After brunch the day just got even better with a trip to the Elysian Room for a coffee or two. Reuben used to work with one of the guys who works at the Elysian Room so managed to score a nice discount and a free cup of coffee from the Clover. If you want to know what the clover is then just click on the link above, they seem to be becoming quite popular in the better cafes around Vancouver. The coffee they were brewing was a coffee flown in from the Yergecheffe region of Ethiopia by Nova coffee in Denver. It was one of the nicest brewed coffees I have ever tasted, on a similar level to the Panama I sampled at the Coffeegeek cupping session in January. I decided not to buy any of the beans though as I had just bought a pound of Kenya AA beans from JJ Bean on Friday so was well stocked already, also the price of $20 for 8oz was a little more than I have been willing to pay for coffee lately.
After coffee I had to run to catch a bus to Ryan's place where I was meeting Ryan, Mike and Kirsty to go to the Cloverdale Rodeo. This was quite an experience, I have never been in a place with so many cowboy hats before, I was even tempted to buy myself one just to fit in. There were a bunch of exciting looking rides there and lots of your typical carnival games where you can win big soft toys etc. There was also live entertainment in the form of Nearly Neil, a Neil Diamond impersonator. He was pretty good and his band was really tight, although after 3 or 4 songs I was feeling like I had heard about as much Neil Diamond as I cared to hear.
The actual rodeo started at 7:30 or so, so the light was getting a bit dark for photos especially given the quick movement. I did get a few shots of the early events that almost came out OK though so here goes.
The horses showed great athleticism, jumping really high.
In the bull riding, on of the cowboys got beat up pretty bad by a big old bull. I think he got his hand caught as he fell off and got dragged around then savagely attacked by the bull. He was carried off on a stretcher.
