Dang, that was a busy weekend. I feel like I’ve been beat with a stick. I’m tired, sore, and sunburned. Oh, but it was fun. The weekend kicked off mid-Friday, when I snuck out of work a bit early and headed North to Kearney for a barbecue competition. The contest was at the Jesse James festival, which has been held annually for who-knows-how-long. This was the inaugural competition for our newly-formed BBQ team, The Triple Fat Backs, aka TFB. Actually, the “new” team is the same team we had at the Royal last year, with a few new members and a more politically correct name than “The Re-Todds”. Plus, Brown built us a big smoker to use, so now we’re big-time. We had a nice little party Friday night. Zim hauled his 30-foot camper up there so we’d be nice and comfy, and several people kind of dropped in and out… A little more low-key than the Royal. We had a good feed-a-thon too; Zim and Chud had a buffet of sausages, and Martin supplied brisket, ribs, and chicken. All that good food sitting around getting cold and I think for the most part I ate nachos. Go figure. About 11:00 Friday night we got to work, putting on the briskets, pork and turkey. When I say “we” that included Chris and I; The rest of the slackers conveniently dropped off their submissions and left us to cook them. Every team has a few weak links I guess.
Saturday morning started bright and early. The first thing I did was meet the neighboring team next door; Friendly cusses. I’m afraid that out of embarrassment that’s all the detail I’m gonna go into on that matter. Let’s just consider that a closed subject. After those introductions, it was back to work. We got the brisket and pork wrapped up in foil, and then got the chicken and ribs on around 8:00. Meanwhile, while Martin and I were driving the smoker, Todd joined Ed and Kim for a 10k race in town. That boy just ain’t right. When they got back around 10:00, Ed and Kim were sporting fancy shiny medals around their neck, and Todd was sporting a bitter scowl. Apparently, there were 85 participants in the race, and of those 80 of them received medals of some type. The beautiful irony of it was that somehow Todd’s broken-down 40-year-old abused frame actually managed to keep up with the 25-year-olds, then they got medals and he got the shaft. It seems that through the magic of the age brackets, Todd just happened to get stuck with a bunch of absurdly fast old men. Rest assured we got lots of mileage out of those results back at the camp. Around 11:30, it was time to get down to the business of the ‘que. Todd got his turkey carved up and turned in, then chicken, ribs, pork, and finally brisket. That flurry of action went until 2:30, and then we got the camp cleaned up and decided to hang out for the awards ceremony. Lo and Behold, Triple Fat Back BBQ brought home some ribbons!! Todd landed an “honorable mention” for his turkey at 7th place, and I got 3rd place and $75 with my brisket. There was a total of 49 teams, so we were nothing less than ecstatic with the results. I was so elated with my ribbon you’d have thought it was a Nobel Peace Prize. The wacky part was that I didn’t even really like the brisket. I gave it an optimistic “marginal” rating when I was turning it in. Heck, I even put sauce on it, which I consider pure heresy, because I thought it was on the dry side. Those crazy judges; What can ya’ do. Here’s a few pictures of the event.
After the big BBQ, I went home and crashed hard. I was thoroughly exhausted. Doni had gotten us tickets to go on the Waldo Crawldo event, but I was in no shape to go anywhere. Plus, I had a rather embarrassing sunburn on my forehead from wearing my hat backwards all weekend; Whoops. Doni hooked up with Ed, Kim and Mike for the Crawldo, which she came to regret. Shoulda stayed home with me. Sounded like they all had fun though.
Sunday morning I woke up marginally refreshed to go on our ALS walk-a-thon. The weather was kind of lousy… Actually it rained on us rather hard. There was a good turn-out though and the rain cleared off pretty quick. Truth be told, I didn’t even walk… I had Gabe with me so we just hung out at the little fairground they had set up. There were several other dogs walking and ol’ Gabe doesn’t always play well with others, so I decided to play it safe. We stayed around the park until around 11:30, then headed back home to rest up some more. Doni crashed out instantly, but I changed my mind and decided to join Todd down at the Brooksider to revel in our BBQ success. He brought down a couple of Padron cigars, which I would consider grossly extravagant. But hey, we were celebrating, and more importantly it was his nickel. We hung out down there and enjoyed the nice day out on the deck, then went in and watched a few football games. Headed home after a while, watched the Chiefs game, and called it a weekend. Whew. Next weekend…. CHICAGO TRIP!!!