Catching Up

First of all, I would like to apologize to everyone (I know there are at least a few readers out there) for the lengthy hiatus I have been on with this blog. This has been due to several factors. 1) Sonya and I moved in to our first home in late September 2)The last leg of the bbq season was extremely fun yet extremely tiring and 3) Sonya and I found out we are expecting our first child in June. :-) Okay 5) Laziness/forgetfulness. This year I have set my mind to do weekly updates, so please check back early and often. If I miss a week, feel free to contact me and give me grief about it.

Just to catch everyone up since our last post I will do a brief synopsis from my last post:

Right after the River City Roundup in Omaha we were off to Kansas City the next week to compete in our first American Royal Invitational/Open. For those of you who don't know, this is heralded as the "World Series of BBQ", and for good reason. We arrived Thursday and spent the next 4 days mixing in equal parts of play and cooking our butts off. Come Sunday afternoon, we could barely see straight we were so tired.

Here are some highlights of the experience:
1)Smack Talk back and forth with Mark Grieco from Four Men and a Pig (last year's Royal Open winner).
2)Becoming friends with the British BBQ Society team who came all the way from England to compete
3)Watching our friend Todd Johns from Pork Pullin' Plowboys win the Invitational
4)Watching our friends Bob and Don Denner from Boondoggle BBQ win their first Grand Championship at the American Royal Open
5)Celebrating with Bob and Don and the rest of the Iowa regional friends Sunday night

We heard our name called four times. We placed 10th in Chicken, 5th in Pork and 12th Overall at the Invitational (against 118 Grand Champions). We were 14th Overall at the Open (470+ teams). Additionally we were one of only a handful of teams to place in the top twenty overall at both the Invite and Open. For our first year, we were thrilled with those results.

Unfortunately, we did not get selected to go to the Jack Daniel's World Championship. Instead we took our new camper and headed to Chicagoland for the Libertyville Barn Burner BBQ to finish out our season. We ended up having one of the most successful events of 2009 finishing 1st in Chicken, 2nd in Ribs, 3rd in Pork, and 2nd in Brisket. We won Grand Champion by a margin in excess of 23 points. The long drive home was surprising short as we relished in a fantastic end to the 2009 season.

In the off season we have been busy breaking in our new cookers and getting comfortable using them. We have also been working on getting more consistent with our ribs. We are looking forward to seeing how/if they have improved as we head down to Central Kansas next weekend for the Kansas Winter Q in Great Bend. Hopefully we can pick up right where we left off in 2009!