Well the day began auspiciously with a huge rainstorm, I am talking inches of rain. This was about 11:30-12:00. It continued to rain on off until about 5 PM, some really hard others drizzle. Luckily earlier in the day I had purchased a umbrella to use for protection of the electronics later.
We actually attempted to use the umbrella during the hard rain, which is when we realized we would need some kind of stand for it. We tried digging a hole, then using our funky picnic table and then Kevin came up with a great idea. Use the tires that have been sitting in various backyards for almost two years. The center hole where the Lexus logo goes was perfect. As you can see from the picture the umbrella is huge so the height and weight of tires was needed. We sat outside and talked through the rain and waited for the ribs to get done. The attendees today were the three of us, Jim, Kevin, Greg, Josh and his friend Maria, the Jaketic's and Josh's sister Annie. We found out late that Annie was a vegetarian (maybe vegan, still not sure) so Travis and I went to Safeway. We got some Boca burgers and tomatoes. We put the grate on the smoker and quickly (extreme heat) grilled the tomatoes, burgers and some corn on the cob for Annie. Then it was time for the ribs. All the ribs had been treated with the rub prior to cooking. Then some were treated with sauce as they were cooking. Lastly, they were treated with our homemade sort of barbecue sauce. The ribs were very good, although a little too spicy for my normal tastes. The next time the cayenne and hot sauce maybe limited a bit more in the recipes. Everyone seemed to enjoy them greatly, I didn't get any pictures but we were all quite a messy site.
After eating some people adjourned to the Karaoke bar for some singing. I then set upon the task of preparing the Hoyt's Drive-In. While this was going on a semi arms race began amongst our immediate neighbors and some a few houses down. They had some pretty good fireworks, there was some issues with hot embers raining down on us, but not too bad. As you can see in the other pictures above I hung a flat sheet from out gutter for the screen. There is a white sheet with a black one as backing to help with contrast. Lastly, a copper pole is used to weight it down and smooth the screen. The last picture is of the setup for it. I had a projector from school, Roger's portable DVD player and then the speakers from my computer. All sitting on a step stool and powered from the gazebo. This setup worked great and the movie was cool. We screened Top Gun. The rain even held off until the last 30 min or so of movie, even then it was just a drizzle. Near the middle of movie some people started leaving. First Annie and then Josh and Maria. After the movie there was more Karaoke, then last to leave (before morning) was the Jaketic's.
Fun times were had by all, it would have been better sans rain but still was good. We will have to attempt it again with ribs and a movie.
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