Thanks where thanks are due!

Gentlemen, I'm outta here. I obviously won't be around any computer until Sunday so as I'm headed out of the office door to continue dragging my load to the Royal, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of you for your advice, suggestions, support and encouragement while I was preparing for my first ever contest. It means a lot to have you folks here for that! Whatever success we have I can attribute to you guys! :wink:

I've learned a lot and one of those things is that I don't think I'll do the Royal next year (unless of course I can't turn down an invite to the Invitational! :-D:lol: :lol: :lol: ). This is SUCH a huge mess and I don't like having to drag along everything I've had to do for this big event. I'm really looking forward to DeSoto in two weeks so I can experience a less hectic, crowded contest with 30 teams and no big cook on Friday night! Next year, I'm looking forward to the event Greg is working on at Kankakee instead!

Take care and have a great weekend! Good luck to anyone else competing at other places. Rod, Wayne, Jim and Ray, I'll look you all up!

Gotta go get a HUGE education! Later...

I don't know if you can call it remorse. More like "God, this is a lot of crap to pull across the metro area and I gotta clean it all up when I get home" kinda feeling.

I will probably cook this event again with better locations and so forth. I told a buddy of mine that he couldn't name ONE THING you need for a contest that I don't have. I was wrong... CHAP STICK!!! My farking lips are toast!!! Oh yeah, and onion powder... and my rib rub recipe. I ran out and although I had most all of the ingredients, I couldn't recall the amounts!

I'm really looking forward to DeSoto with a LOT lighter load and eating WAYNE's food Friday night! LOL!

Yep... definitely!