From mistakes made in Competition #1, we made sure to get our meat well
enough in advance to ensure that I didn’t end up with free range
chicken! We also had ordered and received 2 Kobe (actually Wagyu)
briskets, one of which we were going to try at the competition, along
with 2 regular flats from Sam’s.
Leading up to our second competition, my teammate, Mark, got a new job,
and he found out he was going to be in California for training up until
the morning we had to get to the competition… which meant a bit more
work for me!
We now had 3 Chargrillers to take with us, 2 at my house, 1 at Mark’s,
and the trailer and SUV were Mark’s. So my wife I went to Mark’s
to get the vehicle and trailer, and brought it home empty on Thursday
night. Smokin’ Guns BBQ
is a team out of Missouri that has a couple of great checklists for
teams to use to get ready for a comp; I used a modified version to
ensure we weren’t forgetting anything. I basically needed to load
up the trailer with all my stuff, then we were going over to Mark’s to
load up everything he had with his help when he got home.
Well, first thing that happened was I got an early morning call from
Mark that he had missed his connecting flight; he’d been on a redeye
from LA to Charlotte, NC, and the flight got in too late to get him to
the his flight home.
Well, it’s mid-August, and getting warm… but my wife and I had to
unload the trailer, get Mark’s additions, then repack everything.
It was a pain, but not horrible. Mark’s wife was there, but quite
pregnant at the time, but she was helpful in pointing out where stuff
was.
So we’re finally on the road, going 70 mph down I-75. Something
popped, and I pulled over… One of the tires on the landscape trailer
had blown, and NO SPARE!!! My wife, being very smart, didn’t call
AAA; instead, she called the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Within 10
minutes, Officer Phillips pulls up, and we explain what’s going
on. Instead of calling a tow truck, he lets me put the spare in
the trunk, and my wife takes off with him; he drove her to a tire store
and waited while they changed the tire, brought her back, and even let
me borrow his jack (the SUV’s wasn’t enough) to get the tire back
on. I’ve never had a nicer officer interaction, so I made sure,
as we got back on our way, to call his supervisor and tell him so.
We finally get to Madison, IN, at about 2:50 for a 3:00 pm cooks
meeting. The site organizer showed us our site, right along the
Ohio River… great spot… and we made it to the meeting in
time. Of course, when the called off the teams, they couldn’t
pronounce ‘McOinkum’s', but I forgave them. 
We finally got our
other teammates together at the site, Tony Hunter and his
mother-in-law’s boyfriend from Indianapolis. They were huge
helps… especially since, though Mark had finally gotten home and was
on his way, he’d gone the wrong way around Cincinnati, which took him
an extra 90 minutes or more! He was bone tired already….
So we got to the site, and we got set up…. With God’s help! Now we’re competing again….
