The Iron Gut Challenge - 2007

While Rubby was home on parental leave, he often listened to the Bear radio station in the morning. When Shadoe's first annual "Iron Gut Challenge" for eating spicy wings was announced, Rubby decided to give it a go.

So one morning after dropping Sam off at daycare, we headed to the radio station and Rubby easily won the qualifying round in which he ate 6 wings. Now 6 wings doesn't sound like a lot but these weren't your regular wings. The special hot sauce was cooked up in the kitchen of the new Wild Wings restaurant on McCarthy road and measures about 3 million units on the Scoville scale for hotness. To put this in perspective, these wings were the hotness of standard u.s. grade pepper spray. That's 10 times hotter than the mighty Habanero pepper and about 1000 times hotter than Jalapeno peppers. Employees at the radio station were running around teary-eyed after a single drop of this sauce and Jacki, one of the announcers, was throwing up and was down for the count after a single wing. The other 2 contestants dropped out at 3 and 4 wings each so Rubby didn't have to eat any more that day. After an intimate moment with the toilet bowl at the radio station, Rubby collected his reward (a coupon for 50 wings for participating and 106.9 free wings for winning... regular ones, not lethal ones) and we were off to buy some Maalox.

[ click to view photos from Rubby's Qualifying Round in the Iron Gut Challenge ]

Rubby's victory at the qualifying round inspired his dad to try out also (ok, there was a bit of an ego thing happening between father and son!). Bryan was up against much tougher competition and although he did not win, "Cryin' Bryan" beat Rubby's record by one and all the contestants of that round were invited to come compete in the finale.

[ click to view photos from Bryan's Qualifying Round in the Iron Gut Challenge ]

The finale was at the official grand opening of the Wild Wings restaurant at McCarthy road. Rubby used his coupon to treat us and his cheering section to some free wings (my personal favourite were the rasperry flavoured Thai ones). Unfortunately the loud atmosphere and the long day of geocaching had its toll on Rubby who was already queasy and suffering from a headache going into the contest. Sammy and Christopher tried to stay to cheer poppa on but eventually it got too long and noisy for Samantha and we ended up waiting in the car outside since Samantha didnt want to head home without Rubby. Inside the restaurant the contest was in full swing to the tune of "Ring of Fire" (a remake of the Leonard Cohen Song...you'll fall down to a burning ring of fire. you go down, down, down and the flames will go higher. you'll burn, burn, burn, in the ring of fire, the ring of fire...). Waivers were signed and the Executioner came to serve the contestants. Bryan tapped out at 2 wings. Rubby made it to 13 wings but he was faltering. His rival was unwavering. It came to a question of whether puking and continuing was allowed... the crowd was not on Rubby's side and neither was Rubby's stomach. As runner-up Rubby still scored tickets to a Just for Laughs Show as well as to a Sens game.

[ click to view photos from The Iron Gut Challenge Finale]

We couldn't make the Just for Laughs show but Sam spent the night at Oma's while Christopher made his television debut sleeping at Scotiabank in his Habs sweater. Just as well that he slept through the Sens loss against the Washington Capitals!

[ click to view photos from the Senators Game]