When I retired, I have traveled to every city in the United States with more than 10,000 inhabitants. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t avoid small towns, I went to so many I can’t even count, although I didn’t get to all of them, it took me seven years of RV travel just to make sure I got to every town of 10,000+ people. Two areas that I really enjoyed were West Texas and South Texas. The people are very nice there, and the cowboy is alive and well. Perhaps the most fun place to visit is a Texas two-step bar and grill establishment, and there are quite a few.
That’s where all the fun and action is, and as long as you’re not trying to pretend to be something you’re not, or yelling, you can have a lot of fun even as a stranger. One of the best things are mechanical bulls, and you might think they are safer than a normal bull, and maybe they are, but they are not as safe, at least not all of them as you think they might be. Most of them have automatic shutdowns once the rider is down. But in some of the older bars, they have the old style mechanical bull rodeo style set up without the auto shut off.
If you get thrown from one of these, expect to be thrown from a decent distance because if you try to stand up again, it’s likely to come back and kick you in the butt and hit you in the rear. Not only is it embarrassing, but let me tell you; hurts. Just because some of the locals can ride the mechanical bull on the highest setting, doesn’t mean you can too, and it can be fun for a few seconds, but often ends with a crash landing even on the mats. And you better get out of the way fast.
It seems like the ones with the auto shut off are weight based, and when there is no more weight on the mechanical bull, it pops out the spring and shuts it off. Still, on some it takes a little while for it to turn off and so these systems may need a seat sensor to turn off using a fiber optic cable under the saddle. Immediately turn off the power and completely stop the system. This could increase the cost of the mechanical bull, but it could also help the bar and grill with its insurance policy, although each rider signs a waiver to ride the bull at their own risk. Please consider all this and think about it.