2012 - Too Ashamed to Name
goes to
The American Royal and The JACK!

What a thrill. We won 3 California State Grand Championships in 2011 / 2012 that qualify for the American Royal Invitational BBQ Competition, and that's 3 chances to win the California draw for the Jack Daniels too.

We already had our American Royal plans slated - we'll haul the motorhome and the cooker out to Kansas City for the worlds largest bbq competition in the world - Open and the Invitational.

The day of the Jack Daniels draw was a long one - no results were leaked out until everything was verified. I was already checked out from work because we were leaving that day for Las Vegas to celebrate my 50th birthday. Finally about 5:00 pm PST results were posted - low and behold, there was our team name in the listings!

It was literally like we had already hit the jackpot and we hadn't even left for Las Vegas yet!

Well, the exhilaration of that weekend ended soon enough, and it was time to start the extensive logistics and planning for competing in the two most important competitions of our careers, each over 1000 miles from home and only 3 weeks apart.

The American Royal would take us one week off work to drive the motorhome and our BBQ trailer to get to Kansas in plenty of leisure time to trim meats in a hotel room just outside KC, and just a few miles from Kemper Arena - the grounds of the American Royal!

Our results for the American Royal 2012 

That's only half the trip! Since the Kansas City / American Royal is only about a 12 hour drive and two weeks before the Jack Daniels, it only makes sense to put the motorhome and bbq trailer in storage for a few weeks while we fly home to resume normal live for a couple weeks before The Jack!

Come time to fly back to KC, there were again a ton of logistics to figure out - how to get our meats and garnish on the plane, and would the motorhome start when we got there - there was a lot of things that could go wrong and various repairs that needed to take place.

It turned out that every single thing went according to plans and nothing went wrong - we were on our way to Lynchburg Tn to compete in the friggin Jack Daniels - the absolute most prestigious BBQ competition in the world.

Our results from the Jack Daniels 2012

It was an amazing 2012 season for our BBQ team, and we're just dying to hit the local road again in 2013 to show off what we learned - and to show of some of the bitchin swag we got from The Jack!