It's not very often you get to combine a guys' weekend with a long-overdue reunion between old friends and home victories by the Sabres and Bills. But that's how it went down Saturday and Sunday, and the very first T-Rev's Stiff Willi Chili tailgate was a blast.
Brady, Brian and I departed southern Maryland at Oh-sober-30 Saturday morning in Brady's company Cirrus and arrived around noon in Buffalo, where we were picked up by my buddy Daren and subsequently commenced ingestion of Guinness and Labatt. Daren is an old friend from high school and college, so it was great to catch up as he and his wife Bridget put us up for the weekend in their Orchard Park home.
After we polished off a twelver, the four of us headed to Tops to pick up all the ingredients I needed for six gallons of chili. We all prepped everything as fast as we could once we got back to Daren's -- stopping intermittently, of course, for repeated swigs of beer -- and got everything in the pot by about 3:30. The chili should simmer for at least two hours before you cut the heat, so by 5:30 it was good enough to pull off the stove and cool down in Daren's "refrigerator/Buffalo garage in November" while we got ready to head out for the Sabres game that night.
It's at this point where any respectable guy stops talking publicly about the night out, but I will say that we went to Laughlin's pub before the game and again afterward. And then a couple more places. Sadly, however, none was a strip club thanks to the fact that wonderful U.S. law now prevents you from getting back from Niagara Falls (Canada, of course) without a friggin' passport. I swear the Dept. of Homeland Security must be run by a bunch of wives.
We were home in time to get to sleep by 2 a.m., and I have to say I was pretty impressed that we all made it up by 8:00 so we could get to The Ralph by 9:00. My friends Rico and Melissa were already at the stadium by the time we arrived, but then, no one's really ever questioned their dedication to partying. Again, huge thanks to them for rallying a bunch of our old college buddies for the tailgate.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without Peter Conklin and his friends Scott and Bart from Conklin's Bar 'n' Grill, who were all featured on the Food Network's Tailgate Warriors with Guy Fieri not too long ago. You seriously have never tailgated until you've tailgated with these guys! In addition to my chili, they served an incrediby tasty menu including grilled chicken and sausages with banana peppers, seemingly unlimited drinks, and, of course, all the "Illegal Motion" shooters you could handle. And they give it all away for free; all they ask is that you contribute a modest donation. Here's a shot of the "Illegal Motion" bus, an old Wonder Bread truck that CBnG has converted into its now-famous Billsmobile.
If you look closely, you'll notice the "Tailgate Warriors" logo that Fieri's guys spray-painted on the bus.
By the way, I couldn't believe how great the weather was on Sunday. It must've been almost 50 degrees. In Buffalo. At the end of November. That's basically like spring break. As you can see from the picture below, the sun was shining and the beers were flowing. The chili was hot by 9:30 as anticipated, and it was on. For the next few hours I handed it out to dozens of tailgaters, and from what I was told it was a pretty big hit. I sold a couple cases of spice mix and maybe a dozen shirts, but overall a pretty good sales day in a depressed economy before a football game where people would need to save most of their money for the $8 beers inside.
Brady, Brian, Bridget, Daren, and Rico
Around 11:00, my buddies Kevin and his brother-in-law Mark stopped by to party with us. Kevin runs one of my favorite websites, BfloBlog.com, and, amazingly, it's been almost three years since I first met him in person after a year of merely corresponding with him through his blog. Funny thing is, even though I knew Kevin and Mark were planning to throw a few back with us, there was still that instantaneous moment of surprise you get when you haven't seen someone in a long time. Good times indeed.
This was taken right before the inevitable onslaught of tailgaters.
As a new, small company -- I'm so small I'm not sure I even qualify as a "small business" yet -- it probably doesn't need to be mentioned that at this point there's no way I can finance trips like this using company revenues alone (to date the majority of which are the result of modest spice mix sales). Like most people who take a chance at turning a hobby into a full-time venture, almost all the costs associated with advertising and these types of marketing events are subsidized personally by my wife and me (i.e. by "the day jobs"). So, really, I should probably take a little bit of space here to thank her too -- she was fully supportive a few weeks ago when I asked if I could go off and have fun with all our friends while she stayed at home to take care of our 2-year-old.
My wife aside, I would be remiss if I didn't single out several people who have played pivotal roles in whatever success I've had since I launched this company only three months ago. There are those who've been my sous chefs at the DC and WV cookoffs -- Mike, Brian, Brady, Rico, and my brother Erik -- and about 20 others who trekked all the way to West Virginia in October to support me at the World's Championship Chili Cookoff. In particular, Brady has basically volunteered to be my private pilot whenever he's available for these types of gigs. That's friendship you couldn't buy even if you were made of money.
Rico and Melissa took it upon themselves to put out a Facebook invite for Sunday's tailgate; Brian's wife let him come with me even though she's pregnant (I don't think that's a secret anymore, right Amanda?); likewise Erin, who's not pregnant yet but nevertheless gave up a seat on the Cirrus for my box of T-shirts, and so Brady could hang out with the guys by himself; as we speak my brother-in-law is trying to hook me up with the head chef at Watkins Glen in the attempt to get me a vendor's license at a NASCAR race next year; Daren refused to take money for $160 hockey tickets, which made it a heck of a lot easier to pay for gas in the plane; Daren's neighbor Tim gave me a Bills ticket for free chili and a shirt; Kevin, who was the one who alerted me to Peter Conklin and his crew, gave me a nice plug yesterday on his blog. And this is just off the top of my head. Obviously, there's no guarantee that things will ultimately work out even with all this help -- and hey, it's not like we're not having fun in the process even if it doesn't -- but there's no chance it would without it. So I just needed to take a few minutes and let everyone know how much it's appreciated.
One of the coolest things about the tailgate was that I met a lady out of Toronto who's starting a "tailgate tours" company and wants to hire me to work tailgates with her. That's right, hire. So while I may have spent five times more money to make this trip than I actually collected in sales at the tailgate, I'm hoping all the networking pays off in the long run.
Finally, we woke up Monday morning to find that the Buffalo News put a nice photo from the tailgate in the paper. Unfortunately, the editors wrote that I was the one featured on the Food Network but, much as I wish that were true, it obviously was my hosts who pulled that one off.
The photo appeared only in the print edition, so I took a snapshot of it last night so I could reprint a nice digital copy. For some reason, however, Typepad isn't letting me insert the image so I had to take a lesser quality version with my phone's camera.
Serving chili to Rico as Brian looks on in the background.
As usual, I'll post more pics as I get them.