I think I might have recovered enough to report on the "experience" of this weekends New Albany "Blues, Cruise and BBQ Fest...It's hard to recall the details through the haze of heat exhaustion but here goes.
The site of this Summer's first contest was the asphalt parking lot of the Northside Christian Church in New Albany. The words "Summer" and "asphalt" being key here. After a careful check of the weather forecast on Thursday we joined many of the competitors in sweating through an early set up on Thursday evening. BAD Stevie...NO biscuit. Thursday nights storms dumped over 4 inches of rain on the area and I returned to the site on Friday afternoon to find $350 dollars of canopies twisted like pretzels. A "quick" trip out to Dick's Sporting Goods during rush hour traffic and another hundred bucks and we were back in -some- semblance of competitiveness.
Those of you who have never seen the Northside Church, it is one big place...and it appears they have a lot of ministers. All of 'em are Great foilks but ya couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who was the minister of -something-. I mention this only because who ever it was that had previously assured us that we had permission from a much higher authority to <eh-hem> discretely consume alcohol on the premises was over ridden by the head-mother-what-be-in-charge (HMWBIC). NO Alcohol. No big deal though...my belly was so full of Gator-Aid that I don't think I could have found room for a beer.
Competitive BBQ cooking is a perfect example of the "Haves" and the "Have NOTS"...and I suppose in part this boils down to a level of commitment but disposable income and a hyper level of competitiveness also play a large roll. The "haves" pull in in driving their motor homes or pulling their "toy hauler" trailers. They wheel out industrial strength "set it and forget it" smokers with enough bells and whistles to make NASA proud and the commence to "cook" BBQ. While waiting for their meat to turn into BBQ they relax in air conditioned comfort while watching the new episode of "Top 40 Country" on CMT via their satellite TV. The "have Nots" on the other hand...or at least in the case of my lovely bride and I sweat out the night ("sweat" being another key word here) manually tending their little smokers, listening to the new "Chickenfoot" CD, taking a little nip every now and then (in this case followed immediately by a prayer of forgiveness..."just in case") and catching a 15 minute cat nap in the back of the pick up once or twice during the night.
On a -good- day the have nots can make it a pretty good show and the "art" of BBQ will prevail over technology. This was NOT a good day. We got our asses kicked. By Saturday afternoon we both felt like we had been ran over by TWO trains. Between the heat, no sleep and that new BBQ rub I tried we managed a 14th place finish...Not bad in a contest with 50 teams but unfortunately this contest only had 15 (YIKES !!!). What the heck though...at least I got a heat stroke out of the deal, so I've got THAT going for me.
Well there ya have it...Sorry more of you didn't venture out but what the heck, maybe next time.
). We brought our own water and strolled around the competitor setup for about 20 min., left and went across the street to Five Guys. Yes, it was awfully hot that evening, there were a few inflatables for the kids there that did not cost $1 each time a kid went down the slide.