To me, Bull Riding has always been a guilty pleasure. I watch it much in the way that I watch NASCAR: 1) not very often, and 2) only for the occasionally vicious (yet oh, so beautiful) crashes. In that nature when I heard that the PBR (no, not Pap's Blue Ribbon you drunkard, it stands for Professional Bull Riding -- the NFL equivalent for Bull Riding, so to speak) was coming to Portland, the only images I could conjure up in my head involved Brokeback Mountain-esc cowboys getting thrashed around by massive angry bulls.

With that rather hefty stereotype in mind, I went to the first night of bull riding Saturday night to shoot some footage for the Seen video of the event. But what I experienced walking around with the cowboys and rodeo fans was that unlike the road-show circus that I thought Bull Riding to be after watching it a few times on TV, the PBR was a legitimate sport that was as grinding and competitive as any other -- not only for the cowboys but also for the bulls -- and each respectively with their own dedicated fan clubs. One woman I spoke to had come to the event specifically to watch one bull she'd seen growing up. She wanted to see if it still had it's "buck."

As that hefty stereotype I came with assumed, a large percentage of the people in the crowd would be "hicks" -- that the PBR would act as a magnet for all the hicks in the greater Portland area... and I was mostly right. I did feel a bit overdressed in my khakis when I was talking to a guy from Gardner with a handle-bar mustache and a Harley Davidson skull cap... But, BUT, BUT I was also surprised by how many families were there and -- more importantly as far as I'm concerned -- how many attractive girls could be found in the stands. One pair, so to speak, showed up wearing matching referee outfits and caught the attention of the cowboys and announcer in the rodeo several times... It made for good comic relief after a few of the riders got a little violated by the bulls.

The one disappointing thing from the night though was not the make-up of the crowd, but its size. Both Saturday and Sunday's shows were largely empty. But, in true Maine fashion, the people there, both hicks and chicks alike, more than made up for their size with crazy (and slightly drunken) cheers and attitudes. Speaking with the cowboys after the event, they all expressed -- in an expectedly distinct southern drawl -- how impressed they were with the Maine people and atmosphere.

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that we welcome them back anytime.

Here's the video I produced from the event. Check it out here or at the MaineToday.com Video Page