BBQ and grilling festivals & competitions

Last year was a tough one for me personally. I had to handle a lot of personal hardships including the loss of my father and my mother-in-law, the end of my marriage, my mother’s own health challenges, and a diagnosis that will forever change how I live my own life (I will be ok…I’m managing well without extreme measures). So the blog took a back seat. A lot of things took a backseat, actually. But for me things are looking up. I’m strong, I’m happy and I’m feeling more like myself again. Hell, I’m probably in better shape than I’ve seen for many years!

But here we are in the spring of 2020 and the globe is facing a huge pandemic and we don’t even know what “normal” will be like in the coming weeks. Or months. While the term “social distancing” makes sense (it’s a rather annoying term…isn’t it?) we need to take precautions to ensure the spread of COVID-19 doesn’t go completely rampant while some sort of vaccine is developed.

So many people are directly impacted by this virus, whether by loss of work/income/business, loss of a loved one, an extraordinary amount of overtime at work (more on that in another post, but THANK YOU to all of the healthcare workers, grocery and retail operations, truckers, farmers, first responders, etc etc etc), or a whole new way of working and learning.

That being said, I wasn’t sure how to handle my bi-monthly “National BBQ Events” post. A lot of time was spent each time researching not only the nationally ranked competitions and festivals, but also the smaller town events and trying to dig into whether or not a festival was cancelled or the date was different, or location changed….. And with the COVID-19 pandemic, who knows when mass gatherings of people will start up again for festivals and competitions?

I have come to the decision that I will not do the bi-monthly “Events” post anymore. I’d rather see if I can find more interesting stories on people or projects that somehow have a correlation to grilling, barbecue, outdoor entertaining and music.

For bigger national events, please check the Kansas City Barbecue Society website. They have a comprehensive list of competitions happening all over the globe. Otherwise, if you look through my previous posts for smaller events that had happened in your area, you can check to see if they will have anything re-scheduled.

Reach Out!

There have been some people who have contacted me about events in the past, but there are also a lot of you who probably have some great story ideas. Send me a message and let’s talk. 

Thanks for reading….and keep washing your hands.

~Julie