A New Challenge, A New Reason to Live

Today at lunch I finally tried a little hole in the wall pizza joint in West Seattle. It is on 35th, a little south from me, and just before you get to Westwood Village. I went there with the intent to eat a pizza all by myself, but was delighted to discover that they sold it by the slice. I had a slice of cheese and a slice of pepperoni/sausage. Two thumbs up. Finally I have found good pizza in West Seattle.

Now for the SUPER DUPER fun part. They have a new challenge up on their menu board, and so far NOBODY has succeeded.

All you have to do is eat an entire 28 inch pizza, fully loaded in 45 minutes. If you succeed, it is free ($40.00 if you fail) AND YOU GET A T-SHIRT!!!!!!!

If you know me, you know that I am dumb enough to try. If you know me, you know that I have a better than average chance of succeeding.

And here comes the easy part. You get to do this with a partner. Yeah, two guys get to go at this monster. Done deal.

I just hope my potential partner doesn't get mad at me for hogging (truer words were never spoken) more than my share of the pie!!!!

Helpful tips from my research

steps to making money eating pizza.
Hello everyone, my name is shane cassady and I recently took the pointers pizza challenge. I have learned a lot over the past few weeks on how to make money eating pizza. There is a pizza shop in Saint Louis that offers a $500.00 reward if you can eat their 28 inch 12 pound pizza. You have to call them in advance and the rules are that you get to have two people eat the pizza at the same time and you only get one hour to do it in. You are allowed to drink as much as you want, but you have to stay in the lobby while eating it. There are no bathroom breaks, so be sure to go before you start eating. You get to chose between eating 2 meat toppings or 4 veggie toppings. My partner and I decided to eat the 2 meat. I can tell you right off the bat that it is not a good idea to order the sausage. They pile it on and it makes it very difficult to eat. My suggestion would be to order a ham and pepperoni. This is a monster pizza and can be done. I have been told that only 16 people so far have managed to eat the beast. I would suggest a good excersize program before you start. I would also recommend eating lettuce to help stretch your stomach. Another helpful hint is to soak the crust in water before you eat it. They do not allow you to have a glass of water, but you can get a bottle of water and hold it in your mouth before chewing. The hardest thing about the challenge is getting over the repetitive taste. I would recommend eating it as quickly as possible. It takes your stomach 20 to 30 minutes to tell your mind that you are full so the quicker the better. I know that this has been done in 14 minutes by a professional eating team. I hope this helps you and I am open to any questions that you might have. Be sure to come back often as I will be answering questions and adding some pictures to help you out as well. I will look forward to hearing from you soon.

Curveballs

Back in the day, the rap on me as a hitter was that I did not handle the curveball well. I don’t care who you were, how well you threw (ok Mike Lentz at the time could get it by me) I ate your fastball for lunch. But curveballs, off speed; well I hadn’t figured those out. And surprise, surprise after a while (with later maturity and wisdom) I noticed that they became a larger part of my diet, and that batting average and batting success wise, I was losing weight.

But the biggest curveballs that were ever thrown to me happened at just twenty-one years of age. In the midst (junior year) of my budding college baseball career I was faced with the challenge of fatherhood. That was some curve. And by the end of that summer I learned that I was to be the father of two, which was a bigger curve. And two weeks later two live curveballs were staring me in the face. These were big time game changers. These were big time life changers.

In retrospect, I am glad there was more than one curveball. One curve ball might have just sent me back to the dugout with my bat in my hands. Odd to say, but one might have beaten me, two made it better for me. With two I was needed. With two I was in the game. With one, I quite possibly could have been ignored, pushed aside and regulated to remote back-up status. With two I became very involved from necessity and then became very involved by enjoysity (my new word). Parenting was fun, it was joyful, it was incredibly rewarding.

Much later, after my skills had eroded by age and forced exile from the game I began playing baseball again. Older, slower, wiser I now enjoyed seeing curveballs and off speed pitches, heck I preferred them to the fastballs that now tended to beat me. Perhaps a lesson with curveballs or two at age twenty-one was just what I needed.

Well life still throws curveballs and I sometimes hit them and I sometimes fail. YESTERDAY was Melissa and Kelsey’s birthday and while I did call Kelsey early in the morning (heck perhaps even at the time of her actual birth) it was to co-ordinate a time to come visit. And much later in the day when she called me back, I had three people in my office asking questions and needing answers and the call was short and confusing. And then this morning (and I can indeed go days without knowing the date, and this month has flown by; and I got probably 10 more lame excuses) I saw the date and said “oh shit”.

I can only hope for forgiveness.