In the Life of Martha: Brat Days

***Warning: Lots of pictures!!***

We headed down to Sheboygan for Brat Days 2006 on Friday. We stopped at Cruiser's for lunch and struggled through the construction on hwy 28. After a stop at the GameStop store in the Target/Home Depot shopping center we checked into our hotel at the La Quinta. When Adam discovered the refurbished PS2 he bought didn't work we drove across town again, taking cty A this time to avoid the mess. We then hung out at the hotel until my dad and Cheryl came and picked us up for dinner. They took us out to The Bull, the golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, so Adam was happy. The food was wonderful and the view was great too:

We had a picture of Adam in front of the entrance, but he went delete happy later on in the evening and accidentally deleted that one. Oops...

We headed back to the hotel, mentally regrouped, and headed down to Kiwanis park for the Firehouse concert. We actually parked relatively close to the park. We only had to walk 3 blocks or so. We picked a spot on the second tier of the hill, far enough from the stage to avoid any hoopla and retain our full hearing. Therefore the pictures are kind of blurry and psychadelic. I think Adam was kind of bored (and he had a headache) but I enjoyed the concert. They played a lot of newer stuff from albums I wasn't altogether familiar with, but they also played some classics from their earlier albums.

We then packed our chairs up and headed back to the hotel. It was a rough night, but we made it through. We got up early Saturday and headed to the free breakfast in the lobby. After we checked out we drove to West Side Bakery for a bit of nostalgic donut goodness and then headed back to Kiwanis. We got there just after 9am and staked our claim on the benches in front of the Johnsonville Big Grill truck. We sat about 5 benches from the front. Great seats if you ask me. Of course, the competition wasn't due to start until 11 so we had some time to kill. We got to listen to the announcer practice his speeches and yell at the music person who kept missing her cues. Her name was Kate. :) We also got to hear the crew's pep talk. We saw the two top contenders (Takeru Kobayashi and Sonya Thomas) when they arrived at the park after the parade. The park filled up pretty quickly after about 10:30 and there was a decent sized crowd. At least ESPN thought so. The competition was originally supposed to be done live to tape and then aired (edited for commercials, etc.) at 3. Apparently the people at ESPN like the energy of the crowd so well they decided to just go live. It was interesting. They had to do the entrances of the contestants 3 times.

I'm getting ahead of myself. The amateur contest was first. 16 local guys shoving brats into their faces. One guy barfed. A lot. Other than that it was relatively refined. The winner ate 14 total. The stage was then cleaned up and prepped for the professional contest. After a lot of hoopla and the announcer's speeches (which we had already heard once), the contestants all got up on stage. Then it was announced that ESPN wanted to air it live so they had to start over. They got three of the guys back up on stage and then had to send them back off and start over because they hadn't gone on air yet. *sigh* Finally they got everyone back up on stage and started the competition. It was disgusting, yet exhilarating. The world record set last year by Sonya Thomas was smashed in less than 5 minutes. Kobayashi, this tiny Japanese guy, plowed through 58 brats in 10 minutes. It was amazing. He lifted his shirt up at the end of the competition and you could still see his abs... this guy is ripped... Anywho, he won, the crowd went wild, and we went to seek out shade and water. It was incredibly hot and I got totally sunburned.

I can't find any video of the contest anywhere that shows us. There's nothing on the ESPN website, although the contest made #10 on their top ten moments on SC this morning. There's a two-minute (low quality) clip on YouTube, but that's about all I can find so far. If I find anything else, I'll post it. Trust us, we were there. :)