Near-disaster making ribs. Smoking without a drip pan because I get away with it usually. Had a pretty bad grease fire while I had the lid open spritzing them. Pulled the ribs, took out some wood that had grease on it, let the rest burn off.
The ribs weren’t perfect. The grease and too much early smoke gave them a hint of acridity that bugged me quite a bit, but enough else was right with them that they were salvaged. I think Andy and Vick were the only other people who noticed. Andy ate like a hundred of them, and everybody else seemed to like ’em a lot, so in the end I felt like they were on the right side of terrible.
Similar near-disaster at the park. We light off fireworks in the middle of the ballfield there. People aren’t exactly far away, but these are pretty standard-issue fireworks, nothing artillery-grade. One of the multi-shot rocket things must have been made towards the end of a double shift. It didn’t have enough sand in it. The first load knocked the firework on its side, sending subsequent loads a) into the backstop, b) right at a couple of kids, who scattered and spent the rest of the evening watching from a couple hundred yards away, and c) right at my wife, who got a burn mark in her skirt for her trouble.
We should make a little enclosure for the things next year.