I Rode a Mechanical Bull on a Floating Rodeo and Lived to Tell About It

My legs are clamped around the shoulders of a rotating black bull with glowing red eyes and plastic horns that could gouge a chunk out of someone’s rear end. I glance around—no dusty rodeo arena or wood-clad bar, just a bunch of waves lapping against a rocky shoreline. I slide a little lower with each spin; my wet swimsuit is making things slippery. Still, I hold on for eight seconds before the twirling slows, a successful ride.

You might think my prescription painkillers have kicked in and I’m hallucinating, or that I’ve time-traveled to Gilley’s nightclub in Pasadena, circa 1980. You’d be wrong. I’m really riding a mechanical bull on a barge on Lake Travis, just outside of Austin. It’s part of a (no joke) floating rodeo, where I’ve willingly come even though I usually prefer backpacking, hiking, and paddling to hanging out on a boat parked in a cove with a bunch of other humans. (Though, according to the National Marine Manufacturers Association, more than 85 million Americans go boating each year.)

Boatsetter, a Florida-based company that offers peer-to-peer boat rentals (think Airbnb for boats), hosted the event to entice non-boat owners onto the water. I was curious. Also, here in Austin where I live, summers are hot. Lakes are cool.

Besides the mechanical bull, the water-borne festival featured live country music, wakeboarding and wakesurfing demonstrations, a floating dance floor, an on-the-water hotdog stand, and a pontoon boat carrying four baby goats. By attending, the theory went, people would get excited about renting a boat for a day on the water.

Boatsetter teamed with local running club Rawdawg, whose super-fit members are known for running shirtless through the streets of Austin (the guys, anyway), posting attention-grabbing videos on social media and occasionally drawing disorderly conduct complaints from neighbors.

To get to the rodeo, I rode in a Super Air Nautique with a sparkly blue and silver paint job. I knew we’d arrived when a wakeboarder went by wearing jeans and a cowboy hat and an inflatable pink and white unicorn the size of a small merry-go-round appeared on the horizon. Next to it, a barge converted into a floating nightclub bobbed on the water. A musician played country music from another boat, while half a dozen people in swimsuits attempted, with varying degrees of success, to boot-scoot across a floating, undulating mat. Our captain tied off alongside a barge dubbed “The Pasture,” where four baby goats, each the size of a beagle, bleated and cuddled with visitors.

But I had a mission, and it involved that bull.

I jumped into the water and swam to the floating arena. There, I hoisted myself out of the lake and made my way to an inflatable corral, where I climbed aboard the bull. One arm outstretched, I clung to it like a tick as it began to bob and twirl, humility draining from my body with every rotation. But I stayed on.

Mission complete, I headed back to our boat, stopping to pet a few goats along the way. There, I spoke with Caitlin Choate, chief marketing officer for Boatsetter.

“This is our first rodeo,” Choate said.

That may be so, but it wasn’t Boatsetter’sfirst pop-up on the water. In Miami last year, the company set up a floating pickleball court behind a boat just off the coast. They’ve hosted two small floating music festivals on Lake Austin, too.

“We’re trying to get new people on the water by doing events that reflect the city where the events take place,” Choate says. The point is, you can do a lot of weird things on the water if you use your imagination. “Yes, you can surf, swim, go fishing—but you can also ride a mechanical bull, pet a goat, or play pickleball. We’re pushing the envelope.”

With that, we head back to shore. I survived my ride on a floating mechanical bull without any broken limbs, and even had a chance to try some wakesurfing.

That might have been my first floating rodeo, but hopefully it won’t be my last.

Pam LeBlanc is an Austin-based environmental and adventure travel writer and photographer. For Outside, she reviewed the film The American Southwest, calling it a wild ride down the mighty Colorado River.