Roasting Eugene

The past few weeks have been filled with beginning of the school year activities, as students have returned and classes began last week. One activity that Titan Traverse normally has is a barbeque during the first week of classes. This year, due to Brian's and my experience in the Outing Club, the barbeque was updated to a pig roast. We learned that it is not so simple to throw a pig roast without the help of the Outing Club!

Unfortunately, I was working for most of the actual roasting, so I am reporting this from what I have been told. I'll have Brian check it for accuracy :-) Anyway, Brian and Steve ran around for a few days trying to get everything together, and we picked up the pig, named Eugene by the students, on Thursday night. We spent the evening getting the spit ready. At the OC cabin, we have a permanent pit that we use to roast the pig. Here in the Nystrom's backyard, we had to be a little more creative. Steve made two tripods of saplings, each about 10 feet tall. From each tripod hung a rope with a pulley system in order to raise and lower to pig over the fire. The sapling the pig was on then went through the ropes, and the fire was in between the tripods. It seemed a great system...when we started. I skipped out on the festivities of getting the pig on the pole, so Brian will have to fill in those details... It went smoothly... the spearing of the pig that is. With four guys on the pig and another guiding the spit, we successfully got the pig to the middle of the spit. We didn't even have to use too much Crisco.

Brian came home at about 1AM, and left again at 6:30, before I got up. I didn't see him again until lunchtime, when I wandered over to see how things were going. Well, the pig was on the ground in a broken spit. Bad sign. Apparently, the original spit had broken at about 2AM. Steve and the students who were brave enough to stay up all night lashed together the broken end of the spit, which help together until the morning when it broke again. Steve and Brian then cut down two more saplings and sandwiched them around the pig, lashing them together at the ends. They held until they burned through around lunchtime and Brian had to cut down two more and do the same thing. Those two held until the pig was done, thank goodness. So, the actual roasting of the pig was a comedy of errors.

Once the pig was done, though, everything went very well. The meat was well done and tasted great, and we had a great turnout. At one point in the evening, Brian counted 70 students in the yard, and more had come and gone throughout the evening. They ate, talked, played horseshoes, football and Catch Phrase, and stuck around until it started to sprinkle. It was a great outreach event, and an opportunity for students to meet us and each other. I hope it will be a fun memory for them, especially the ones who sat up with the pig all night.