Well, I do believe the last American Royal BBQ for team TFB is officially in the books. \u00a0Never say never, though. \u00a0If it was the last, I think we got our money’s worth; \u00a0I know I did. \u00a0I headed down Thursday afternoon to get things started. \u00a0Thursday is kind of our “team-building” night. \u00a0We hang out, catch up with team members we haven’t seen since LAST year, and go over our respective cooking plans for the weekend. \u00a0Honestly, I’d say a lot of the first two items, not so much the last one. \u00a0It was, as is usually the case, my “late night” for the weekend too. \u00a0I don’t know what time I called it a day (morning) but it was later than common sense would dictate.<\/p>\n
Friday is the big party day of the weekend. \u00a0We all spend most of the day decorating the spot, preparing all the side dishes, putting on the tablecloths, etc. \u00a0I must say, the guys who did the centerpieces this year really went over the top, they were breathtaking. \u00a0Our first guests arrived around 6:00, and it was all downhill from there. \u00a0I won’t rate it our best party in the 10-year history of the team, but it was a good one. \u00a0And, while nobody will say it out loud, the rain storm around 10:00 was a blessing; \u00a0It effectively cleared out most of the riff-raff and left only a handful of people. \u00a0The second storm that rolled through around midnight got rid of the stragglers, and we had the spot to ourselves. \u00a0Perfect crime.<\/p>\n
Saturday is usually a rather brutal day. \u00a0Generally there are only a few of us left onsite, left to deal with a sea of half-full plastic cups, broken glass, discarded plates, and other assorted trash. \u00a0I stumbled out of the trailer early in the morning to find that this year would be no different. \u00a0In his last declaration as acting CEO though, Martin declared that the remaining four of us should take the day off and go get some rest. \u00a0Hey, no need to tell me twice, I was on the phone with Donette in about two seconds. \u00a0She was so overjoyed to hear from me at 7:30 in the morning she could barely form a sentence. \u00a0Once she got past the excitement of getting to see me, she rushed down to pick me up and took me home to a hastily prepared breakfast of smoked salmon and bagels. \u00a0I then took a hot shower and crashed for about three hours. \u00a0(That last sentence is actually true; \u00a0The ones before that, not so much. \u00a0She DID actually come get me though.) \u00a0After catching up on some sleep, we headed up to The Well for a tasty dinner, then I loaded a few bare essentials and headed back down to the BBQ. \u00a0It was with much delight that I arrived to find the site pretty well cleaned up, courtesy of Schmidt. \u00a0There were still only four of us Saturday night, and we all were a little worse for wear. \u00a0We had the good fortune to find the MU game on TV and watched that, then everybody kind of dozed off where they sat.<\/p>\n
Sunday started off around 4:00 with the smokers getting fired up, food prepped, and detailed plans drawn up. \u00a0All went well, or at least as well as it ever does. \u00a0To tell the truth, there was at least an 80% chance of chicken and brisket not even being turned in, as Martin and I had already discussed the fact that since we had no plans of returning in 2014 there was no reason to bother with it. \u00a0But, in the interests of the team members who may or may not choose to carry on the tradition next year, we grudgingly decided to at least submit them. \u00a0Judging from the results this morning, we’d have been just as well served to stay in bed, but at least we didn’t get disqualified. \u00a0(Barely.) \u00a0Actually, chicken turned out to be our team’s best-scoring entry, although it was certainly nothing to brag about. \u00a0Brisket… \u00a0Well… \u00a0Again, we didn’t get disqualified and that’s what is important, right? \u00a0I had a good day of it though, it was certainly a lot more relaxing not really caring how our entries did. \u00a0Part of this was the due to our arch-rivals, The Red Gloves, not showing up this year for the contest. \u00a0In the grand scheme of things, we historically have only cared how we did against them anyway. \u00a0(And it might be worth mentioning, we historically whup them too.) \u00a0Without them to compete against, we didn’t really have any motivation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, I do believe the last American Royal BBQ for team TFB is officially in the books. \u00a0Never say never, though. \u00a0If it was the last, I think we got our money’s worth; \u00a0I know I did. \u00a0I headed down Thursday afternoon to get things started. \u00a0Thursday is kind of our “team-building” night. \u00a0We hang […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1541,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions\/1541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}