Ribfest Day 1 recap

Well, these festivals are still fun, but they're becoming less and less fun when you go alone. I guess when you start having friends you want to do this stuff with, it changes your perspective.

After Come Thirsty in the morning and walking Hogan, I drove 40 minutes south to Naperville, IL, home of the rich yuppies. Unlike last year, there was no extra admission ticket waiting for me at the window this year, I actually had to pay my 10 dollars to get in. I went with an ear of corn to start off. Very sweet flavor. Just the right amount of butter too. The I hit Mojo's for a 3-rib taster. Nice smoky sauce. I give these a solid thumbs up. Then I hit Texas Outlaws, my fave. Instead of ribs, I wanted to do something different. So I went with a pulled pork sandwich. I got a long hoagie bun with a lot of pork and dripping with a rich sauce. Amazing. I got a half slab at Pigfoot, which is one of the higher rated vendors at Ribfest. Not bad, but they could have been better.

But the story here is the sauces at Pigfoot. They have five sauces, the new applewood, sweet, mild, hot, and killer. I was going to do hot. One guy dared people to do killer. He said he couldn't handle the heat and his mouth would have burned if he ate ribs with it. So I gave it a taste. Wasn't too bad. And I said it. Out loud. Then the lady with this guy said words that are haunting me now. "You should smother that all over your ribs!"

Now 10 people are watching this. And I couldn't back out. I squeezed that Killer sauce right onto my ribs. The when they were gone, I added a little hot and sweet so I would still be able to breathe. They were fine, but I'll stick with Texas Outlaws in the future.

As for the shows, Los Lonely Boys were very good. They didn't play too many familiar songs, there were a lot of long instrumental jams. But you should have heard the crowd erupt when Henry Garza played the opening guitar lick of "Heaven." And at the end of the song, thousands pf people sang "How far is heaven?" at least 15 times. And you know what's really cool? I know a lot of people at this event weren't Christians but they were singing a song that is really a prayer, a cry for help with a message of hope.

I'll be returning on Wednesday for Randy Travis and the Marshall Tucker Band.

PS The best wrestler in the world, Bryan Danielson, just sent me a second myspace message. Yes, I marked out!