Whew, that went by awfully fast for a three-day weekend. I took off work Friday, and we left for a driving trip to Memphis Thursday night after work. Since we got the late start, we only made it half-way that night, then got up Friday morning and drove the last several hours. Boy, nothing like a nice drive through scenic Arkansas to start a weekend! (Unfortunately there is no “sarcasm” font available, so you’ll just have to take it for granted.)

Upon our arrival in downtown Memphis, we immediately scanned the GPS for BBQ joints, and decided on Neely’s for our first visit. It was a pretty solid lunch; As with every other place we would try over the weekend, the ribs were good, the slaw was “different,” and the beans were nothing to write home about. After stuffing our bellies, we checked into a hotel downtown and handed the keys to the valet, marking the last time we would see the car for the weekend. We didn’t have any real plans, but our main destination was the Memphis In May BBQ competition, which was easily within walking distance from the hotel. After a quick nap, we headed that direction, via the famous Beale Street. I guess it’s famous anyway, they seemed pretty proud of it. Supposedly it is the second-most-visited street in the US after Bourbon Street; After spending considerable time there over the weekend I’d buy into that designation. We showed up at the ‘Que competition around 6:00, and spent the rest of the evening there just kind of walking around. It was a lot like the American Royal in that it was packed, had lots of deafeningly loud parties going on, and it would be better if you knew somebody in the competition. I still had a good time of it though, taking pictures and checking out all the booth setups, which were on average more elaborate than the ones at the Royal. A big thing there was to set up scaffolding to make a second party level, effectively doubling your booth space, while tripling the liability. Genius! Seemed to work well though, and I never did see anybody take a header off one of them. Anyway, we walked around for several hours checking it all out, wrapping up the evening with a concert by the world-renowned redneck band, The Kentucky Headhunters. Holy smokes, those guys are even uglier than I remember. Wow. They are just fascinatingly ugly. MESMERIZING ugly even. About the 150th “YEEEE HAW” we had to leave though. That was just into the third song, so we really didn’t make it too long. We had been walking so much we really needed to sit for a while, so we headed back to Beale street for a late dinner. The party was in full swing by that time, so we had a bit of trouble finding a place to eat, but we finally scored two open chairs at “The Pig.” These were my favorite ribs of the weekend incidentally. I’m not sure if they were really that good, or it was just that it was 1:00 in the morning and I was half-starved.

Saturday brought pretty much a repeat of Friday, we just got an earlier start of it. We headed down to the BBQ Competition around noon to check things out in the daylight. Without all the parties and noise going on, we talked to a lot more teams and kind of figured out what was going on. (Once we dropped the name “Triple Fat Back BBQ” we found them more than willing to chat with us.) The coolest thing (I thought) was the part where the judges walk around to each booth and taste the product. The teams all set fancy tables and then give a big spiel to the judge about their equipment, food, etc, then they sit down and eat. On the downside, I thought it kind of lame that the teams only enter one major category; Whole hog, ribs, or shoulder. It was fun checking out all the smokers and stuff though; Again, pretty much like a mini-Royal. My favorite line of the day came from one old guy, who we asked how his smoker towed. It was about a 20′ long trailer, and they had made the ill-advised decision to set their enormous rig on the very back end of it. He summed it up with his annoying drawl, “Well, you get ‘er much over 40 mph and she starts shakin’ like an 18-year-old in a topless bar.” Nice. For lunch we went with Corky’s ribs. They were pretty solid, although they likely suffered a bit from the re-heating. (We were at their booth down at the competition, not at the actual restaurant.) After spending the entire afternoon down there, we decided to check out the local minor-league baseball team, the Memphis Redbirds. The stadium was right across from our hotel and we like checking out ballparks, so we figured what the heck. We bought the cheapest tickets in the park, which put us in the grass out in left field. Being way too old to sit on the ground for long, we only made it a few innings, then we headed to Rendezvous restaurant for one last slab of ribs. Donette voted these her favorite, and they were indeed a fine rack o’ bones.

Yesterday we didn’t do anything but drive. Including lunch at beautiful Mountain Grove MO, the trip took us seven hours. Do the math on that one and it turns out the good ol’ Accord got a workout.