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#9 The American Royal Invitational, Kansas City, Missouri - October 2004
62nd place overall / 89 teams
Ahhh!! This parking lot is hard!!! Okay, no complaining....this is the American Royal! We worked so hard to get here, and here we are with our tents in a sea of motorhomes competing against teams who have cooked in well over 100 contests. It is a brutal weekend, as there are two full cookoffs back to back. While we are preparing our entries for the first day of judging, we are also preparing our meat to cook for the next day....the "Open".
Overall we achieved our goals and turned in some of what we thought was top notch barbecue. Never cooking in the KC area before, we had very little idea what the judges were looking for, and we definitely had some tough competition. But we got hammered pretty good on just about everything. Chin up! Still have the Open to cook!
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Chicken
69th
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Ribs
51st
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Pork
73rd
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Brisket
39th
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#10 The American Royal Open, Kansas City, Missouri - October 2004
18th place overall / about 450 teams
Wow. As tired as we were the second night it was amazing we got eveything done right on schedule. Mike and Bryan ran the night shift while the rest of the team spent the night in the hotel. A bitter cold October blast hit the area, and the Canadians struggled to stay warm, but kept the cookers going steady all night long! Refreshed in the morning, Chris, Kenny and John got to work and Mike and Bryan came back after a nap, and we turned in some fantastic barbecue. We didn't hear until my wife called us on the way home (right as our trailer bearing burned up) that the Dizzy Pig team had come in 18th overall out of a field of over 450 teams. Yeeehaaaaa!! Being stuck in St. Louis was a little easier to handle with the good news. The Royal was a helluva scene, and we had the time of our lives.
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Chicken
40th
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Ribs
97th
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Pork
16th
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Brisket
165th
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The American Royal
October 2004 proved to be a great month for the Dizzy Pig BBQ Team as they were able to take part in the two premier competitions on the KCBS barbecue schedule. Thanks to their Grand Championship win at the 'Smokin' on the Chesapeake' event in June '04, the team was invited to take part in the largest bbq event on the circuit, the American Royal, held on the grounds of Kemper Arena in Kansas City, MO on the first weekend of October. Shortly after learning of their invitation to the Royal, their designation as a state champion for Maryland landed them a coveted invite to the Jack Daniel's World Invitational BBQ Championships for the end of October.
With the full crew on hand (Kenny, Chris, John, Mike and Bryan), along with a few friends and guests stopping by for support, the team gathered in KC for not one, but two, competitions on that first weekend in October. On the Friday the team was part of the field for the invitational portion of the Royal. Using the methods that had earned them success in the East they found that the tastes of KC judges weren't like they'd experienced closer to home and their scores showed the result. For the 'Open' part of the American Royal, the team switched gears and introduced some 'sweet and smokey' Kansas City style elements to their rubs and sauces. The 'tweaking' of their recipes certainly worked, because when final results were announced, the Dizzy Pig BBQ Team had finished an amazing 18th out of over 400 barbecue teams taking part in the event! The long drive for all involved (which included a broken-axle induced layover for the Virginia/MD contingent), proved worthwhile as they'd shown they could adapt their que to contend among the big boys and girls on the bbq circuit!
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| The look on John's face say it all. "we goin' to da Royal!" |
Almost there. One more state to go across! |
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| Arrive at Rodney's house tired but otherwise healthy. |
Next mornin this is when you know you are getting close to Kemper Arena. |
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| Our site during one of the cloudy spells. |
Bob, Fred and our lineup of Big Green Eggs! |
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| If you decide to compete, ya gotta think about the meat bills! The fellas were happy to see a nice quality. |
Time to get trimming. Some St. Louisizing goin on. They will get the Dizzy Pig rub treatment at about 3am. |
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| There were plenty of ribs to trim. so Ken got to work as well! |
Meanwhile Mike and Bryan were whippin up a good time! What an honor it was to be cooking at "The Royal Invitational" |
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| Some guy had a keg of Guinness ordered, but no site to put it. He asked us if he could put it on our site, and we could drink what we wanted. We drank a lot of Guinness!!! |
Ken, Shotgun, Minion, Woo and Bob enjoy the scene at the Dizzy Pig camp. |
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| Dr. BBQ was interviewed next door. There were lots of cameras around. |
Chris designed a logo for the Pellet Envy team, and it was a lot of fun to unveil it for the first time! |
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| Chris gets the chicken on after rubbing up good with Dizzy Pig Raging River. |
And tends to the nicely colored thighs. |
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| Mike usually handles the ribs and here he fixes to get them on. |
Ribs gettin' purtied up. |
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| Car Wash Mike was a treat to have around camp. He helped a bunch prepping lettuce for boxes, doing odds and ends, and just bein' happy. |
John applies his magical brushstrokes to the pork box. |
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| Brett, John, Shotgun and Bob fixin to go to the award ceremony!! |
all the trophies we never got. Sure was fun to watch though!! |
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| Trailer did not make it back through St. Louis and the bearings burned up. |
Looks like we'll be in St. Louis a while. |
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| So we checked out the scene, and were back on the road Monday afternoon thanks to the kind folks in St. Louis. Mike, the shop, the parts store. Thanks all! |
Back on the road home. What a trip. |
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