We Have A Cookout!
Miss Terry has wanted to use her Orion smoker for months now, but we just never seemed to have the time. That all ended yesterday when she smoked up three huge racks of ribs for a cookout with Rocky and Berni Frees.
We got the smoker at Lowes about a year ago, but this was only the second time we used it. We need to do that more often!
Unlike conventional smokers, with this one the charcoal goes into a ring around the outside and into a small holder on the top, while the meat is inside, along with, in this case, some apple juice and some mesquite wood chips for extra flavor. The smoker works on a convection effect.
It took about two hours from the time she lit the fire until Terry 
took the ribs out of the smoker, and they were just perfect! So tender they fell off the bone and mouth watering delicious. Don’t they look yummy?
And you can tell by the satisfied looks on everybody’s faces that they sure enjoyed their meal. 
Besides the ribs, Terry also smoked up a pork loin, made beans, her special pico de gallo sauce, and there were some other goodies that nobody had room for. We love coming here to Muskegon to visit with Rocky and Berni, but every time we do, I gain five or ten pounds! Now how in the world does that happen?
We had planned to go kayaking on the Muskegon River after dinner, but we were all so stuffed that we were afraid we’d exceed the boats’ weight ratings, so instead we went back to their house for yet another game of Mexican Train. This was a special game, because we probably won’t have a chance to play with Rocky and Berni again for at least a year, and Berni marked the occasion by winning by a tremendous margin. I’m not sure the rest of us were even in the game by the fourth or fifth round.
On another subject, I guess some RV dealers haven’t been reading the newspaper, or else they are living in La La Land, because they just don’t seem to know that the market has changed and they can no longer play by the same old rules. Our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel called to give us a lead on a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage for sale at an RV dealer in Ohio.
This is our dream rig, although this particular unit was only a 38 footer and we really want a 40 foot model, and it only had a 300 horsepower diesel engine, and we have decided that we really need at least 330 horsepower with the size of the van we tow. Plus, it was about $5,000 higher than two different Ultimate Advantages we had looked at before, that were a year or two newer. But you never know, so I called anyway to see if it might be something we could live with.
The first thing out of the salesman’s mouth once I told him which rig I was interested in was “Are you going to buy today?” I told him no, since I was about 400 miles away, but that if the unit sounded like it might be able to fit our needs, we’d be interested in taking a look at it.
“Well, unless you’re prepared to give me a deposit by credit card, there’s no use wasting my time or yours,” he told me. “The used RV market has gone crazy in the last year or so and we can’t keep them on the lot. Every unit we have moves in 24 to 48 hours.”
I told him that I never gave my credit card out over the telephone, and that if the unit sounded good, we were a short day’s drive away. Then I asked a couple of questions about it’s equipment, and again he told me that he had too many customers waiting in line to buy it to waste time with someone who was not prepared to make a commitment right then.
I happen to know that this particular motorhome has sat on the same lot for over a year. I also don’t like clowns who think I just fell off the turnip truck, so I ended the call, and possibly a chance for him to sell an RV. Even if that particular coach did not meet our needs, they may well have had something else we’d have fallen in love with. I guess we’ll never know.
Thought For The Day – Even people who believe everything is predestined look before they cross the street.
