teams would enjoy it a lot more if you weren't so quick to kick participants out of the match.
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