Weekends are a funny thing. In the two and half days between finishing your Friday shift and dragging yourself into work on Monday, you can experience the highest of highs and lowest of lows.
This was definitely the case for me, and I’ll break it down with a comparison of my Saturday versus my Sunday.
Saturday
I woke up around 10 a.m., which at the ripe old age of 27 counts as sleeping in for a long time. I forced myself out of bed to go play video games, catch up on around four months worth of comic books and keep my stomach empty for my barbecue judging duties later.
Thanks to my unnatural passion/obsession with the art of barbecuing, I was selected to be one of three judges for Cadillac Jack’s in Baxter’s annual “Smokin’ Out Back BBQ Cook-Off.”
Eating free food and catching up on my nerdy spare time habits, this was indeed going to be a rough day.
I arrived in Baxter around 4:15 p.m., and spent the next four hours sampling 36 different dishes, listening to live music from the Electric Hillbillies — who are just as funny as they’re musically talented — and socializing in a part of the county I don’t frequent as often as I like.
The meatiest portion of those four hours (pun intended) was, of course, the judging. There were five categories, pork, ribs, brisket, chicken and the wild card. Myself and fellow judges John and Les had the tough job of eating snippets from each of the seven teams submissions.
Secluded in the back room of Cadillac Jack’s, my fellow judges and I were subjected to eating heaping portions of freshly smoked meats every 30 minutes or so beginning at 5 p.m.
Worst job ever!
I have to say that the wild card may have been my favorite round. We had everything from bacon wrapped rib meat to grilled peaches covered in raspberry sauce. Oh, and did I mention that we got to take the leftovers home?
To quote a friend of mine, “Ugh, he has the best life.”
After judging, I went around and met with some of the teams, and to check out their equipment and give them praise on the creativity they displayed: It should be noted all judging was done anonymously and we couldn’t even go to the grilling area beforehand.
Once the results were announced, I went home and fell asleep with a full belly on the couch while watching TV.
Sunday
I set my alarm for 10 a.m. in hopes of at least cranking out one story before the NFL pre-game shows began at 11 a.m. Unfortunately, my overdose of barbecue from the day before caused me to hit snooze more than once and I didn’t get up until 10:45 a.m.
As I channel flipped between Fox and CBS, I was more than pleased when former Chiefs’ great Tony Gonzalez picked the Chiefs to win against that silly team from Tennessee during the early afternoon game.
Like Tony G., I was just as confident in our victory and my late breakfast of leftover barbecue made me feel like I was tailgating at Arrowhead. Honestly, that was about the peak of my euphoria because once the actual game started — we looked bad.
Some excerpts from my Twitter account can summarize my initial positive reactions in the first quarter down to my lost hope for the season by the third quarter:
“First SACK OF DA SEASON!!! WOOOH #CHIEFS;”
“Alex Smith is the king of the qb slide! #CHIEFS;”
“Although that kick was good, I’m not sold on this new kicker #CHIEFS;”
“(We) gave Smith $63 mill not to throw it apparently;”
“Grrrrr … this rookie kicker!!! #CHIEFS #bringbacksuccop;”
“Time to start drinking ugh! #CHIEFS.”
From this point on, I don’t think I tweeted a single positive thing about the Chiefs and my patented #godhatesthechiefs hashtag made multiple appearances.
In the midst of watching my team play terribly, the kicker we cut hit four field goals on us, our defensive leader and second all-time leader in tackles, Derrick Johnson, tore his Achilles tendon, our free agency depleted offensive line looked putrid and the best running back in football, Jamaal Charles, seemed pedestrian.
I’m one of those sports fans that lives or dies with his team, so Sunday’s underwhelming performance pretty much wrecked my weekend.
On the bright side, at least I still have a fridge full of barbecue, and ribs go great with manly tears.
Contact Senior Staff Writer Ty Rushing at (641) 792-3121 Ext. 6532 or trushing@newtondailynews.com