Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders Read online

  But the first 41 rides were the appetizers before the main course: resumption of the race for the $1 million bonus. Each night it would come down to the end of the show, the top contenders riding last.

  Murray had joined the broadcast booth, only after ruling out the idea of his replacing Hedeman as the behind-the-chutes commentator. “I don’t want to be no chute bitch,” Murray said. So that role belonged to Shivers, who discarded his sport coat and looked comfortable and capable with a microphone instead of a bull rope in his hand.

  First up: Mike White, fourth in the point standings.

  Moraes saw White as his biggest threat. Since winning in Columbus, Mighty Mike had been riding with supreme confidence. Even though he stood in fourth place, it was White—not Moraes, McBride, or Lee—who had headed to New York for a round of prefinals interviews, including an appearance on the Today show.

  At the 2003 finals, White had arrived in Las Vegas feeling tighter than Moraes’s bull rope around a bull’s midsection. He rode only two of his four bulls, failed to make the championship round, and watched as his best friend, Shivers, won the title.

  But at the 2004 finals, White arrived feeling confident and loose. Before the first round, he told Shivers, “I’m going to do something different. I’m just treating this like any other bull riding event and trying to stay relaxed.”

  Climbing aboard River Rat, White began making his hand wrap when the bull lunged beneath him. White patiently hopped out of the chute and waited for the bull to calm down. “A smart move,” Shivers told the TV audience.

  White climbed back in the chute and steadied himself on the skittish bull, and out they went. Holding on during an early jump, White spurred the bull with his left foot, and he kept spurring until the 8-second buzzer sounded, earning him 83.5 points and giving him his ninth qualified ride in the last 12 attempts.

  Next up: McBride, third in the point standings. As he lowered himself on Black Hawk, the bull thrashed and lunged in the chute. But the bull finally settled down, and McBride settled into the pocket. With his thin face tightened and blue eyes narrowed, McBride called for the gate.

  Black Hawk bucked right, and McBride’s injured right leg flopped against the bull’s midsection. But McBride knew he could take 8 seconds of excruciating pain, and so did everybody else inside the arena when the buzzer sounded and he was still on the bull. On the dismount, he landed on his head, flipped over on his stomach, and, with the crowd cheering, speed-crawled to safety. His score of 82.75 points was almost secondary, because McBride had proved that despite the broken ankle, he was prepared to compete.

  Next up: Lee, second in the point standings. He boarded Without Warning, a bull that had been ridden on four of five outs, and he coasted to an 84.5-point score. Providing commentary on the OLN broadcast,Murray praised Lee for his technical perfection, fitness, and determination. “If I’m Adriano,” Murray added, “that right there is my competition.”

  “Ahead of McBride?” asked OLN’s Brett Haber.

  “I’m not taking anything away from Justin, ”Murray said. “Justin’s one of the greatest bull riders to come along in a long time. But Justin’s injured, and Mike Lee—the guy is focused, and I think he really wants it.”

  Last up: Adriano Moraes.

  He settled atop the bull named Larry ‘Cable Guy’s Git-r-Done. Faster than you could say the bull’s name, Moraes hit the dirt. Gasps shot through the arena.

  In the 2.6 seconds that elapsed between the moment the chute gate opened and when Moraes lost his rope, the idea that he would cruise to the championship ended. The race for the $1 million bonus and the gold buckle was on, and the crowd understood the heightening drama the next night, when White scored 92 points on Showtime while riding his fifth straight bull and his 10th in the last 13 attempts. Then the cheers went from loud to deafening.

  Body jerking back and forth as if riding a bareback horse, McBride held on during a wild ride on Sudden Impact for 90.25 points. Next Lee climbed aboard a bull named Lightning, a two-time champion in Mexico, and it was more thunder. The crowd erupted as Lee rode the bull for 89.25 points. Just 2 days into the eight-round finals, Moraes was facing a pressure-packed ride on Coyote Ugly, a bull that had bucked off its last seven riders. Of the past 12 riders to board Coyote Ugly, only one had made the buzzer: Adriano Moraes.

  With the pressure on, Moraes did it again, overpowering the 1,200-pound bull. But as Moraes dismounted, he grimaced and grabbed his left arm, his riding arm. In came the score—86.25 points—and out went Moraes, headed for the sports medicine room.

  Tandy Freeman needed less than a minute to diagnose the injury. Moraes had ripped his left distal biceps tendon, the tendon connecting the muscle to the elbow. The muscle remained attached only by the two tendons connecting to the shoulder. As Freeman rotated the arm, already swollen and purple, Moraes grunted.

  Freeman showed Moraes how the injury would weaken his grip when Moraes turned his palm upward, but not if he could keep his palm down and arm locked against his body. If not for a championship hanging in the balance, Freeman said, he would’ve recommended surgery that required 6 months of rehabilitation.

  Moraes asked Freeman if he’d inject the left arm with something to numb the pain before his ride in the third round. It wasn’t an option. Freeman explained that such medication would not only numb the pain but also numb Moraes’s riding hand, making it virtually impossible for Moraes to hold on to the rope.

  But Freeman did provide some painkilling pills. Licking closed the small pouch, he issued his standard warning about using the medication. “Don’t drink, drive, operate heavy equipment, handle large sums of money, sign legal documents, or play with large animals.”

  “What about bulls?” Moraes asked.

  Freeman grinned. “Not until tomorrow,” he said.

  A PBR official walked in to get an injury report. Freeman told her Moraes was questionable for that next night.

  “Bullshit,”Moraes snapped.

  Freeman held up his hands to calm Moraes. “If I was going to the sports book, I’d probably put money on that you’d get on,” he said.

  Moraes was determined, and earlier that night Murray had seen the same grit in McBride. He sought out McBride in the locker room to congratulate him on the ride.

  “Remember the sight, the smell, the feeling, and recreate it six more times,” Murray said like a corner man sending his boxer into the 12th round of a championship fight. “The guys with the biggest balls and who try the hardest will win.

  “They’ll falter, and you won’t.”

  Through two rounds, Moraes’s lead had shrunk to 1,627 points. But even with $1 million at stake, the finals were about more than bull riding. Every day, in a parking lot outside the Fan Zone, the aroma of barbecue and chili wafted through the warm air as folks in hundreds of booths stirred their secret sauces as part of an 8-day cook-off culminating in its own championship. And as the posters leading to the Fan Zone promised: “The Fun Doesn’t Stop After :08 Seconds.” Every night, the PBR hosted after-event parties featuring a band and bottomless amounts of alcohol in one of the ballrooms at Mandalay Bay.

  Riders, after their mandatory appearances at the parties, headed to the Palms Casino or the Gold Coast, the cowboy-friendly casino for high-stakes blackjack. Others snuck out to the strip clubs, while several gathered nightly at Mandalay Bay’s Rum Jungle, where go-go dancers competed with the buckle bunnies for the attention of the riders. Unlike the regular-season events, rookies were pleasantly surprised to find more aggressive groupies and a shorter getting-to-know-you period.

  “It’s definitely a new experience,” said Bohon, who did better at the after-event parties than he had that first day at the blackjack tables.

  Lee’s agent, Shawn Wiese, worried about the rider’s tendency to isolate himself, took Lee out for a night of bowling with other riders. Later in the week, Lee also attended a drag-racing event as part of his endorsement agreement with the US Army. He also drove around the cit
y in his rental car, with Pastor Todd Pierce occasionally riding shotgun. But Lee spent much of his time holed up in his hotel room, avoiding what he believed was Satan’s strong presence in Sin City. “Mike has made an enemy of the devil,” his father once explained. “Mike is ornery, and he likes to kind of tie a knot in the devil’s tail whenever he can.”

  Every day in Las Vegas, Lee would meet with Pierce for spiritual talks and counseling sessions that lasted anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. By Sunday, Lee was praying the pressure of contending for the championship would dissipate.

  Sunday night. Round three. With 41 rides completed, the prelude ended and the showdown resumed.

  Riding Joe Millionaire, White scored 81.75 on the sluggish bull, which earned him a reride option. In his last six rides, White looked capable of staying aboard anything. He checked to see which bull he’d be riding. Hells Bells, the back judge told him. Without hesitation, White shook his head. Though he’d ridden his past six bulls and 11 of the last 14, on White’s four previous attempts on Hells Bells, the bull had thrown him off each time. So he played it safe, kept his modest score, and stayed in the top cumulative scores during the finals, worth $225,000 and, just as important, 2,500 bonus points toward the championship.

  McBride followed White by riding his third straight bull at the finals. Duster whipped back like a crash-test dummy, and McBride scored only 72.5 points. Like White, he declined a reride option.He was in too much pain. Landing on his broken ankle on the dismount, McBride needed help getting out of the arena.

  Aboard Waterproof Dip, Lee rode his third straight bull of the finals and scored 85.75 points. Again the night came down to Adriano Moraes, who, with a heavily wrapped left arm, climbed aboard Vegas Nights.

  Resting his right arm on the outside gate, Moraes wriggled into position on the bull. He tightened his grip on the rope. His face tensed. Then came the nod.

  Vegas Nights made a hard turn out of the chute. Moraes lost his balance, fell to the dirt, and grimaced while grabbing his injured arm and heading to the sports medicine room. Through three rounds, he had led the overall standings with 9,302.25 points, still 1,476.25 points ahead of his closest pursuer, Lee. But that was without factoring in the huge number of bonus points awarded for the top cumulative finishes; and through three rounds, Lee had led the cumulative standings, while Moraes was tied for 21st. Had the PBR finals ended after those three rounds, Lee would have earned 2,500 bonus points and won the title by more than 1,000 points.

  But the thought of winning a championship swirled with the more maddening images in Lee’s head.

  “If we could see what’s really going on, we’d probably pee on ourselves,” Lee said after the third round. “All these demons are following us around, trying to steal our souls. . . . Angels are trying to fight them. It’ll be a fight to the end.”

  Lee went on for 5 minutes about the unseen world. Then he abruptly chastised himself. “When I talk too much, I feel terrible,” he said. “I feel like puking. I feel like a know-it-all.”

  Coming off as a know-it-all had never seemed to bother Moraes. But not even Moraes professed to know the answer to the most pressing question: Could he, at 34 years old, rebound from a disastrous start at the finals after tearing the biceps muscle of his riding arm?

  That Sunday his wife, Flavia, took a call from a man who said he’d heard about her husband’s injury. The man said he’d just attended a conference on alternative medicine in Las Vegas and, before he left town, wanted to give Adriano a package of herbal remedies guaranteed to reduce the swelling and pain in Moraes’s injured arm. Flavia suggested the man drop off the package at the front desk of Mandalay Bay Monday morning.

  A day later, that is where the package remained. After riding bulls for almost 20 years and suffering countless injuries, Adriano Moraes was sure of one thing when it came to doctors and alternative medicine healers.

  They had no miracle cures.

  STANDINGS

  1 Adriano Moraes 9,302.25 points

  2 Mike Lee 7,826 points

  3 Justin McBride 7,717.75 points

  4 Mike White 7,161 points

  5 Brendon Clark 5,941.75 points

  6 Ross Coleman 5,617.5 points

  7 Greg Potter 5,468.25 points

  8 Rob Bell 5,027.25 points

  9 Mike Collins 4,924.5 points

  10 Jody Newberry 4,900.5 points

  TWENTY

  THE DELICIOUS SHOWDOWN

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Thursday–Sunday, October 28–31, 2004

  A massive bull with lethal horns stood at the corner of Third and Fremont streets, the neon-lit honky-tonk section of town known as Glitter Gulch. It was dead—not the street, but the bull, preserved by a taxidermist. Next to the bull, painted letters on the side of a trailer read, “Welcome Bull Riding Fans.” Kenny Petet, a rodeo clown, had loaded the dead bull, named Texas Red, into the trailer and driven from his home in Mesquite, Texas, to this lonely corner in Sin City, covering 1,207 miles without so much as a nap. In hopes of capitalizing on the PBR fans descending for the last weekend of the finals, he was charging $15 for a photo with Texas Red, the dead bull, and another $5 for a key chain embossed with the photo. But pedestrians passed Petet and Texas Red without a glance as they marched up the street toward a sign that from a distance shimmered like a mirage.

  Upon closer inspection, one could see it was an electronic video board above the entrance of Mermaids Casino. The looping videotape showed a woman seductively biting into a golden brown, deep-fried—at last, at last—Hostess Twinkie.

  The Holy Grail. The deep-fried Twinkie of Las Vegas. The yearlong search had ended.

  Inside the tired casino, among the 300 one-armed bandits, a concession worker lined up on a baking sheet 50 individually wrapped Twinkies. The woman inserted a wooden stick on one end of each confection, then slid the baking sheet into a freezer and pulled out another sheet of 50 frozen Twinkies. She peeled off the cellophane wrappers, dunked the Twinkies in pancake batter, and dumped them into the deep fryer’s bubbling oil. Two minutes later, the golden brown Twinkies were ready for the final touch: powdered sugar across the top and a dusting of chocolate sprinkles.

  Patrons fished dollar bills out of their pockets, took a penny’s change for the 99-cent Twinkie, and hungrily chomped into a dessert disgusting to some and delicious to others. Deep-fried Twinkies two blocks from a picture bull on a casino strip the same weekend of the PBR finals? Only in America.

  Though Kenny Petet had set up his bull a mere two blocks from Mermaids, Herb Pastor, owner of the casino, wasn’t sure what deep-fried Twinkies had to do with bull riding or how they might help a rider stay on a bucking bull for 8 seconds. All he knew was what they had done for his business. Sitting in a cramped office, Pastor asked his business manager for the numbers. Fingers tapped on a printing calculator, and the roll of paper spit out the tally. Over the past year, Mermaids had sold 21,700 deep-fried Twinkies, but the dessert faced new competition.

  Three weeks earlier, Pastor had instructed the concession workers to start deep-frying Oreo cookies. The workers had looked at Pastor like he was crazy. He loved that look.

  Before long, Oreo cookie sales hit 145 orders a week, fast gaining on the Twinkie, with its weekly sales of 417 per week, and easily outpacing the chocolate-dipped frozen banana, with its weekly sales of 20 per week.

  “Over the long run, who do you like?” Pastor asked Jason Babcock, the casino’s director of purchasing.

  “Oreos.”

  “Me, too,” Pastor said.

  “Unfortunately, the banana’s left behind,” Babcock told his boss.“ But somebody’s got to be in the dust.”

  The established Twinkie trying to hold off the upstart Oreo. In some ways, the battle mirrored the PBR’s race for the gold buckle and $1 million.

  Adriano Moraes feared it was over. Maybe that’s why he actually decided to pick up the package of herbal remedies that had been left for him at the front desk of the Mandalay
Bay Resort & Casino and started applying a paste on his left torn biceps.

  When things had been going well, Moraes had proclaimed himself the world’s greatest rider—ever. When things went poorly, he worried he’d be unable to stay on a bull for 8 seconds—ever again. In the 3 days since he’d gotten bucked off Vegas Nights in round three of the eight-round finals, Moraes sunk into the abyss of self-doubt. His torn biceps might have contributed to his slump, but he suspected there was another problem. He just couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

  At 11:30 Wednesday night, the night before round four, Moraes called his two younger brothers and fellow Brazilian riders Guilherme Marchi and Paulo Crimber into his hotel suite. They gathered to study videotape of their previous bull rides at the finals, and they watched closely when the tape showed Crimber, Adriano Moraes’s protégé. At 23 years old, Crimber suddenly had emerged as one of the PBR’s hottest riders. During the first weekend of the finals, he won the second round and a $20,000 bonus with a 92.5-point ride on Jack Daniels Happy Hour. He covered all three of his bulls and trailed only Mike Lee and Mike White in the finals standings based on cumulative points.

  Four years earlier, when Crimber had decided to test his skills in the United States, Moraes had helped him find an apartment in Keller, Texas, not far from Moraes’s house. He helped make Crimber’s travel arrangements, taught him how to enter bull riding events, and tutored him with his English and the finer points of bull riding. He became Crimber’s mentor, and as a tutor, he could be tough.