It’s going to be a hot one in Grand Rapids this weekend!  But we’re on our way this afternoon to the Taste of Grand Rapids.  I hear rumors of 71 teams competing, which surprises me since the prize money is pretty low, there’s no running water or electricity.

The weather is going to be in the low 90s with a healthy (or unhealthy, I guess) amount of humidity thrown in.  We have some neck thingies that are supposed to help out by cooling down the blood in our necks or some such thing; we’ll see if they work or not!

I feel like we’ve kind of grown up this time.  We used a landscape trailer to load our old Chargrillers and small vertical smokers before; this time, we have the Smokehouse, which is PLENTY big enough for everything we need.  We also have a box trailer that’s big enough to hold all our gear, and it’s covered.

I want to thank Mark, my teammate, for this week.  I was on vacation last week, and he really went all out to make sure everything was ready.  I don’t thank him enough, and this wouldn’t be happening without his efforts.  On top of that, the box trailer is borrowed from another business he has, so we wouldn’t have that without him, either.

So this competition, we get to look a little more organized, whether we are or not.  We’re taking a grill with us for higher heat stuff, but planning on putting the smokehouse to a real test this weekend.  I’m pretty conifident that it’s up to the challenge.

As with any endeavor that uses equipment, be it golf or smoking, you can try to blame the equipment when you’re starting out.  With golf, if only you had a better putter or driver; with smoking, if only you had a better smoker.  The Chargrillers we’d been using are great smokers for the price, but not really up to a lot of moving around, and they leak smoke like mad.  Now, we have a smoker that won’t be bothered much by the weather the way Chargrillers can be.  We have no excuses… it’s all our cooking at this point!

So we leave after work today, and drive 5 hours or so to Grand Rapids.  I’m hoping we get there before midnight so we can get some sleep.  Whatever happens, we are going to have a great time!