This is The World According to Buchs - Keepin’ it moving since 2003!

Last night was the Great Crab Eating Championship Of The World. Mr. Daniel Cody and myself squared off at Las Palmas in a battle of intestinal fortutide. Literally.

Several months ago, the boys and I spent the weekend in Chicago. It’s now commonly referred to as “Buchs’ Weekend”, because (1) I walked away with The “Mr. Risk” title, and (2) I thoroughly squashed Dan in a friendly swimming competition.

Shortly after that weekend, Dan let it be known that he was a big fan of Crab. I responded that I, too, enjoyed the Crab - a lot. Well, one thing led to another, and Dan spouted off some nonsense about being able to eat more than I could. I was willing to let that go, but he followed up with a “in fact, I can eat a whole BUCKET more than you can”.

Being a highly competitive person, I couldn’t let that claim stand untested. For the last few months, we’ve been trying to schedule the actual event. Last night, we got down to business.

The ground rules were simple.

# A “bucket” of crab was defined as 3 full clusters, plus a chunk of body meat.
# Neither participant was allowed to take any extended breaks; trips to the bathroom were allowed.
# A 2-1/2 hour time limit was set.

We began at 6:30. By 7:15, we had each eaten 7 clusters - the pace was blistering. Over the next 45 minutes, I was only able to put down an additional 3 clusters. Dan, however, was an eating machine. He barely stopped to breathe.

As I tore into my 10th cluster, I began to feel… odd. It wasn’t that I was full, but more like the crab just wasn’t tasting good anymore. Judy pleaded with me to stop, lest I be turned off the sweet sweet crab forever. I agreed with her, and put my soiled napkin down on top of my plate.

Dan and I had been conversing as we ate, and I let him know after #9 that I didn’t know how much more I could do. He thought I was trying to use some sort of Jedi mind-trick on him, and went back to stuffing himself full of crab. But, once I declared myself out of the game, he knew that all he had to do was finish up 3 more clusters. I think it may have taken him another 20 minutes after I finished, and I think he could have done another 2 or 3 clusters - if he had to.

After it was over, I dutifully donned the Bush-Cheney ‘04 cap that Les had contributed to the Loser. All that was left was the song.

Chuck had been placed in charge of arranging a little tune for the loser to sing. In falsetto. I originally thought that he was going to write something along the lines of “I am a big fat loser. I could not eat as much crab as [NAME]…” However, he thought it would be much, much funnier to have the loser sing some song about a milkshake. He went to the trouble of obtaining an instrumental version of the song, and was all ready for me to perform, karaoke style.

I had to put the kabosh on that.

I did, however, sing the first few verses of this song, in falsetto, at the table.

Dan and I had agreed beforehand, that, no matter the outcome, it was all in good fun, and had more to do with the Crab than who could eat more. Dan just got the bonus of being the winner.

Next time, Cody. You’ll get yours…