Indian Invite '16

We had our first Indian Invite as workers/volunteers today.  Since this was our first foray into working it, we had no idea what to expect.  The good thing was that we had someone working with us in the kitchen who has been doing this for something like five or six years (he has had two daughters each as varsity cheerleaders for four years).  But it was still hectic.

Getting the meat heated up and ready for walking tacos was easy.  All we had to do was put it in the convection ovens for about 15 minutes.  The big problem that we had right off the bad was making coffee.  Since we opened the doors at 8:00 AM, we wanted to be able to have coffee ready for anyone who might need a pick me up.  The problem was that the coffee makers we had in the kitchen were the old, barrel style percolators.  I have NEVER made coffee in one of these, and had no idea how they worked.  Add to it I had no clue what sort of filters were supposed to go in them and it was just a comedy of errors. 

The first batch we made had grounds in it because we didn’t use paper filters.  It also wasn’t something that we pushed start and the coffee was ready 5 minutes later.  It took 15-20 minutes to perc and heat up.  The first few cups we sold to people must have just been BAD!  Sorry about that. 

Once we got the hang of things we had a nice little assembly line going with our hotdog and walking tacos.  Oh, and one other thing we ran into was having stuff ready right away.  Along with the coffee, we had a few dozen donuts and cups of donut holes, figuring that would be good “breakfast” stuff for people.  Well as early as 8:15 or 8:30 people were coming up and asking for walking tacos.  Really?  A walking taco at 8:30 in the morning?  Or even a hot dog?  I suppose, but it certainly wasn’t something that I would have considered for a breakfast type item.  Next year we’ll have to keep that in mind and make sure that EVERYTHING is ready to go by 8:00 AM.

Overall, the event went off pretty well.  It sure seemed to go quickly though.  I think everyone was pretty much cleared out by 1:30 PM and we were cleaned up and packed up by around 3:00.  Some of the parents went to a local watering hole to “celebrate” afterward, but Kris and I were tired and just figured we wanted to go home and take a nap.  I wouldn’t have figured it would have taken that much out of us.  Although being up by around 4:30 AM to be there at 6:00 AM didn’t help.  The only downside as I see it was that we were unable to see any of the competition, so we don’t have any idea of how the other teams we would be competing against this year, look.  Then again, it shouldn’t really matter much as long as they hit their routine.  Next competition is the UCA Nationals qualifier, so they better work their butts off between now and then if they want to go to Disney in February.