08/13/2026
My Dearest Family,
I write to you from somewhere along a highway whose number I have long since forgotten. The sun is setting behind us, the fuel light is on, and according to the map, we are still several hundred miles from wherever it is we are supposed to be tomorrow.
I fear the summer rodeo run has become less of a journey and more of a war of attrition.
There are 45 days left in the rodeo season.
Forty-five.
I write the number plainly so that someday, should these letters be discovered among the empty energy-drink cans, fuel receipts, bottles of banamine, and back numbers historians will understand just how far we still had to go.
Our equipment continues to betray us. Tires have blown without warning, usually at the least convenient hour and in the most godforsaken stretch of highway known to man. We now judge towns not by their population, but by whether they possess a tire shop capable of handling our kenworth and a 6 horse trailer.
The roads themselves stretch endlessly before us.
We drive through the night.
We drive through the morning.
We drive until yesterday, today, and tomorrow seem to blend together.
The miles are no longer counted individually. They are measured in fuel stops, gas-station burritos, and the number of times someone asks,
“How much farther?”
Our diet has deteriorated considerably.
Gas-station food has become a primary food group. Roller dogs, questionable breakfast sandwiches, chips, jerky, and coffee strong enough to revive the dead sustain us.
Our bodies have begun to reject vegetables on sight.
Fuel, meanwhile, costs approximately the price of a small ranch per fill-up. I have stopped looking at the total on the pump. There are some horrors a person simply does not need to witness.
Conditions at the rodeos offer little mercy.
We have encountered ground so bad it should require its own liability waiver. At times, merely getting across the arena safely feels worthy of a victory lap.
We have missed hazes for wins and then hazed over barrels for thousands.
Then comes the draw.
Oh, the draw.
A cowboy can haul a thousand miles, survive two blown tires, eat supper from beneath a heat lamp, arrive with four hours of sleep, and still discover that fate has personally selected the one steer in the herd that apparently has somewhere else to be.
And should fortune finally smile upon us, there remain the officials.
Feather fines.
Yes, Mother. Apparently, feathers have become expensive.
The horses are beginning to show the miles as well. They are sore, tired, and increasingly suspicious every time the trailer door opens. Their joints ache. Our backs ache. Knees ache. Shoulders ache. There are muscles hurting in places we were previously unaware contained muscles.
Nobody walks normally anymore.
We simply limp at different speeds.
And then there are the driving hangovers—that peculiar illness known only to those who have driven through the night, slept briefly folded against a truck window, and awakened unsure what state they are in.
No alcohol required.
Just 700 miles, truck-stop coffee, three hours of sleep, and the distant ringing of diesel engines in your skull.
Yet despite these hardships, the great campaign continues.
For now we have entered The Bubble Push.
Every dollar matters.
Every rodeo matters.
Every steer, every run, every check.
The standings are watched like battlefield reports. Names move up. Names move down. Someone wins somewhere and suddenly phones across the country light up.
"Did you see what he won?"
"Where does that put him?"
"How much does he need?"
"What's left?"
And somewhere in all of it, the season is quietly building toward what can only be described as the Cowboy Photo Finish.
Forty-five days remain for contestants scattered across America to determine who will still be standing when the dust settles.
So onward we travel.
Through blown tires and bad ground.
Through bad draws and feather fines.
Through sore horses, aching bodies, expensive diesel, and meals purchased beneath fluorescent gas-station lights.
Through another midnight.
Another state line.
Another rodeo.
Another thousand miles of the never-ending road.
We are exhausted.
We are sore.
We are broke from buying fuel.
We have eaten things from gas stations that no human being should willingly consume.
And yet tomorrow morning, we will climb back into the truck and point it toward the next one.
Because somewhere down that highway is another rodeo.
Another town.
Another chance.
Another check.
Another chance to move one spot closer to the right side of that bubble.
Forty-five days remain.
Should we survive, we shall return home with stories, empty bank accounts, crippled posture, horses in desperate need of rest, and an intimate knowledge of every Love's, Flying J, and questionable truck stop between here and wherever this madness finally ends.
Until then, tell everyone at home we are alive.
Mostly.
And if you truly love us—
send fuel money and something to eat that wasn't cooked on a roller.
Yours from the endless road,
The Cowboys of the Summer Run
P.S. We blew another tire.
Photo Credit Ute Mountain Round Up
Formula 707
Master Saddles
Cactus Veterinary Services
Rodeo 4 Ronnie
Good Vibes Equine Services
Zesterra by Pro Earth Animal Health
