The American Royal

Kansas City, Mo

October 4-7, 2007

 “THE WORLD SERIES OF BBQ”

     I love going to this contest!  “It’s huge!”  This contest brings 500 BBQ teams at one event.  This is amazing.  This must be how the munchkins felt when they all met to film The Wizard Of Oz.  Just when you feel odd because you think you’re different and there can’t be many like you, you find that there a bunch of people just like yourself.  When you share this passion of BBQ you know it’s going to be crazy.  Everywhere you look, people like you are nuts about BBQ and the whole focus of the weekend is-BBQ!  We didn’t go to the Royal last year and it bugged me all year.  We will always try to make this contest from here on out. 

     Sunday evening we got home from Clovisfest still basking in the biggest win of out BBQ lives as far as I’m concerned.  We unloaded and cleaned, then reloaded & headed to the Royal.  We have been going nonstop for the last two months BBQing all over the place.  The truth is, I love every minute of it and wouldn’t want it any other way.  We made it safely to Kansas City, MO and pulled in to The American Royal Complex on Thursday morning.  We had space #754, B-lot & it was a great location.

     The Royal changed the schedule a bit and we ended up cooking and turning in on Saturday (The Invitation) and Sunday (The Open).  Friday night was the welcoming party & concert instead of the normal Thursday night.  I think this format hurt them as Friday night was packed with parties all over the dark side and B lot.  But Saturday night was empty except for a small party right behind us.  Normally with would have been great, but the bass from the band was so loud, my bones hurt.  Our stuff was vibrating and the band wasn’t even good.  We just vacated until the party ended, Thank God!  My sister, Diana, joined us here and this makes it special for us.  I love when family gets involved.

     Don Bean, from Savemart, and his wife Stacey came to the Royal. Bob, a new sponsor from Ace Hardware, and his wife also joined us.  Bob is a BBQ enthusiast so he was in heaven buying up every type of sauce he could get his hands on.  A friend, & old business associate, Mark Frances showed up as he lives in Kansas City now. 

It was good to see him & talk over old times and all the changes we have both made in our lives.  Dan Cannon, from BBQ by Dan, flew in to help us with side dishes.  He wanted to come and have something to do so he did beans and sausage for us.  I always enjoy having Dan around, as he is the most passionate BBQer of all time.  We love having discussions with him.

     As for the contest, we did the 4 meats and we liked everything we did (the curse).  So, we ended up scoring 34^th overall in the invitational (out of about 90 teams).  We did get a call for ribs in 10^th place, same as the last time we were here in 2005.  In the side dish category, we got a call for 5^th place in vegetables for our creamed corn.  We finished 31^st overall for the side dish competition.   In the open portion we scored 34^th again out of about 500 teams.   We really did pretty well, but I thought this was our year to do better so I was a little disappointed that we did not finish at or near the top. 

     Saturday night after the band, we sat around with Ella’s Barbecue, Dan Cannon, Jay of Denver Cajun BBQ Krewe, Motley Que Crew, and Habitual Smokers and imbibed well into the night (early morning) talking BBQ and everything else.  I love nights like this!

     Early, early in the morning the wind kicked up for about 2 minutes and things were flying all around the lot.  We had a 10 x 20 canopy land in our space from somewhere?  By then, most people had left the Royal.  As we picked up our stuff and got packed, here came the rain.  We headed to Okalahoma Joe’s for lunch with Dan Cannon before we started out drive back to California.  I sure am fortunate to be having all this fun BBQing!

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