Q: Could you please tell me your name?

A: My name is Ripper Moore.

Q: Could you tell me about what you do?

A: Well, I’m one of the few people in the world who can say they are a knight in shining armor for a living. I’m a professional jouster.  I’ve been jousting for nineteen years this year; ever since 1996. I do full-contact competitive jousting, there’s no real theatrics involved. Every time I take up a lance and use it on another knight, I’m trying to knock him out of the saddle and he’s trying to do the same to me. My business suit weighs 130 pounds.  It’s great because it’s one of the few jobs in the world where you actually get to knock the crap out of your boss. And the bosses think it’s a great job because they get to knock the crap out of their employees.

Q: On that note, can you tell me how you get paid to be a professional lancer, and how that dynamic works?

A:  Technically what I would call myself is a freelance jouster, which means I don’t actually belong to a troop, but I can take independent contact with a troop, tournament or specific event. What usually happens is an event wants to put on a joust, so they contact someone who has a jousting troop then work all contact details out with them. Then they pay him and he pays the members of the troop.

Q: So with you being a freelance jouster, your boss, per se, hires you for individual events and then otherwise you’re on your own?

A: More or less. Generally speaking, I know at the beginning of the year what my year is going to look like because I will have talked to people I am touring with and at the events I am appearing at. So I will keep track of what events I have agreed to attend, and then plan my schedule accordingly.

Q: How many events are there per year?

A: Every state has at least one Renaissance fair during the year, and just about every Renaissance fair has a joust of some sort. In addition to that, state fairs have started getting on board with it, saying it’s a really cool thing to do and they want to have exhibition jousting. There are tournaments at a couple of different place throughout the year. Some of them are held at fairs, some of them not. The actual answer to your question: How many are there per year? Hundreds, depending on exactly what you mean. Some of them are a whole weekend long, others are only one day.

Q:  You mentioned on the phone earlier that there isn’t an event in Oregon, in the near future.

A:  Oh no, there’s plenty of things in Oregon, I just don’t do them.

Q: Is there a reason why?

A:  Well, I just moved here three years ago, and by the way I love it, but all my contacts are still back out east. So right now, when I go out to joust, I have to go back out east to do it. I’d love to joust on the west coast, I’d love to joust in my home state, but I don’t have the contacts yet and at the time that I should be making them I’m back east jousting.  So, I’ll get there.

Q:  What brought you out here in the first place?

A: My wife. She spent a large chunk of her childhood around here and wanted to move back, and I said, “Wherever thou go-est, there is home. So let’s move to Oregon!” And I don’t know if you’ve ever moved an entire household before, I mean its one thing to move from an apartment to an apartment, but moving an entire house from one place to another is a logistical nightmare, and I hope I never have to do it again. But we did, we still haven’t unpacked everything, and now we are in heaven.

Q: Can you tell me what you take with you when you travel?

A:  Sure, I have a pick-up truck and a horse trailer, and I’ll put everything I’m going to need for the next four months or what have you, into those two vehicles. Usually, the season will start with me driving from Oregon to Ohio, and then from Ohio I will drive to a bunch of different places including Canada. Obviously, I’ve got my horse and my armor, the two most important things for a jouster, my saddle, horses tack, all of that. I also take with me armor repair kit, leather working tools, an anvil, and then other essentials like toothpaste and that kind of stuff.

Q: Can you tell me a bit about your horse? Have you had this one horse for a long time?

A: I’ve only had him for a couple of years; he’s actually still in training. He’s not entirely sure about this jousting thing himself. Not every horse can be a jousting horse. To run straight towards another animal with a huge, “clanky” thing on your back and a huge, clanky thing coming toward you is just not a natural act. So horses have to be trained to do it very carefully, and some of them never make, and he might or might not, but I still have hopes for him. He’s an Eighteen-Hand Belgian; that means he’s six feet at the shoulder.

Q: What’s his name? Where did you find him?

A: My horses name is Big John. He’s an eighteen-hand Belgian, about eleven years-old, and I’ve had him for about two-three years now. I found him in Virginia.

Q: So would you say your passion is with jousting?

A: Oh, absolutely. I never really thought that I would get passionate about anything. Some people know from when they’re ten years old that they’re going to be an artist, a musician, or go into politics or what have you, and I never really had anything like that. I’ve always sort of fell into it, and one day I noticed that this thing that I sort of fell into, I had been doing it for ten years, won several international tournaments, and ranked one of the top jousters in the world, and I went, “Okay, I guess this is what I do.” And every time I thought about giving it up, some old part of me said, “No! No! Gotta keep jousting. Gotta keep hitting.”  So yeah, I guess I would say I’m passionate about it.