On my first Monday back to work after our Bermuda vacation, I had to take a class about some very boring computer stuff.  I thought that it would be an easy way to get back into the daily grind but it wasn’t.  The class was hard and complicated.

The class was only three days long.  On the first day I was really hungry for lunch because my stomach was still all stretched out like a Hefty bag from the cruise ship buffet.  The closest food was a Hooters restaurant.  It was only 11:30 and no cars were outside so I figured that there’d be now wait and I could get back to class with time to spare.

My waitress was on her first day of work.  Judging by her apparent age, I’m guessing that it was one of her first jobs.  She was really nervous but ultimately was a good server.  I left her a generous tip because I was her first customer ever.

That’s what she told me, anyway.

Following her training manual step-by-step, she was sure to tell me about their hot wing challenge.  Intrigued, I ordered some of the wings with their “thermonuclear” sauce to give it a try.  It wasn’t bad.  I got them un-breaded (naked), the way they were meant to be eaten.

For the “Nuclear Wing Challenge”, one has to eat twenty breaded hot wings in six minutes soaked in their hottest sauce.  Also, they are all drumsticks to save time and the meal was free if you finished.

I came back the following day and got a cheeseburger.  On Wednesday, you can get “all you can eat” wings for $10.  I had to be back in an hour so I didn’t get all that I could eat.  They had to be ordered in increments of ten and service was slow that day so I only got 30.

I figured that if I could do this.  I can do the wing challenge.

The rest of the week passed by and on Sunday I had to go into the office for only an hour.  A friend gave me a call as I was driving home and suggested that we go to Hooters because I told him of the wing challenge and he wanted to see circus act that my eating has become.

We get there and they order beer and I get some water while confidently declaring to the waitress that I will be conquering the wing challenge later.  She was excited/disgusted.

They had a few more beers and I got up the courage to order the wings.  It was only at this time that I learned that the wings are breaded.  That makes them at least 150% their normal size.  These wings were huge.

I needed to sign a waiver to take the challenge.  It was mostly funny but probably necessary.  It actually said that if I failed, I would pay double the cost of the wings (to make up for the jerks who would do it and succeed) and buy a beer for everybody at my table.  I signed and told them to bring it on.

She brought out a plate of wings the smell of which cleared my sinuses immediately and a bucket “just in case”.  She announced to the whole restaurant which was packed that I was going to take the challenge.  People cheered and I got nervous.  This looked like a lot of food.  It wasn’t the volume that scared me, it was the time.

Six minutes for twenty wings is eighteen seconds per wing.  That’s fast when they’re not breaded.

My friend stood up to get a good video of it.  When I get that video, I will share it with everybody.

The timer started and I went for the largest pieces first.  Then things became blurry.  Starting the final minute I was behind by a wing (time-wise) and I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to make it.  I simply couldn’t swallow fast enough.  I kept gnawing away and had to sit back to try to swallow it all.

It was hot, and not just spicy hot but temperature hot.  At the six-minute call, I had taken the meat off of the last bone but still had a mouthful of meat.  The judge looked at me and said that I did it.  I guess that if you can fit it in your mouth, that counts.  I was really excited.  Everybody cheered.

He came out and took my picture with a huge Polaroid camera and put me up on the wall.  I am the second person in Tucson to complete the challenge.

I also got my photo taken with the cute (and unusually short) wait staff.

You can see the letter "E" from the "Wall of Flame" behind us.

My mouth burned for the rest of the afternoon but fortunately I didn’t get the “exit wound” that I expected.

I couldn’t have done it without the encouragement of the friends I was with.  Either that or I couldn’t imagine living with the hard time they would give me if I didn’t succeed.

We then went out to another bar afterward and sat outside even though it was over one hundred degrees.  I sat in the sun on an unventelated bar stool that, by the time I left, was more butt sweat and wing fart than it was bar stool.

It was a good day.  The solar eclipse started about an hour later.

You can see the shape of the sun in the lens flare.  It looks like somebody took a bite out of the sun.

On May 20th 2012, I ate the sun.