SUPER HOT VALENTINES DAY!!!

Ok, this has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, the events simply happened on it. Last night, Dewey and I were watching "Man Vs Food" from the Netflix instant queue and decided to watch the San Jose episode. For those not familiar, it is a show about a guy that goes from town to town taking on extreme eating challenges like the Amarillo, Texas steak challenge, hot dog eating contests, etc... The San Jose episode ends with him going to Smoke Eaters in San Jose, and restaurant that has an extreme challenge in eating really hot wings. I thought it would be an awesome idea to take on the challenge, so the next day, we set out to San Jose where I would do something incredibly stupid and Dewey would chronicle it.

Now, to explain how hot these wings are .... well first look at this picture.

The wings are made with a ton of cayenne peppers, house hot sauce, duck sauce, hot BBQ sauce, and a ton of habenero peppers. They told me the mix makes for half a habenero pepper for each wing. The rules were as follows:

1. I have 10 minutes to eat all 12 of the wings. No meat left on the bones and no sauce either.

2. At no point during the ordeal may I drink anything, eat anything else, or use any napkins to wipe myself clean.

3. After they are eaten, I must lick the remaining sauce off my fingers.

4. After the first three steps, I must remain seated without drinking, eating, or using napkins for an additional five minutes to endure the pain.

Now I have done the blazin' challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings easily, but I was honestly not prepared for this. As you can see, the wings are served so there is possibly more sauce than wings. I had to go fishing in sauce to find wings I hadn't eaten. Needless to say, I signed the waiver to attempt it and it was on.

I was excited, and the fact that less than 20% of the people that take on the "Hellfire" challenge actually complete it didn't scare me at all. So I dug in. I started fast and the first wing was down, no problem. Unfortunately, when I started on the second wing, that's when the pain hit me like an angry badger clawing at me. I continued on and within seconds after the third wing, my eyes welled with tears, my nose wouldn't stop running, and the intense burn covered my hands, mouth, and face.

Fortunately, I had the crowd on my side. I didn't see more than five people in the restaurant when I started, but suddenly there were twenty people cheering me on. Apparently they see people try this all the time, and a few have even tried and failed. They were excited to see someone put himself through the pain, and that fool was me.

By wing number six, my hands went numb. I felt like an eighty year old stroke victim and I had to hold the wings in my hands that wouldn't stretch out all the way. On top of that, the pain was insanely unbearable. I clearly didn't respect the Hellfire Challenge going into it, and now it wasn't respecting me. Snot, sweat, saliva, and tears were flowing like the Mississippi and I pushed on. At a certain point, Dewey thought I was going to yakk, and I thought it was possible as well. I was getting to the point where I wasn't even chewing the meat and just swallowing it to finish.

With everyone cheering me on, I made it through by thinking, "If I quit, it will still burn like hell." So I kept on burning like hell. I had one minute to go and two wings left. I was trying to pace myself so I could finish as close to the buzzer as possible. That's when the lovely waitress turned into a nazi stickler for the rules and told me I had to not only finish in less than a minute, but I had to lick the sauce off my fingers as well. And she also pointed out that that last wing still had a tiny piece of meat on it. With her literally counting down from ten, I finished like MacGuyver disarming a bomb at the last second.

Then I went into a state of painful zen. I closed my eyes, held out my hands, and waited five painful minutes. That was the easy part. The bar applauded, then went back to their business, and I bee-lined for the bathroom and used the entire supply of paper towels in there and ran half my body under cold water.

After that, I sprinted back to the bar and drank beers to soothe the pain and then sat uncontrollably shaking until the pain subsided...thirty minutes later. Needless to say, I completed the foolish challenge, won a t-shirt, my photo on the wall, and feel like I never have to do that again. So that was my "hottest" V-Day ever.