Well, another season gone by for the Triple Fat Back BBQ team.  I’m too tired and beat up to objectively re-tell the events of the weekend…  Rignt now I still feel like it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.  It really was a fantastic time though;  I know this because everybody else told me so, and they seem like reliable enough people.

The events of the weekend started Thursday, which I would say might be my favorite night of the weekend.  We get down there and set a few things up, and then just sit around and enjoy the day.  Fix a little dinner, listen to some music;  Pretty much just hang out.  If not for the $(@*#%^ trains rumbling by, blowing their stupid horns every 30 friggin’ minutes, it would be downright relaxing.  We actually went to bed at a rather reasonable hour, but it’s hard to get a quality night of rest when it sounds like a freight train is about to run into the camper.

Friday, of course, is the big fiesta.  I thought we put on a pretty good event this year;  I might have even had fun for a bit.  Man is it a lot of what can only be called “work” though.  All told, I’m sure we cooked up over 300 lbs of meat this year, which then of course needs chopped/sliced/sauced or whatever the case may be.  I’ll admit it’s a good time though, once it gets rolling.  We had the same band as the last few years, The Unusual Suspects.  They put on a solid show, plus I like that they mix in some good blues;  Fits the atmosphere better than most of the bands down there.  This year’s TFB production also featured the inaugural show of “Guitars For Christmas,” a new local band that treated us to a short three-song set, just to get their name out there on the music scene.  Actually, if you didn’t have the pleasure (??) of enjoying their show, Guitars For Christmas is made up of Martin, Scotten, Belanger & Zim, each of whom got new instruments for Christmas last year.  Isn’t that cute.  While I could probably come up with a string of adjectives as long as this page to describe their performance, I think I’ll just go with “entertaining.”

Saturday the Royal was still dragging on, but I didn’t put in much face-time.  I was pretty beat down from the whole Friday debacle I think.  Not that there was much going on anyway;  It’s sort of a dead day that they mixed into the event to get more money out of us.  We had friends in from Nebraska that drove in for the party Friday night too, so wanted to see them as much as we could while they were in town.  Later in the day Martin got a TV set up at the spot and everybody came down to watch the MU game.  Not the best game ever, but at least we were on the MU side of things;  I think our Nebraska friends got less entertainment out of it than we did.  After the game was over, we fired up the smoker and got to work.  This is without a doubt my least favorite portion of the event.  Every single time we do one of these, I find myself shivering in a lawn chair at four o’clock in the morning, swearing I will never do another BBQ.  Hmmmm, what does this mean?  I’m a slow learner?  I don’t hate it as much as I’m absolutely positive I do?  I’m not really sure.  It was as brutally miserable as ever, that much I can say, made only worse by the fact that I forgot to bring warmer clothes.

We got all our stuff turned in and got the heck out of there around 2:30 Sunday afternoon.  I actually thought I was feeling rather rested compared to a few of these things I’ve done, but I didn’t even get all the way home before I was fast asleep.  (Donette was driving luckily.)  The rest of the day was spent on the couch, watching television and drifting in and out of consciousness.  They finally got the results of the competition up this morning, and I’m happy to say Team TFB did “respectable,” which is about all we really strive for.  I was particularly pleased that my brisket got back to middle-of-the-road scores, as opposed to the drubbing I’ve taken at the last two competitions we’ve done this year.  Of course you could also say that, after trying several different things, I’m right back where I left off from last season.  Oh well!

Now before all the hate mail starts about getting the pictures up, I’ll admit there was a little technical glitch with the photos this year.  I didn’t take any.  Seriously, I think I took like 3 or 4, and those were nothing of interest.  My camera was in my supply box and I just didn’t get it out for some reason.  So, if anybody happened to be there over the weekend and has a few pictures for me, send them my way.