Snuck in a down weekend there.  We actually had some big plans, but everything fell through last minute, so we decided to take advantage of the situation and just lay low.  Here’s my do-it-yourself weekend summary: So, (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) the wife and I sat on the couch (upstairs/downstairs) and watched (movies/football/baseball.)  Just mix and match the words inside the parentheses to create a very accurate portrayal of our last few days.  Outside of that, well not much to report.  Saturday I took a stab at dinner, and whipped up this recipe.  Now, before you start in on me, I was not out cruising marthastewart.com looking for valuable household tips.  I merely googled “shrimp basil pasta” (because that’s what I had on hand) and that’s the first recipe that came up.  I swear, try it yourself.  Anyway, it came out pretty well, I may try it again with some minor changes.  That killed an hour or so, then it was back to the couch.  Sunday was even less eventful.  I walked up to QT for a delicious breakfast, mostly just to get out of the house for a bit.  Hung out with the other ne’er-do-wells and enjoyed a fine meal of sausage biscuits and coffee, which is about the most entertainment you can expect for $3.50.  Maybe not the moderately wild weekend we had planned, but it was quite relaxing.

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.

Squeezed in another 3-day weekend;  Can’t get enough of those.  We got up early-ish Friday and rolled down to the Plaza for a pancake breakfast at the Cheesecake factory.  They were having a fundraiser for a good cause, and we like pancakes, so it seemed a reasonable start to the weekend.  After that we went back home, threw some clothes in a bag, loaded the car, and headed towards Harvard, NE to visit our friends Dan & Denise.  They achieved empty-nest status several years back and moved to a farm outside of Harvard, but we’d never made it out there due to the horrifically long drive.  That’s only a slight exaggeration;  It was a pretty doggone long trip, especially with an antsy dog pacing around the car.  We did finally make it though, with a only a few slight navigational snafus.  For the record, we tried three products to get us to their house;  Our trusty Garmin (with recently updated maps,) the new iOS maps on our iphones, and Mapquest.  The Garmin was ruled out right off the bat when it couldn’t find road 321.  Both the Apple and Mapquest offerings mapped it out, but with significantly different endpoints.  Given all the bad press the new Apple maps have been getting, we went with the Mapquest route. Bad decision, it sent us about 15 miles east of their house.  Switched over to the Apple map and it took us right to their front door.

Saturday we woke up to some great weather and drove to a nearby town to watch two of their grand kids play soccer.  The kids were 5 and 7-ish years old, so they were on different fields.  We walked back and forth watching them, and it was quite entertaining.  The older ones actually had a pretty good grasp of the game, we saw some good plays over on that field.  The little ones were just a pure comedy show.  They’d be running the wrong direction, or standing around in a big group waling away on each others shins while the ball was 10 yards away, or they’d just suddenly lose interest and start wandering off.  We got a good show on both fields.  After that we headed back to their house, and started getting ready to throw a watch party for the Huskers game.  When we planned this weekend a while back, we originally intended to drive to Lincoln and have a tailgate party.  As it turned out all the hotels there were full so they decided to just host the party at their house.  Good plan for me;  I was done driving anyway.  The game started at 7:00, and we had quite the party.  I will admit only a slight interest in the game, although they fixed me up with a Cornhusker shirt and coozie so at least I’d look the part.  Of much more interest to me was the feed table.  One of his boys brought out a large smoker and spent the day cooking up a ridiculous spread.  He did a brisket, several slabs of ribs, stuffed pork chops, bacon-wrapped shrimp, cream-cheese stuffed chicken breasts…  We did NOT go hungry.

Sunday we spent the day driving home.  The WHOLE day.  For whatever reason it seemed a lot longer trip heading that direction.  I was struggling to keep my eyes open most of the time, and Donette couldn’t take a nap because she had to keep an eye on me.  Whew, I’m too old for parties like that.  Teagan was totally wiped out too, she was immobile in the back seat all the way home.  I think she had as much fun as we did over the weekend.  She was an…  “acceptable” house guest.  There were a few mild squabbles with their dog, and she wasn’t overly fond of the horses.  (Especially when Donette went for a ride on one.)  For the most part she just enjoyed the big yard and all the fascinating new stuff to check out.  She had a big ol’ time at the party too.  Lots of kids to throw her ball for her, people dropping food all over the place, holy smokes it was a pittie paradise.  Next time she goes to a party and everybody feeds her treats I’m going to require they spend five hours in the car with her the next day to suffer the consequences with us.  Whew.

After a summer of rather lackadaisical training, I finally got in my century ride for the season.  I like to work in one big ride per year, and this year it was the MS-150.  Saturday morning I met up with a few buddies out at the Garmin plant in Olathe, and we joined a few thousand other riders heading towards Lawrence, KS.  Munkirs and I had done the 100 mile MS-150 ride before, but last time we went the opposite direction to Sedalia.  It was my friend Don’s first try at a 100 mile ride.  Overall, I’d say it was a positive day.  All three of us finished, so it’s a win in my book.  The weather, as far as the temperature went, was nothing less than perfect.  On the downside, we fought a brutal wind the majority of the way. Holy smokes, I’m not sure I’ve ever ridden in a wind like that.  It had to be a good 20 mph all the time, with gusts that would nearly put you in the ditch.  And, as luck would have it, it was always in our faces or across us, except for a stretch near  the end when we actually got to ride with it for a bit.  I guess we were in it for the challenge, and it certainly added to that.

For the most part, I’ll give the ride a passing grade.  The wind stunk, and I made the unfortunate discovery that Kansas is the biggest proponent of chip-and-seal road surfacing in the nation.  (I think my arms are still vibrating from that nasty crap.)  But, we had Donette and Teagan at a few spots along the route cheering us on, and I had a good time in Lawrence when we finally got there.  We got checked into a hotel and cleaned up, then met up with Don and his wife for a celebration pizza dinner.  I’d have liked to stay out a bit longer, but I was struggling to keep my eyes open so we headed back to the hotel to watch TV.  I think I was asleep by like 7:30.

Sunday morning, I got up early and headed down for day two of the event.  Don and Munkirs had made the (probably wise) decision to get back to KC by way of motorized transportation, so I was on my own for this ride.  That seemed to be a popular choice;  I’d say there were no more than a few hundred riders heading out.  It was a brisk start to the day too, a crisp 34 degrees.  It warmed up pretty quick though, and I popped in my headphones for a nice little ride.  It was so nice out that I gave a (very) brief thought to riding the whole 72 mile route, but luckily common sense kicked in and I opted for the 38 mile ride.  I’d had some nasty leg cramps during the night and I didn’t want those coming back, plus I was experiencing some discomfort in my… errrr… well… “contact points.”  Six hours on a bike seat will do that I guess.  Fine weekend of riding, I tentatively plan on doing it again next year.  I like the Sedalia route about ten times better, but unfortunately I don’t get a vote in the matter.

Oncall again last weekend, rats.  It comes in streaks I guess.  I still managed my fair share of fun though, if a bit toned-down fun.  Friday I dropped by the Brooksider, but only because it was a mandatory meeting of the TFB-BBQ team.  The American Royal is drawing near, time to start planning!  I stuck around 30 minutes or so, during which time we decided to A) Show up at the contest and B) Try to turn in our entries.  Planning is a slow process with this group.

Saturday I headed to Lee’s Summit and met Munkirs for the last Spin Pizza ride of the year.  I’m not entirely sure why they are cutting off the season so early, but whatever works.  These rides are just your typical “group” ride, similar to the Mission Farms and Brookside routes I go on nearly every week, but they put a bit more enticement into it.  They teamed up with Bike Source and occasionally raffle off gift cards, and sometimes they give away cycling socks or other cool stuff.  If you go on enough rides they will even donate to your MS-150 ride, but I ended up just a few short this year.  (I usually ride from the Main Street location if I go with them, and I don’t particularly care for that route.)  All in all, they are just good supporters of local cycling, and they got some dang good pizza too!   At any rate, for the last ride of the year, they offered a 40-mile option, which is just what we were looking for as we wind down to our “big” ride next weekend.  It was a decent route and we finished with a good time.  I sorta actually enjoyed the two trips up “The Hill,” as they called it.  That reference was to the big hill on the south side of Longview Lake that I used to ride up and down as a mere child growing up in Grandview.  Just as it was then, it’s a lot funner to go down than up;  I think the Spin team needs to consider reversing the route direction.  After that, Donette and I headed down to the P&L and had a late lunch at the recently opened Dubliner.  They were offering 100 extra points on my KC Hopps reward card for going there Saturday, and I’m always a sucker for those events.  (I wear that card out.  At one point last year they owed me over $400;  Then I decided it would break my heart if they folded and I lost all that money so I brought it down to a more reasonable level.)  This was our first trip to this restaurant since it changed over from Raglan Road.  The food was actually quite good, but being considerably out of our normal geographic dining region I doubt we hurry back any time soon.

Sunday was a low-key affair.  I watched the atrocity that was the Chief’s game for a bit, before flipping over to the Royals.  Neither game provided a whole lot of excitement.  I was pulled away from those train-wrecks around 2:00 to take Donette to the airport, as she will be working out of town all week.  After that, I pretty much sat on the couch and flipped between bad football games and bad movies.  Cinematic picks for the evening featured the Russian-language offering “Black Lightning,” which was a sappy action movie.  Eh, it passed the time.  After that I switched over to the horror genre, selecting “The Descent II.”  It was about as good as it sounds.  On a related note, we are seriously considering turning our cable back on.  I’m about 1/2-mad from watching too many low-quality movies on Netflix, and I’m tired of missing Monday night football already.