Got another American Royal BBQ in the books.  Wow those things are hard on an old man.  I’m feeling a bit beat up today, but considerably better than I was yesterday when I got home.  This was the first year I didn’t head down there on Thursday, which probably helped out a little bit.  Three nights sleeping on a cot is about three too many in my book.  Plus, I have a cold, haven’t been sleeping well, and myriad other excuses.  So, I rolled into the site Friday morning around 9:30 and soaked in my expected abuse for skipping out.  (Mostly dished out by guys who would leave that evening, never to be seen again for the remainder of the weekend.  Just pointing that out.)  Luckily they hadn’t done all the work on Thursday, there was still plenty left to do in preparation for the Friday night fiesta.  If you had a chance to go outside Friday, you may remember it as a rather crummy day.  Yeah, it was pretty chilly.  Despite the weather, we had an above-average turnout for the party, and everybody appeared to be having a good time.  On my several walk-abouts around the grounds, I definitely noticed we had one of the larger parties going on, and it lasted a lot longer than most.  Must have been our gregarious personalities, who knows.  Everyone declared it a success at any rate.

A small handful of us spent the night down at the site, and woke up Saturday morning to a disaster of leftover food, dirty dishes, and a few hundred empty cups, cans, and bottles.  Mixed in with that trash were some mildly more interesting artifacts;  Roughly 50 discarded coozies, a hat or two, some stray single gloves, and a couple of tee shirts.  Hmmmm.  Whatever.  Given a total lack of alternative entertainment for the day, we spent most of it cleaning up that toxic wasteland.  I would say we need more trash cans for next year, but I don’t think it would do any good honestly.  The day passed quickly enough, and around 6:00 we started doing our prep-work for the BBQ competition.  Good thing somebody made that call in time, because it got very dark and very cold shortly thereafter.

After a mostly sleepless night checking the smokers and trying to stay warm, we got up Sunday and rather lethargically plodded through the competition.  They started the Sunday turn-in thing three or four years ago, and I still have mixed feelings on it.  On one hand, there is really no way we could have done our prep work and got everything going in the middle of the party Friday night.  On the other hand, by the time Sunday finally comes around we are all so tired and disinterested that our main focus is just turning something in and getting the heck out of there.  Despite our lackadaisical effort, we did pretty fair in the results.  Surprisingly fair, as a matter of fact.  And, as usual, my predictions were remarkably skewed from the actual numbers.  Our best score was brisket, which I seriously expected to be at or near the bottom of the entire competition.  Go figure.  Next was the chicken, which despite a decent appearance really wasn’t very good.  Third-best were the ribs, which I was absolutely certain would be our best entry by far.  I could have eaten an entire slab of those things, they were awesome.  Last was the pork, an entry I was sure would do well just on appearance alone.  I will never figure out the results at those things.  It’s not just me either, all the guys that cook on the team had similar evaluations.  Especially on the brisket;  It just wasn’t good.  Oh well, what can ya’ do.  I think we all had a good time and it’s not like we ever expect to win anyway.  We thoroughly defeated our arch-rivals Team Red Glove and that’s all that matters in our BBQ world.  I slapped a few pics of the event up for those who missed it.  Note the omission of the brisket turn-in box.  I was so appalled I didn’t even take a picture of it.