Now What?

Haven’t posted anything in a while, figured I’d say hello to the two or three of you that actually look at my blog.

We decided not to go to the Grill Kings competition in Long Island, NY this past weekend, and apparently that was a good decision. Very hot temperatures, and other apparent problems (including no water from Saturday afternoon until 10 Sunday morning) made it seem like this was a difficult event for the teams. Some New England teams did really well, including iQue taking grand champion and Purple Turtle taking third overall. Great job!

Our next competition isn’t for more than a month. I really want to get back to it. We didn’t do particularly well at Lake Placid, our last event, but looking back I made too much of that showing. Sure I want us to score well and win every time out, but that’s not going to happen and I realize that. I guess we had so much success so early that we figured we wouldn’t have any adversity. Wrong…..

But I have put this all in perspective. We had a great time, continued to make friends with our fellow competitors and learned some things. We had a huge feast Monday night with Ward Mann from Hog Heaven and a friend of his, along with my parents who made the trip to Lake Placid to see us in action. The organizers went out of their way to make it a great experience for us.

This weekend, Sheila and I are planning to head up to the Harpoon BBQ Competition as civilians. We have volunteered to judge in the grilling competition Sunday, but will probably just end up hanging around and taking it all in. I am looking forward to spending a little time with Mike Lee of the Yankee BBQ Boys, who was one of the people who helped me make the decision to compete in the first place. I have a feeling they will have a strong showing at Harpoon.

Interestingly, even though we have competed in three events, Sheila and I have never been to a competition as a paying visitor. Also, some of the teams will be vending, so it will be a good chance to sample some of the stuff other teams are making. However, I’m sure they are not going to put their competition level food out there for "spies" like me.

Maybe, we will take "Rookie Team of the Year" honors, which will be awarded after Harpoon. According to my calculations, if the Qkwannabes do not score a 625 overall in either the grilling or the BBQ competition, we will win RTOY. Not sure what (if anything) we would get for that honor, but just the recognition would be just fine with me. However, a trophy would be better!