Today, I almost lost my life in the great Lakeshire propane-fueled grill fire of 2010.

The great fire that destroyed half of Knoxville, the whole of its neighbor Farragut and a small portion of Lenoir City. All because I want to have a cook out tonight at my place.

My grill has been one of the best investments we’ve made since we’ve been living at our new place. Hamburgers have never been better, and with the assistance of this killer dry-rub that I make at home, steaks are better than you can get anywhere else. The most tender chicken on the planet comes off of that grill and it’s even been known to make up a pretty good pizza. Seafood hasn’t touched it yet, as when we eat seafood it’s usually salmon and I have a killer recipe for salmon that utilizes a skillet and the oven. More on that at a later date.

Tonight is going to include steak, roasted potatoes and beer and they’re going to be awesome. This was scheduled to take place, however, provided only if I got the grill cleaned beforehand. I use my grill a lot and though it’s totally cool to clean off the grates, I haven’t cleaned the inside of the grill yet and it was getting pretty wild. So I got down to it, scraping out burnt mushrooms and other foreign burnt things (actually, more than likely mushrooms as well) and while it’s not sparkling, it is looking much better. Beautiful! Now let’s start her up and kill off whatever’s left for about 20 minutes…

…or not. The grill doesn’t start. Your humble narrator proceeds to press the ignite switch several times all to no avail. It was time to break out the big tools…Big tools meaning the twisting of my wrist to take the propane tank off and a Phillip’s head screwdriver to take the switch off of the burners so I could see if I was getting a spark. I did get a spark, but decided to clean it anyway, reattached everything and prepared to do it again.

And that’s when it happened. Not only did the grill fire itself up on the next ignite, but it also tried to kill me in the process. Maybe it saw that my eyebrows needed to be trimmed and was trying to help me. But due to my cat-like reflexes and cheetah-like speed, I was able to avoid disaster as the flame went back down to where it needed to be. Hank Hill would have been proud to see the way I defeated the devil in the grill.

Btw, the cook out is open to all tonight…Just know I’m only providing the cow and the beer for those invited by name ;-)

Enjoy today’s haiku:

Marci has headphones
She’s even more beautiful
Than previously