Brad Olson
TVWBB Diamond Member
In a normal year I spend the last full weekend of April in Des Moines, hanging out with school friends, going to the Drake Relays, and relearning once again that eating and drinking like I could when I was 20 just isn't a good idea anymore. 
Our Saturday night tradition is ID-marinated turkey tenders gas-grilled at our friends Jeff and Cathy's house (which is actually Ground Zero/Base of Operations for the weekend, and I've logged hundreds of hours on their basement couch over the years), but since this far from a normal year I had to improvise at home with chicken instead of turkey (the ketchup wasn't part of the marinade, it was just photo-bombing).
The chicken was fine but the atmosphere just wasn't the same.
(Non-grill content starts now.)
Relays Weekend actually starts with Thursday night pizza at Felix & Oscar's, where one of the pies is always a deep-dish "Cheese Topper" made with alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce. It is - to put it mildly - a pizza of incredible weight and density and I still find it hard to believe that 25+ years ago my friend Dave and I could not only finish this pizza but could do so after orders of mozzarella sticks and fried mushrooms:
But just like the Saturday night cookout, Relays Thursday Pizza was not to be in 2020. But technology is all up in our business now, so we actually got together and "shared" pizza via Zoom. Our favorite local pizza place doesn't offer alfredo sauce but I made a special request, and the owner was not only kind enough to make a pizza for me but he even made the sauce from scratch (he's a trained chef):
The Zoom "dinner" wasn't the same as being there, but it was still a chance to see and hear good friends and it went on for nearly 3 hours - about the same amount of time we would've spent at F & O's. And since we were all in our respective homes, the bar bill was a lot less painful and no designated drivers were needed!
Our Saturday night tradition is ID-marinated turkey tenders gas-grilled at our friends Jeff and Cathy's house (which is actually Ground Zero/Base of Operations for the weekend, and I've logged hundreds of hours on their basement couch over the years), but since this far from a normal year I had to improvise at home with chicken instead of turkey (the ketchup wasn't part of the marinade, it was just photo-bombing).The chicken was fine but the atmosphere just wasn't the same.
(Non-grill content starts now.)
Relays Weekend actually starts with Thursday night pizza at Felix & Oscar's, where one of the pies is always a deep-dish "Cheese Topper" made with alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce. It is - to put it mildly - a pizza of incredible weight and density and I still find it hard to believe that 25+ years ago my friend Dave and I could not only finish this pizza but could do so after orders of mozzarella sticks and fried mushrooms:
But just like the Saturday night cookout, Relays Thursday Pizza was not to be in 2020. But technology is all up in our business now, so we actually got together and "shared" pizza via Zoom. Our favorite local pizza place doesn't offer alfredo sauce but I made a special request, and the owner was not only kind enough to make a pizza for me but he even made the sauce from scratch (he's a trained chef):
The Zoom "dinner" wasn't the same as being there, but it was still a chance to see and hear good friends and it went on for nearly 3 hours - about the same amount of time we would've spent at F & O's. And since we were all in our respective homes, the bar bill was a lot less painful and no designated drivers were needed!
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