Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders

by Josh Peter

  “All this stuff doesn’t work without having your mind really quiet,” his father told him. “You’re riding basically with your heart and your spirit, because if your brain kicks in, then you can’t find that feel.”

  Before every bull ride, Mike Lee tried to clear his head of all thought and emotion to the point where he had removed himself from the conscious world. The preride routine helped explain his zombielike state at BFTS events. Already a loner, Lee deliberately isolated himself even further when he prepared to ride his next bull.

  In addition to internalizing his father’s advice, Mike also inherited the man’s obsessive work ethic. After competing in the Championship Bull Riding finals one year, he drove to Billy Bob’s Texas, the legendary honky-tonk bar, so he could ride another bull for a cheap jackpot. Another time, during a steer-riding exhibition, event officials were about to release the last steer out of the gate because there were no more riders. Lee shouted for them to stop. In his sneakers, he ran over to the chutes, hopped on the steer, and, holding only a flank rope, rode the sucker halfway down the arena. At home, he lifted weights at least twice a week and sculpted his 5-foot-8, 165-pound frame. He also rode bulls at a nearby practice pen until he reached the verge of exhaustion.

  Dennis Lee allowed his son to push himself, even though he admitted his own all-consuming work ethic had led to depression—and may have contributed to his divorce from Mike’s mother, Teri. That didn’t stop Mike from marrying young.

  As the Bible instructed, Lee believed a man and woman must marry before consummating their relationship. That became more difficult after he met a shy, sweet blond-haired girl named Jamie, and the two began dating. Hormones raged, but Lee would not succumb. Believing lustful thoughts were just as sinful as the act of sin, he decided marriage was the only option. He was 19. Jamie was 17.

  When Lee joined the PBR in 2001, riders found his behavior peculiar.While most of the riders fraternized in the locker room, Lee helped the PBR work crew set up for that night’s show. When he felt comfortable enough, he talked about his plans to build a basement—just a basement—where he’d live with his wife until they could afford to build the rest of the house. Sometimes riders found Lee wandering the halls or camped out in the hotel lobby in the middle of the night. At home, it turned out, Jamie Lee found her husband unable to sleep and vacuuming the house at three o’clock in the morning.

  When he first joined the PBR, Lee brought his own food to the events and, sharing hotel rooms with other riders, ignored their pleas for him to take his stinky sardines out of the room. He also ignored their pleas that he put on clothes, preferring to walk around the room naked.

  But Cody Whitney, who once roomed with Lee, said Lee’s most annoying habit was his urge to “slap box.”

  “Sometimes I like to get in a fight, get punched in the face two or three times,” Whitney recalled Lee telling him. “It’s good to get your butt whipped once in a while.”

  Despite Lee’smarriage, the sexual temptations only multiplied. Scantily clad buckle bunnies were everywhere he looked—and Lee couldn’t help but look. Just like he did that weekend in Nashville. “It’s all about Bud Light and how many women you can sleep with,” he told Moraes.

  Usually, Lee confided his innermost and troubling thoughts to Todd Pierce, the young pastor employed by Pro Bull Rider Outreach, a nonprofit organization that sponsored the Cowboy Church services and Bible studies at PBR events. But now Lee turned to the man he was chasing for the title.

  For several weeks, Lee attended weekly prayer sessions that Moraes held at his house in Keller, Texas. Every time Moraes asked Lee to join him and his family for lunch, Lee declined. Then, one day near his home in Keller, Moraes was riding practice bulls at the same arena as Lee was.

  Like most riders, Moraes rode no more than two or three bulls during a practice session. He shook his head in dismay after watching Lee ride his seventh bull. “Are you tired?” Moraes asked.

  Lee nodded.

  “You riding any more?”

  Lee glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t know,” he said.

  Moraes looked in the same direction. It was Dennis Lee, watching his son from behind the chutes.

  “You’re done,” Moraes ordered. “That’s enough.”

  Later, behind the chutes, Dennis Lee made eye contact with Moraes. “You talk too much, Adriano,” he said.

  “I know too much,” Moraes shot back.

  Moraes scoffed at the idea of a horse trainer like Dennis Lee trying to teach someone how to ride bulls and talked about how much better Lee would be if Moraes trained him. Moraes also was convinced that Lee’s father was pushing his son too hard.

  The way Dennis saw it, Mike pushed himself. That’s also the way Clint Branger remembered it when Mike Lee attended one of Branger’s bull riding schools in the mid-1990s. “He’d make a good ride and kind of lean back at the end and make the whistle and he’d be all upset at himself,” said Branger, a retired rider who had been a star when the PBR began. “I was like, ‘Hey, quit being so hard on yourself.’ ”

  But as Lee’s career progressed, it was hard to argue with the results. He finished 11th in 2002, his first full season on the PBR tour, then finished sixth in 2003 despite his having missed 3 months after the skull injury that left him with the zipperlike scar. For someone so young, Lee’s consistency was astonishing.

  Cody Custer, a former world champion, was so impressed that before the season started, he predicted Lee would win the 2004 championship. But Moraes predicted Lee would fail to win a championship until he distanced himself from Lee’s father and became his own man.

  That morning in the Nashville airport, Lee went on to tell Moraes that he’d called his wife, Jamie, and told her about the half-naked groupies in his hotel room. Moraes shook his head.

  “Never tell your wife about seeing those things, because it only makes it worse,” he said, adding that if Lee found himself in another awkward situation, he should call Moraes. “Anytime. Day or night. I’m always available.”

  As Lee walked off, Moraes rolled his eyes. He was less concerned with Lee than getting home in time to make his early-evening flight to Brazil. But he had yet to talk to his wife, Flavia, who served as his advisor and voice of reason.

  The next day, instead of Adriano flying to Brazil, it was Flavia who was flying back to the United States. She accompanied Moraes 2 days later to Freeman’s office in Dallas, where Adriano underwent knee surgery.

  This wasn’t just about his knee, and Flavia knew it. This was about a lead in the standings that could be wiped out by his aggravating the injured knee with only five events left until the finals in Las Vegas.

  For Adriano Moraes, this was no time for risks.

  STANDINGS

  1 Adriano Moraes 7,948.5 points

  2 Justin McBride 6,354 points

  3 Mike Lee 6,205.5 points

  4 Mike White 4,541.5 points

  5 Ross Coleman 4,323 points

  6 Mike Collins 4,285 points

  7 Jody Newberry 4,244 points

  8 Brendon Clark 3,998 points

  9 Owen Washburn 3,690 points

  10 Greg Potter 3,437 points

  Jody Newberry, the 2003 Rookie of the Year, got off to a fast start by winning the season opener in Jacksonville, Florida.

  Adriano Moraes served notice by winning the second event of the year that his disastrous 2003 campaign was behind him.

  Moraes with his father, Aparecido, and his mother, Elizabeth.

  Moraes with wife, Flavia, and sons Pedro (in Adriano’s arms), Antonio (front left), and Jeremias (front right).

  Moraes pictured sitting atop a mule during his 10-day visit to Brazil.

  Justin McBride riveted fans and fellow riders with his agility and athleticism, on display here during yet another successful bull ride.

  McBride often cracked wise in the locker room. But when it came to riding bulls, he was dead serious.

  McBride despised the number 2 because of wha
t it represented—his frustrating, runner-up finish in 2003.

  Mike Lee puzzled fellow riders with his enigmatic behavior but awed them with his riding ability.

  By the midpoint of the 2004 season, Lee left no doubt about his status as rising star.

  At home in Alvord, Texas, Lee enjoyed the solitude of rides on his Harley-Davidson.

  Top: Jerome Davis, here pictured with his wife, Tiffany, was paralyzed from the chest down in 1995 after getting thrown from a bull and landing on his head.

  Dave Samsel plummeted headfirst for the arena dirt. He wasn’t the only one who crashed back to earth during the 2004 season, with the bulls winning more than half of the showdowns against the world’s top riders.

  Tony Mendes strapped on knee braces while preparing to ride, but there was never enough battle gear to prevent injury. One in every 15 bull rides resulted in a new injury requiring some form of treatment.

  After-event parties sponsored by the PBR allowed fans like the young woman pictured here to get up close and personal with their favorite riders, such as Ross Coleman, standing on left, wearing a white shirt and a black cowboy hat.

  The gold, handcrafted PBR championship buckle, studded with diamonds, was an alluring sight for the buckle bunnies. But the coveted buckle, along with the $1 million bonus that went to the world champion, helped drive bull riders to greatness. More than money, the gold buckle signified excellence.

  Little Yellow Jacket, here in repose, entered the year in position to become the PBR’s first three-time Bull of the Year.

  With his savage bucking style, Pandora’s Box proved a worthy contender for Bull of the Year.

  At age 44, Rob Smets exhibited the courage, skill, and scars that made him one of the most respected bullfighters in the business.

  Medics huddled around Ross Johnson at the Tuff Hedeman Championship Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, moments after Johnson suffered a horrific wreck.

  Rider Sean Willingham helicoptered off yet another unfriendly bull.

  Tandy Freeman, an orthopedic surgeon who directed the PBR’s on-site medical team, pictured here examining rider Robert Bowers. Freeman always stayed busy at the event in Fort Worth, where Hedeman took pride in assembling a rank set of bulls.

  Randy Bernard (left), the PBR’s chief executive officer, and Adriano Moraes, who joined the board of directors midway through the year, shared a quiet moment.

  From his perch behind the chutes, Ross Coleman, a favorite of the buckle bunnies, peered across the outdoor arena in Laughlin, Nevada.

  Adriano Moraes dropped to his knees and clutched his left arm in agony. Despite riding with a torn bicep, Moraes won the fourth round at the finals in Las Vegas, closing in on a third world championship.

  Mike Lee clasped hands with Pastor Todd Pierce as the two shared a quiet prayer before the last round at the finals in Las Vegas and the last moments of the 2004 season.

  Dipped in pancake batter and fried in bubbling oil, the deep-fried Twinkie proved as sumptuous and odd as world championship bull riding in Las Vegas.

  TWELVE

  DIRT ROAD TO PARADISE

  Cachoeira Paulista, Brazil

  Wednesday–Sunday, June 30–July 4, 2004

  The black Fiat rattled down the narrow, bumpy dirt road, past the eucalyptus trees and the sugarcane fields, the grazing cattle and horses, and the loose dogs that gave chase. Kicking up dust, the car came to a stop at the base of paradise—a ceramic-tiled porch wrapped around a red ranch house that sat nestled in the valley of 1,000 acres of rolling hills, lush grass, and a panoramic view of the distant mountains. Out of the passenger’s side of the Fiat climbed Adriano Moraes, who took a gimpy step on his left leg, thereby officially completing the 13-hour journey from his house in Keller, Texas, to his home in Brazil.

  Down the driveway ran his 4-year-old son, Antonio.Moraes scooped up the boy and showered him with kisses. Next came 6-year-old Jeremias and, in the arms of Moraes’s sister, 18-month-old Pedro. Moraes planted more kisses on his three sons and took in the sight of his ranch, dotted with banana, guava, and mango trees and home to wild parrots, roosters, horses, mules, and chickens. Alas, it also was home to termites. “A plague,” Moraes grumbled about the insects, which left knee-high dirt mounds across his property.

  He had built the four-bedroom ranch house, complete with a trophy room, maid’s quarters, and guesthouse, from his career winnings of more than $2 million. It was unmistakably Adriano Moraes’s house, with a huge portrait of himself hanging in the entryway of the guest-house and his trophies prominently displayed on the shelves in his living room. Yet they lived modestly enough, with Flavia often wearing old T-shirts and sweatpants and Adriano wearing the jeans or Western shirts he got free from sponsors. Other than the ranch, his only major indulgence was a restored 1956 Chevrolet pickup truck for which he had paid about $30,000, leaving plenty of the money from his bull riding winnings in the bank.

  Most of the country’s riders competed with ragged equipment, hoping to make enough money to get from one rodeo to the next. There was no Brazilian-style PBR offering a $1 million bonus—or anything close to that bounty. Though the country had produced some great riders, none had made it as big in the United States as Moraes had. But unlike Pelé, the former soccer star and Brazil’s most famous athlete, Moraes enjoyed a life of relative anonymity outside the rodeo circles. His ranch was about a 2½-hour drive north of São Paulo; and on that 5-mile dirt road leading up to it, Moraes sometimes stopped, grabbed a rock, and hurled it high into the palm trees, knocking loose acorn-size nuts. He chewed off the bittersweet skin and, if he had the right instrument, cracked open the nut and sucked out the meat. Here, in his home country, he also enjoyed cashew juice and his mother’s homemade cheese and free-range chicken, which Elizabeth Moraes cooked on a wood-burning stove. There were no deep-fried Twinkies, but there was passion fruit, which Moraes ingested in multiple forms—passion fruit cocktail, passion fruit pie, and passion fruit ice cream.

  Ah, home sweet home.

  With knee surgery and recent struggles making Moraes look vulnerable for the first time of the 2004 season, he returned to his home base. The nearby Catholic community, Canção Nova, was his spiritual base, and Moraes said it was time to “recharge my batteries, because the spiritual world is much better than the material world.” Yet that first night at the ranch promised to be a restless one.

  Eyes flickering open and shut, Moraes kept checking his alarm clock. The minutes passed like hours. At five o’clock in the morning, he climbed out of bed, buttoned up his long-sleeved Western shirt, pulled on his jeans and cowboy boots, and headed for the stables. Halfway there, he stopped in front of the house where his parents lived, and across the lawn bounded his three dogs—Outlaw, the Catahoula leopard dog; Congo, the boxer; and Blue, the Australian cattle dog. Sufficiently slobbered on, Moraes continued his drive to the horse stables, where under the moonless sky he recognized the white face of his oldest son’s horse. He rode it bareback into the pasture wet with morning dew and rounded up his 16 other horses. Then he saddled up 10 horses and fidgeted, pacing until his guests finished breakfast and joined him for the morning ride.

  Wedged in a saddle labeled 2X—referring to the two PBR championships Moraes had won—he rode with purpose. It was time to tour the grounds and check on his cattle, and before long he found five ranch hands and a veterinarian trying to deliver a calf from a large incision in the side of a cow. Uncharacteristically subdued, Moraes watched. “He’s going to die.”

  The veterinarian and ranch hands continued to wrestle with the calf, and Moraes moved on. Down a dirt track, up a steep hill, inside a wire fence, he led his entourage to the day’s first chore: rounding up two dozen cows.

  “Ho-ho-ho! Hey-hey-hey! Ah-ah-ah!”

  Moraes and his father, Aparecido, a lifelong ranch manager with a small but muscular frame and a thick black mustache, hooted and yelped at the cattle. The cattle responded. Hooves pounded across the grass as the herd picked up speed.
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  Moving into position, Moraes and his father directed the herd; and the animals lumbered back through the wire fence, down the steep hill, and onto the dirt path.

  “Ah-ah-ah, heh-heh-heh, hey-hey-hey.”

  Moraes and his father kept shouting, and the cows moved into the wooden holding pen as if they spoke the same language as the two men. There was much to do: wean and tag the calves, untag the cows, and separate the cattle into those Moraes would sell and those he would keep. These were the ranch chores that took Moraes’s mind off his recent knee surgery and his recent slump on the PBR tour. Lost in the activity at the outset of a 10-day trip home, Moraes looked like a man at peace—until he heard the wailing of his 4-year-old son, Antonio. Standing outside the pens, Antonio burst into tears for no apparent reason. Moraes’s voice dropped an octave, rose in volume, and in Portuguese he bellowed, “Stop crying, boy.” Moraes picked up a rock and started to count.

  “Um, dois . . . ”

  Before Moraes reached trê s, Antonio’s sobs had halted.