Paul Ryburn’s Journal

It was a Friday night in July 2006. The Romanians were in town working for the summer and living in an apartment at Front and Union. Early in the evening I met one of girls, who later came to be nicknamed The Romanian Sensation, at Sleep Out Louie’s for a drink before she left for work.

As [...]

Ten of the best memories of BBQ Fest this year, in no particular order:

- Dancing with Audrey in the Ques brothers booth

- The antelope that Nikki’s parents brought from Montana. I never knew antelope tasted so good.

- Suzy. Tube top. ‘Nuff said.

- Watching the tribute video of Big Dave made by Willy. Not Willie, our cook, [...]

COLD was the theme of BBQ Fest yesterday. It never got much above 60 and was windy most of the day. I wore my PBR hoodie and shorts. It was still a good day, but for tube top viewing it was rather bad.

Nikki is cold

Lauren is cold

Sausages of all shapes and sizes

Artichokes, which are [...]

Left upper pocket: Assorted change. Breath strips. Digital camera. iPhone.

Right upper pocket: Keys, pens. On Friends & Family night, admission ticket.

Left lower pocket: Guest wristbands to the Ques Brothers booth.

Right lower pocket: iPhone charger. Spare batteries (2) for the camera.

Left back pocket: Wallet.

Right back pocket: Note pad. Not really necessary since I use Evernote on my [...]

Scary moment this morning… plugged the camera into the computer and it found 0 pics. I rebooted the camera and the pics were there. Whew. Yesterday was a good day, would’ve hated to lose these.

After a few warm-up beers at the Saucer, we went to the bus stop at Second and Beale, where the [...]

I didn’t have to ride the shuttle to BBQ Fest either way yesterday. Caught a ride out there with Otto and our sponsors WordPress; rode back with Lauren and friends. I heard the shuttle ran very well though. It’s the little casino mini-buses. Here are some pics from yesterday.

This was B.S. With people riding [...]

Harrah’s is providing the shuttles that will take people to and from BBQ Fest at the fairgrounds. Shuttles will run every 15 minutes, making five stops on Second Street between Exchange and Beale, and then heading directly to the festival.

You may wonder, what is Harrah’s getting out of it? Yeah, the casinos are closed so their [...]

Yesterday a few of us were hanging out at the Saucer as usual on Tuesday. We thought about heading north to trivia at Ferraro’s, but I pointed out, “I want to hang out with the out-of-town members of the BBQ team. They have arrived in town, and they don’t know to go to Ferraro’s.” We texted [...]

Today I volunteered to go over and help the BBQ team load tables and chairs. The Center for Southern Folklore was nice enough to let us borrow tables and chairs for the booth.

We had a heck of a time getting the trailer backed into Gayoso Alley.

After the loading was done, I went [...]

Tomorrow is a big day. It’s load-in for the BBQ teams. Now, in past years I’ve had a very important and unique role on the team. “Paul, we need one team member to stay behind at the Saucer, and handle anything that comes up,” the team captains told me. Here’s a recap of what I did [...]