Triple Fat Back BBQ wrapped up another season this weekend, with our big American Royal BBQ party event.  I am still somewhat out of sorts from lack of sleep and over-partying, so forgive my lackadaisical effort at this.  I am definitely envious of the team members who had the foresight to take today off, that was fine planning on their part.

The event started (for a small part of the team) on Thursday afternoon, when a few of us showed up at the site to start setting things up.  By the time I got there, we had two big campers already in place, all the electrical work done, and the big tents were being set up.  That pretty much took the rest of the afternoon.  For dinner Firehouse Subs (one of our proud sponsors) showed up with some sandwich boxes.  Apparently they had just taken a guess at how many would be needed, which turned out to be “way too many.”  (Were they a little more familiar with the workings of our “team,” they would have known that a very small portion of the members show up when there is work to do.)  Not being ones to waste food though, we managed to take care of all the sandwiches, which put us all in food-comas and effectively ended the work for the day.  For the rest of the evening we sat around and rocked to the sounds of “Guitars For Christmas” and tried to stay warm.

Friday was spent getting ready for the big party of the evening.  We usually have around 300 people show up throughout the evening;  That’s a lot of BBQ to get prepped, tables to set up, decorations to hang, hair gel for Scotten to apply, etc.  I can honestly say we are getting better at it every year though…  By now (our sixth year) we have a rather effective process for getting it all done by the time people show up.  Other than some uncooperative weather I think we had a great fiesta.  Unfortunately it was ridiculously windy, which we had to fight all day, and by the time the party got going the temp had dropped to a somewhat uncomfortable level.  I walked around a bit throughout the evening though, and I really think we had one of the larger parties in the area.  I had my fun to be sure, and that’s really all that is important at the end of the day.

Saturday was sort of a down day.  Relax, recover from the party, and get ready for a night of cooking.  I actually left the spot for a while even.  Our friends David & Jill had flown in from Dallas for the party, so Donette came down and got me and we all went to have breakfast at the Corner Cafe before they flew back home.  After that I went home and cleaned up a bit, then headed back to the Royal and got down to business.  Cooking conditions were somewhat less than ideal:  The temp dropped to the low 40’s, and still a little on the windy side.  Martin set up a TV outside for me though, and I managed to stay awake all night, feeding the smoker wood every 30 minutes in an effort to keep the temp up.  My efforts were rewarded with by far the worst score I have ever turned in.  I will say, I went in to the weekend not really caring how I did in the competition, but even given that attitude I was a bit embarrassed at doing that bad.  (In all fairness, it was a pretty bad brisket though, so I won’t argue the results weren’t deserved.)  On the upside, our ribs and chicken did well, pork was respectable, and the sausage came in a staggering eleventh place.  The brisket was easily our worst product, with the exception of the beans, which earned us our first-ever ZERO, although I doubt anyone cares enough to find out why.

Sunday we got the site torn down, then I went home and crashed on the couch.  I tried to stay awake so my “clock” would get back in sync, but I think I only made it about 30 minutes before dozing off.  So much for that plan.  I slept well knowing that we had finished what was (supposedly…  maybe… hopefully…) our last American Royal event.  It has been decided that it’s just too much work and money for old men like ourselves, so we are retiring from the event, much to the delight of the organizers I am sure.  Despite that ultimatum, even as we packed up on Sunday there were rumors of a possible merger with one of our neighboring teams that we party with throughout the weekend, things that we should do differently next year, etc.  Stay tuned next October…

Now this is weather.  It would be this way all year if I had any say in it.  Hopefully it holds out for the big BBQ this weekend…  (Jinx.)  By the way, I know everybody has been on the edge of their seats waiting for status on my web server instability issue.  Well, after turning on some logging here and there and watching things for a while, it turned out there were about 150 or more spam-bots hitting my message boards every twenty minutes or so.  Given the rather anemic specs of the little server I use, it would just puke all over itself.  After ciphering on a few different solutions for a while, I took the easy way out and just deleted the message board.  Bah, nobody (except the spammers) has used it for several months anyway.  Done.

That weekend was definitely a bit toned down after last.  That was a good thing, I need my rest.  Friday, case in point, I didn’t do much at all.  I stopped by the Brooksider for a bit and sat out on the deck, enjoying the fine weather and catching up on the latest local news, then went home and watched TV.  Donette, meanwhile, stood in as Susan’s date to a highschool reunion.  She stayed out quite a bit later than I, and that’s all the info I was privy too…

Saturday, after sleeping in just a bit, we headed down to Brookside & joined John and Susan for breakfast at Sharp’s.  I had the biscuits and gravy for about the tenth time in a row;  Probably need to branch out a bit.  Then again, I like their biscuits and gravy, so why risk it?  We ate breakfast, then walked around the Wayside Waifs event for a little bit, checking out all the puppies.  (I didn’t know that was going on or I would have probably gone elsewhere for breakfast…  It was pretty crazy with all the streets blocked off and mutts everywhere.)  After that, with a nice full belly, I headed to the wilds of the northlands, to join Martin and crew (skeleton crew, I might add) working the smoker up at Chris’ house.  Brice & Zim showed up to help out too, and I think we got everything pretty well prepped for next weekend.  Of note, while we had the smoker running, Chris turned out what could have been the best slab of ribs he has ever prepared.  Bold statement, but quite possibly true.  Deeee-licious.  Fluke, or can they be duplicated next weekend under the pressure of competition?  Time will tell.  (If we even bother turning in our entries…  Time will tell that too.)  After all that, I headed back home for another evening of nothing.  I had been snacking on ribs and chicken all day and wasn’t even hungry, so I skipped dinner and just hit the TV again.

Sunday, after the previous evening of nothing, I was well rested and ready to enjoy the day.  I drove over to Mark’s house and picked him up, and we headed to the shooting range out by Parkville for a few hours.  Can’t beat that for a fine Sunday afternoon’s entertainment.  We killed a few dozen pieces of paper, then scurried back to midtown.  There was still plenty of afternoon left, and the weather couldn’t get much better, so Donette and I made the arduous .5-mile trip to The Well to enjoy the weather.  I had the best pastrami sandwich I’d had in recent memory, and Donette gave her burger high marks too.  That was the first time we’d eaten there, and I must say it easily rivals 75th Street for food.  The downside is that every time we’ve been there, (admittedly not many) there has been something a little “off” about it that almost, if not quite, ruins it.  For instance, last time we were there, one of the neighboring businesses had some kind of sewer issue going on, and every so often you’d get an overwhelming whiff of rotten eggs.  (It was still there yesterday actually, but we had a more favorable breeze.)  Then yesterday it was the bees;  Friggin’ honey bees everywhere.  What the heck?  They even kept getting in our tea, which wasn’t even sweetened.  It was a bit unnerving.  But, the pastrami was excellent and I didn’t get stung, so I guess in the end it worked out OK.

I survived my four day weekend with “the boys.”  Unfortunately I came back to a severely impaired webserver…  It is definitely limping.  So, I’m doing the best I can with what I have.

Thursday afternoon Martin & I flew out to Louisville, KY to attend the ’09 Bourbon Festival in Bardstown.  We met up with Todd & his brother-in-law Eric at the Louisville airport, rented a vehicle, and proceeded on to Bardstown.  We pulled in to our Bed & Breakfast pretty late, and after a rather, ummm, “extensive” tour of the house we headed out to check out the surroundings.  We stumbled across a rather inviting place that met our somewhat low-brow requirements, and ended up staying rather late;  Which is to say when the lights came on and they told us to leave.

Friday we awoke bright & early (early at least) to start the weekend festivities.  After a delicious breakfast (highlighted by listening to the proprietress scream up the stairs at Chris to get up, which became a morning ritual by the time we left) we piled in the car and took a rather circuitous route to the Four Roses Distillery for the “Let’s Talk Bourbon” seminar.  (We found the navigation equipment somewhat dicey in Kentucky.)  Oddly this was possibly one of my favorite, and cheapest, events of the the festival.  Don’t get that combo very often.  It was an outdoor event on a fine day, an informative and festive event, pretty much all around fun.  We stayed quite a bit past the posted end of the party, until we noticed we were sorta the only people there, so we slunk back to the car and drove off.  Next was the Woodford Reserve distillery.  That was kinda a non-event, I’d say we were a little disappointed in that one.  “Done, check, move on.”  We headed back to Bardstown & took a quick nap, then headed out to the big “Cigar & Jazz Festival.”  Hopefully you can pretty well put together the content of that evening from the title…  Yeah we kinda sat around and, er, smoked cigars and listened to jazz.  There ‘ya go.

Saturday, after another fine breakfast, we took another long drive out to Maker’s Mark for a tour.  The tour was sort of marginal, but there really wasn’t anything better to do.  I’m a fan of the brand so it was interesting to hear all the history and such.  Plus we got free ice cream;  Can’t go wrong there.  After that we went on a failed quest to find President Lincoln’s birthplace, then ate some lunch, then it was time for the coup de grâce of the weekend, (according to Todd,) the “Bourbon Tasting & Gala.”  This was a black tie event (strike one) held in a large indoor area (strike two) with 1,200 other people.  (Yep that’s three.)  Ahhh, it was fun.  I guess it was like every other Gala I’ve been too, for that matter.  I thought the dinner was very good, and I got a lot of cool swag too.  The fact that I was sweating to death in a stupid tuxedo while enjoying these things was certainly unfortunate, but couldn’t be helped.  Probably the worst part was that they had the same stinkin’ band from the party we went to the night before, so we had to listen to the same set.  It was good the first night, entertaining even;  Two nights in a row?  Not so much.

Sunday was spent travelling back home.  As mentioned, I got home to a gimpy webserver, so I spent the rest of the day alternating football games & geeking on the pc.  About 8:30 the impact of spending three days partying hit me full on, and I wiped out on the couch.  DONE.  Yes, yes I do have some pictures.  In fact, I took a brand new camera just for the event, and I must say I was a little disappointed in the performance of it.  Some of the pics I was most looking forward to just didn’t come out.  (Like the four of us standing in the back yard of the B&B in our formals while the lady snapped pics like we were heading to our senior prom;  All of them are blurry.)  So, I’ll pick through what there is and see what can be done.

Let me preface this entry by pointing out that I am quite disinterested in typing this.  I would expect that to be reflected in the resulting post.  So there.  I am fortunate enough to have the day off, and I’m sure I could be doing something better, although I’m not exactly sure just what.

We had way too many things on our “list” for the weekend.  So many, in fact, that we sort of shifted into panic gear and didn’t actually accomplish too many of them.  It happens.  Friday, for instance, we were supposed to go on an “outing” but it turned out we just didn’t have it in us, so we sat down at the Brooksider and enjoyed one of the rare rain-free days.  We didn’t stay too long, and might still have gone out later, but in a rather unfortunate turn of events Gabe hurt his foot at doggie day-care so we had to stay home and tend to that.  He somehow managed to crack one of his nails, and it was bleeding all over the place.  This particular injury does not go well with light-colored carpeting.  We might have to just tear up the carpet on the stairs;  Haven’t decided yet.  Unfortunately we just had it put in not too long ago, but what can ya’ do.  Right now it looks like somebody slaughtered a goat in the living room and dragged the carcass up the stairs.  OK that’s a rather graphic image, but also quite accurate…

Saturday was kind of a blur…  I don’t really know what happened.  Things started off with a rather unexpected bit of exercise, when one of our neighbors called and said they had an aerator rented, and wanted to know if I wanted in on the fun.  Well, matter of fact that was on my list of fall chores, so I had to hurry up and mow and mark all the sprinkler heads, then tried to push the aerator around for 30 min or so.  Those stupid things are like torture machines, especially on teeny yards like ours where you have to turn around every ten feet.  After that nightmare, we went out and picked the scooter up from the shop sometime around noon, and had lunch at Maloney’s while we were in the neighborhood.  We had evening plans once again, and once again we bailed on them.  I just don’t like leaving the ‘hood it seems, and I think I might be getting worse.  The Plaza is about as far as I really care to go.  So, I ended up just going down to the good ol’ Brooksider and watching the Missouri game.  It was crowded and loud, but I guess it was an “event.”

Sunday went by rather quickly too.  Some time ago we had donated a brisket dinner to an auction, and the people who bought it were cashing it in.  We were lounging around the house, watching football and such, and all of a sudden we were running late.  The house turned into a flurry of activity for a few hours, and we ended up only being about 15 minutes late on our delivery.  When we got back home, the neighbors had all gathered across the street in a driveway, for some kind of quaint little “neighborhood happy hour.”  As this met my somewhat restrictive geographic requirements for entertainment, we joined in the fun.  So, we hung out over there for a few hours, complaining about the new sidewalks, meeting the newest neighbors, talking about the houses that are for sale;  General neighborly chit-chat I guess.  After that, a few hours of football, and the weekend was over.

That weekend was “OK.”  Got a little marred by work, but that happens.  Friday night I was sorta-kinda-almost working so we didn’t really do anything.  Cooked up a nice dinner and then kept half an eye on my PC while watching television.  Bleh.

Saturday was my day-o-fun for the weekend.  We started the day right by going to the gym with Susan for a few hours.  After that we got cleaned up and headed down to the 1rst annual Bacon Festival.  It was a beautiful day out and we’d been thinking about going anyway, so we went ahead and showed up.  I would characterize the event on the whole as “different.”  From the location (West Bottoms,) to the theme, to the entertainment, it was a rather eclectic event.  All in a good way though.  We spent most of the three hours we were there trying out the various bacon-themed dishes on site;  bacon ice-cream (gross as it sounds,) bacon and chocolate cake, pork rinds, shredded pork, and of course the almost-famous bacon explosion.  Not to mention plenty of just plain ol’ bacon.  They also had a bacon-eating constest, which made me a bit queasy just watching, and a local band called Bacon Shoe.  Not quite sure how to describe the band;  A rather bizarre cross between musicians, comedians, and performance artists.  Maybe it was the pork overload, but I found them hilarious, if maybe a bit “edgy” for afternoon entertainment.  I had to wonder if the organizers had listened to them before signing them for the event, or if they just went with them because they had the word “bacon” in their name.  I saw at least one of them walk in, listen for a few minutes, then walk back out with a pained expression on her face.  Look them up if you want an idea of their bizarre-ness;  I would link to their site but it’s a bit, er…  Inappropriate.  After we had our fill of pork product, we headed back to midtown and checked our newest neighborhood spot, “The Well.”  It opened a few weeks ago near Tanners on Wornall, and given their large rooftop deck and the fine weather, we decided it would be a good day to try them out.  Little fancy for us I think, but we’ll drop in now and then I imagine, mostly because the deck is so cool.  After that we headed to John & Susan’s house to round out our day with a fine dinner of grilled steak.  Yum.

Sunday I got up and went out target practicing with my friend Mark.  There was quite a wait at the range, so that kinda stunk, but we had fun when we finally got our turn.  I stopped by the Brooksider on the way home, where Doni’s parents were enjoying some chicken wings, and had a tasty sandwich myself.  After that, well, I logged into work and killed the rest of my evening.  Wanna hear all about that?  Nahhhh.