The Jack - Part One - Lynchburg

We have so many photos that we felt it might be best to post them in several "slide shows". Hopefully they will be a little more meaningful this way...

Lynchburg, TN, sits in a sleepy little "hollow" deep in the backwoods of south central Tennessee, approximately 90 miles south of Nashville. It is surrounded on all sides by tall rolling hills that are the home of stately farms/ranches with emerald pastures and white fences - and when the hills are not the site of a home, they are so densely covered with magnificent trees and vines that one cannot see beyond a few feet into the forests. It is not hard to imagine this area as being an excellent location to hide an illegal " moonshine still" from the federal "reveneurs" years ago...

From my observation, time has not disturbed Lynchburg very much over the years. The courthouse is still the center of the town and it's commerce (mostly tourist-oriented these days) - and most of the homes we saw near the competition site were built back in the 1800's. The "faces" may have changed over the years in Lynchburg - but very little else.

In the following photos, you will see signs we encountered as we entered Lynchburg, the old courthouse, many of the stores "on the square", photos of the Jack Daniel's Visitor center (which, believe it or not, we never found enough time to visit!!), and a photo of Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House (which is now a restaurant, serving some of the finest family-style Southern cooking we have ever eaten!! This is a "must-do" if you ever visit Lynchburg - and make certain to book your reservations well in advance!)

Hoochie On the Tube!!

Well, we got back home at 1 AM early this morning (Tuesday) from "The Jack"... We have a ton of "stuff" to share, but it is going to take me another day to get it all sorted... So hang tight... For those of you who just want the "down & dirty", we ended up finishing more or less "in the middle of the pack"... We will go into more detail regarding how these events are scored, photos of what we turned in, etc... Overall, we were very pleased with what we turned in to be judged... In our opinion, it was perhaps our very best cook this season... We only wish that 1-2 of the 6 judges that tasted our meats had been a little more impressed (4-5 out of the 6 certainly were!!)

In the meanwhile, this segment was filmed right before we left for the Jack, and was recently featured on the local Park City television station (PCTV)...

We're Here!!!....

Well, Team Hoochie-Que is finally here in Tennessee - and wow, was that ever a LONG drive!!... I pulled out of Park City on Sunday morning at around 10 AM (much later than I had hoped/planned)... Had to stop just outside of Evanston, WY, for about an hour to rearrange the load in my trailer (too much weight at the back end, causing the trailer to "fishtail" around)... Stopped for the night in Cheyenne... Left early the next mroning, and spent a LOT of the day traveling though Nebraska, and stopped for the night east of Kansas City... 15 hours of driving that day, so I was pooped that night!... I pulled out the 3rd morning, traveled through 4 states that day (MO, IL, KY, TN), and arrived in Manchester, TN around 6 PM that evening.... This portion of the drive was my favorite by far... The countryside from Southern Illinois through western Kentucky into Tennessee was simply beautiful... I crossed the Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers that day, and for an ol' West Texas boy whose closest early childhood experience to a "river" was an irrigation ditch - well, these rivers were breathtaking...

Manchester is the closest town to Lynchburg that has any hotels of any sort to stay in, and is about 45 minutes away... I got up not quite as early yesterday, and made the drive into Lynchburg... The short trip was simply beautiful, and right out of a painting... The entire area is lush with trees and vines and plants of all sorts, and the colors are just beginning to turn into brilliant reds and golds... Ol' Jack sure knew where to set-up his first still - because Lynchburg is definitely WAY BACK in the woods!!

I got my trailer to the site at the Jack (only 3-4 other teams were there - mostly from distant locations such as Alaska and British Columbia), so I had plenty ot space and time to get my trailer into it's location (I am horrible at backing a trailer!!)... After setting the trailer, I did a little "looking around" in Lynchburg... Which can easily be done by foot, and was really nice... The weather was perfect, and the little town is already bustling in preparation of the crowds that will descend upon it in just a couple of days...

I drove back into Nashville later yesterday afternoon to pick up the rest of the "team"... It certainly was great to see my wife, Venssa, and the kids!!! It is funny how after 3 days of basically no one to talk to other than yourself how thrilled one is to be back around family again - even with all the little fights and squabbles that come along with it all!! It was after dark when they arrived, so they were unable to see an awful lot last night... We stayed here in Nashville last night, and are going to try to make a quick tour of the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Museum today before heading back down to Lynchburg this afternoon... This is a beautiful, vibrant city from what I have seen so, and we will undoubtedly not even come close to seeing everything here that we would have liked to... Oh well - guess I will have to try hard to come back to the Jack another year!!

More to follow - and yes, LOTS of photos to share in the next few days...

(And BTW - I have not given "birth" as yet to "Jack" or "Jackie"... At least not to my knowledge... I have not been hurting, but haven't seen anything pass as yet, either... Am drinking tons of water and taking my Flomax which my doctor gave me last time I was passing a stone, and it helped a lot... Am hoping I don't go into "labor" over the weekend!!!)

Kind of pretty, huh? To the untrained eye, one might think you were looking at some sort of coral... Or perhaps some sort of geological wonder...

Well, it is a "wonder" all right... But more along the lines of, "I wonder why the h*$#! this had to happen to me right now!.."

What you are looking at, dear friends, is a kidney stone. For the past 15 years or so - and about 3-4 years apart - I have had the "pleasure" of giving birth to one of these little babies... The "labor" associated with one of these generally begins in the middle of the night, and can last 2-4 days... And as is the case with the birth of any baby, there is nausea and phenomenal discomfort associated with the process... However, unlike the birth of a human baby - where doctors can administer an epidural or other wonderful drugs to help a woman with her labor pains - modern medicine offers very little to date to help a poor soul deal with the pain associated with birthing a kidney stone... Conventional pain meds such as ibuprofen (Advil) or Tylenol - or even narcotics such as codeine - won't even touch this "demon child"... And in talking with a few unfortunate women over the years who have given birth to both types of "babies" (fortunately for the female gender, kidney stones are far more frequently a male kind of thing) - well, the overwhelming consensus was that when it comes to pain, they would choose giving birth to a child any day of the week over having a kidney stone...

Guess who sat bolt upright about 1 AM this morning, with that "familiar" nausea followed by an intense pain that begins in the lower back and then translates down into the lower abdominal region??? Right or left side - you take your pick - as you have a kidney in both locations... For the record, this one happens to be a "righty"...

As I write this, I am in-between the "waves of pain" that come and go every few hours as the stone navigates it's way down from the kidney, through this tiny little tube call the ureter, and eventually into the bladder... There, the stone sometimes likes to "roll around" like a marble for a period of time (my last kidney stone hung around in my bladder for over a week), and then begins the 2nd half of the "trip" through the urethra and out of the body at some point in time...

By the way... Did I mention that anatomically the male urethra is much longer then a woman's? And that this rather pretty "geologic formation" is more like a "sticker burr"? Yeee haw....

Historically, the first 24-48 hours of this whole process has generally kept me in bed on a heating pad and/or in bath water that is as hot as I can stand it, drinking as much water as I can stand, all in a rather futile effort to get some relief from the waves of pain and pass this spiked bowling ball out of my body as quickly as possible... And there within lies a little "problem" - I am due to pull out first thing on Sunday morning to head to Lynchburg... And I have a TON of stuff still to do in the next 2 days!!! This"beautiful" little object in the photo is suddenly REALLY complicating our trip to compete in the Jack... I have to be on the road by Sunday (it is a 25-26 hour drive) in order to meet the rest of the family when they fly into Nashville on Wednesday... There is a possibility it could cause me to have to miss the Jack all together...

Here comes another wave of pain, so I am closing this for now... So stay tuned, as this could get real interesting...

In The News...

Hoochie-Que is "in the news" here locally. We made the Salt Lake Tribune - their online blog yesterday, and the actual newspaper today. They made a couple of small mistakes, though... They erroneously stated that Venssa is a "medical doctor" (nope - not a "real" doctor - "just" a dentist! ) - and they commented that we received our invitation to the Jack via a "random drawing". Some teams indeed get to the Jack that way - but nope, we won our invitation outright this year! No having to go through any drawing for us! But hey - we were still very thrilled that we received the coverage! Here is a link to the article that appeared in the blog and the newspaper: Salt Lake Tribune blog

The local Park City television station and good friend/patient Ori Hoffer are coming by on Thursday to do a special interest segment on us while we are doing one last practice cook in preparation for the competition. After that cook, it will then just be a matter of getting things cleaned and packed up, our lists double checked, and then getting ready to hit the road on Sunday for the 26+ hour drive.

It just really "hit me" this afternoon that this "dream" is truly about to take place in our lives! Since receiving our invitation in early September, the whole situation has been a little "surreal" in all honesty... And in my mind until today, it has always been "still a few weeks off"... But the hour is now near at hand!! I feel a little "edgy" - but not nervous... I figure "edgy" is good...

The weather forecast for Lynchburg for next weekend is not looking too hot right now... A 60% chance of showers is in the forecast - and it looks like I may have quite a bit of rain as I travel to get there... Uggh... Oh, well... My smoker is heavily insulated, so I won't have to worry about temperature fluctuations like some teams may run into... Here's just hoping for a decent site location there in Lynchburg on relatively flat and/or well-draining ground!! Better remember to add rain boots to my packing list, too!

2 Weeks & Counting...

Well, it is getting to be "crunch time", as "The Jack" takes center stage two weeks from today (Oct. 23-24). In light of all that has been going on in our lives in the past couple of weeks, I feel like I am a little "behind" in terms of my practice and preparation at this point in time - but what else is new?! In my 4 years of competing, I never have felt that I have walked into a competition as fully prepared as I would have liked. In fact, more often than not I am the guy pulling into a competition at "dark-thirty" and scrambling to get things set-up while the other teams are already well into their cookin', story-tellin', and occasional whiskey-drinkin'! I have done a fair amount of cooking for some groups over the past few weeks, so it is not like my pit/"skills" have been idle... And I will be doing a full "test run" tonight, and then another later this next week - so we should be in good shape before heading to Lynchburg.

Besides - as I mentioned a couple of posts back, I know I am already a "Grand Champion". So while I normally might have been getting most "anxious" right about now, I am instead feeling rather "at peace" with things. Not a "laissez-faire" state of mind - just one at peace...

Update on Reid...

WOW!!!
Our family cannot even begin to express our thanks and gratitude for the outpouring of prayers, emails, phone calls, and posts to this blog that we have received since our son, Reid, sustained a head & neck injury at a youth football league game nearly 2 weeks ago. Friends, both "new" and "old", have reached out to us from literally all over the world. What a testimony it is to God's love and kindness that is alive and well in the hearts of so many people out there...


We are most happy to report that Reid is doing very well!! He was pretty darn sore in his head/neck region at first, but that is slowly and surely disappearing. There has not been any further paralysis or numbness in his arms or legs, either. We went back to the doctor a little over a week ago, and everything checked out "picture perfect".

Yes, he has returned to football practice - but, by in large, he is still in "non-contact" mode. Coaches Mike / Bob / Jesse /Spence are all being very careful to make certain he heals fully before allowing him to resume full contact again. That any and all of you reading this that have children in organized sports could have a group of coaches as great and as wonderful as these guys have been!

Again, we can never thank enough the hundreds of you who have kept our son in your thoughts and prayers. May God bless each of you!...