Duke vs. Elon – September 4

(I have a bunch of posts that I have been tardy in getting published. What do they say about too busy living life to write about it? Anyways, weekends during the entire month of September were spent tailgating, drinking, and enjoying college football. In other words, a pretty freaking awesome month!)

There was a death in the family in August. My tried-and-true Thermos 4656110 Grill-2-Go Gas Grill bit the dust after 8 years of faithful service. The Grill-2-Go was a fine grill, but had been showing its' age in recent years.

It started with the ignition failing, requiring manual lighting. No big deal on that one. Then, the grease receptacle started melting away at the inlet where the grease flowed from the grilling surface. As a result, the hot grease would periodically trickle down onto the plastic legs. This made cleanup a pain and started tearing away at a joint connecting the supporting leg with the rest of the unit.

The junction at which the regulator interlocked into the grill also got quite flakey and sensitive. The smallest vibration could dislodge the regulator. This summer, the venturi seemed to become misaligned with the orifices – as a result, the grill became way too hot and there wasn’t an even distribution of heat across the cooking surface.

The last thing you want to worry about when you are in some state of inebriation at a tailgate is the reliability and safety of a propane gas grill. So I made the decision to pull the plug on the Thermos and roll the dice, hoping for a good deal on a new portable grill from one of the big box stores on Labor Day Weekend.

Internet research revealed that the Weber Q 300 is the sexy pick for a small portable grill, but there was no way I was going to fork out more than 300 clams for a portable grill. So I decided to wing it and, on September 3rd, made a trip to Home Depot, having no idea what grill to buy when I got there.

Well, I stumbled across this Coleman unit on sale for $129.00 and impulse bought it – hoping that my later Google research after I got home wouldn’t reveal it to be some sort of Pinto or AMC Gremlin of portable gas grills.

The Coleman Paul Jr. Design Road Trip Grill is designed by Paul Jr. of Orange Country Choppers fame and it is a gorgeous grill. Now I am usually a function-over-form kind of guy, but I was blown away by the look of this grill and the feature set is compelling as well. (The fact that I stole this puppy for $100 under MSRP only makes it sweeter.)

The Road Trip has two independently controlled burners and 22000 BTUs of heat. The chrome accents on the custom black finish look great. Though the cooking surface is smaller than my Thermos, this bad boy gets really hot really quick. The two burners will permit indirect cooking and I find it is extremely efficient in terms of its propane “mileage”. This thing is considerably heavier than the Thermos, but has a much smaller footprint when folded up for transport.

Bobby Flay has nothing on me!

Unfortunately, those shiny blue side tables contributed to a rather embarrassing moment for me during the Road Trip’s virgin appearance at the Duke-Elon tailgate on September 4.

As discussed in my blog post entitled Parking Wars, we have moved to a new parking lot for tailgating this year – the Chemistry Lot. That all worked out great – there was a nice mix of Duke fans and folks from Elon (which is 40 miles down I-85 near Burlington, NC).

As you can see from the photos, we set up the tailgate (canopy, coolers, table, grill) in a separate parking spot between my Civic and Tony’s Accord. When I entered the lot, I paid for an extra spot – I know the routine – and it is not like I am trying to scam Duke (with their $5 Billion endowment) from an extra $10.

Anyways, right when I was in the process of carefully transferring my marinated chicken onto the grill, a parking attendant whizzed by in one of those annoying golf carts and stated that I needed to pay for that extra spot. At this point, I am holding the marinated chicken in a Pyrex bowl with my left hand with a fork in my right hand. I gestured “one moment” and pointed to the car windshield where both parking tickets were positioned. The parking attendant replied “Sir, you need to pay for that extra spot!”.

So, a bit flustered, I carelessly placed the Pyrex bowl on one of those shiny blue side tables and moved toward the Civic to grab the two tickets and show this attendant that I was legal. Hadn’t made it two steps before I heard the Pyrex bowl shattering on the asphalt, followed by laughter and pity from my tailgate neighbors.

You see, the grill was on a slight downhill slope. The blue side table was like a freshly Zamboni’ed ice surface and the Pyrex bowl was the puck. Arrgh! In the 21 years I have been tailgating at Duke, I am pretty sure this is the first time I ever brought a glass bowl along. Isn’t it great when the stars align perfectly like that?

That little faux-paus didn’t detract from the tailgate or the game however. It was a beautiful afternoon and evening. By the 7:00 kickoff, it was high 60’s (which in this part of the country is abnormally cool). 

So this is what a sellout looks like? It had been 16 years since Duke had a sellout, so it was kind of neat to look around and not see empty bleachers. (Realize that Wallace Wade only holds about 35K.) This was also a special occasion as Chris turned 21 on this day, so he could finally (legally) partake of the alcohol.

Here is a Flickr Slideshow of shots taken at Wallace Wade Stadium on September 4, 2010 where Duke defeated the Elon University Phoenix by a score of 41-27.