158. WIN A PIE EATING CONTEST

When I hear the words, “Pie Eating Contest”, I automatically think of County Fairs with haystacks in every corner, straw hats on every guy, and tied tops and daisy dukes on every female. The only time I’d ever hear of a pie eating contest is on TV.

In essence, it‘s through TV that helped elevate this event to be on my Bucket List. I had mentioned in an earlier POST that I love to watch the TV Food Network when I eat. Along with the Iron Chefs, I normally turn to another one of my favorite programs when eating, Man vs. Food. I love watching Adam Richman tackle the nation’s biggest, baddest, and most fattening challenges. Sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses; either way I love the fact that he’s turned your average meal into a competitive sport. It’s shows like MVF that really made me want to participate in this contest.

Over at the Relay for Life, different parties coordinate different activities and events. One family was sponsoring a Pie Eating Contest. When I was first told about it, I was hoping that no one was going to want to do it. There were several of us that could easily take down a pie but I don’t think they’d want to wager their pride. I was concentrating on something so much and so hard that winning or losing never crossed my mind.

When you see a pie eating contest, everyone seems to dig straight into their pie and concentrate on one particular spot. I’ve always wondered why no one ever sucks the topping, as opposed to biting it. That theory now turned into a plan of attack. I thought, “Live by the theory, die by the theory”.

The emcee of the evening called up all contestants. Walking up I had butterflies in my stomach. Again, I wasn’t scared to lose I just don’t like to be in any way the center of attention. There were 7 of us. We all sat down as the emcee went over the rules. When we first arrived, there were only a handful of people. In a 2 minute span where we were given our pies (blueberry cheesecake) and blindfolded. Prior to losing my sight, I looked through the crowd and there were at least a hundred people. Being that I was on the far right, my cheering section was pretty close to me. I tried to flare my nose several times to make an opening for me to see out the bottom of my blindfold. My last thought was, “Okay, let’s kill this”. Shortly after the emcee called out, “On your marks, get set, ready”, as a sinister laughed came from her on my left.

GO! I quickly swooped down and slurped in as much as I could. I heard nanoseconds of the crowd cheering and they seemed to be going ballistic. I chewed as fast as I could and swallowed. On my second pass at the pie, I took in way too much and as I swallowed, I could feel it coming back up. At that moment I was pretty scared I was about to blow chunks to whoever was standing to my right. Luckily I didn’t and I kept going. I felt I had at least half of the pie gone in 4 passes. As I started to work on the left half of the pie I wondered to myself if I had to eat the crust too. The crust thin and I was afraid I’d end up biting the foil pan and getting shocked. (For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, put a little piece of foil in your mouth and bite down on it for about 3 seconds. The results are going to be shocking) I figured I’ll save that for the end and work on the blueberries for now. After swallowing each time I’d be taking deep breaths to get as much filling the next swoop. It seemed that I had for the most part eaten so much already that I couldn’t find any more filling. With that in mind, I resorted to licking the corner and working my tongue around to make as big a clump of filling as I could; then eat it. Once I started thinking, I was getting thrown off my game plan. I thought that since I cleaned out the amount of filling as I had, so has everyone else. I thought that enough time had passed by so I needed to hurry. And as soon as I dove back in, the crowd started laughing hollering because a winner was announced. It seemed I was so deep into thought that for over half of the contest, I didn’t hear a peep out of anyone. However, as you can see, it’s quite different on video.

I heard Anabelle cheering my name but I didn’t think I had won. I just sat there waiting for them to get the blindfold off of me. I then felt a lady’s voice in front of me telling me that I had won. On the inside, I was going absolutely ballistic. On the outside though, I could think of only one thing to do: POP MY COLLAR. After they got the blindfold off of me and my eyes readjusted, I could see a ton of people in front of me. A few of them were on my team but most of them I had no idea who they were. One of my first thoughts was, “Let me get a picture of myself with all this crap on my face so I can use it as a default on Facebook (LOL)”. Anabelle had stopped recording and gave me my camera. While fidgeting with it, I started shaking people’s hands and getting congratulated. There were a bunch of people that I didn’t know taking my picture. People were telling me to look here. Now here. Now there. Okay, one more time. Flash. Flash. Flash. It was surreal. I thought, “Man, this feels like some paparazzi (expletive), wow”. I got the picture I wanted and claimed my prize; a Hawaiian Airlines bag with a towel, hat, and some granola bars.

As the dust settled and we headed back to our tent, it was only then that I truly realized that I had just won a pie eating contest. It was then that I felt a gamut of emotions passing over me. I was still in disbelief. I can’t believe I just won. There was a volleyball game most of our team was playing but as soon as they finished, they were all congratulating me. Typing this just makes me smile.

Being able to participate in this contest was great, but actually winning was the icing on the cake, er.. pie. Looking back to almost 30 days ago, I’m extremely glad I did it. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to defend my title. As Adam Richman would say, “In the battle of man vs. food, today..

MAN WON!!