This won't fit on an egg

@bbqlearner It was on for about 16.5 hours. Could have pulled it earlier. Around noon or so I started dropping the cooker temp based on how it was running.

It rode along pretty nicely. Here's the basics of how it rolled, from what I can remember... I'll note below what I will do differently next time.

First level the cooker if it's not on level ground, which this wasn't. Chuck the wheels so it doesn't budge when loading and opening lid, etc.

Loaded the cooker with 80 pounds of Royal Oak Chef's Select briquets. These are all natural and were what was recommended by the cooker manufacturer. I kind of wanted to try lump, but this worked last year and I didn't want to risk something different with so much at stake. I also added a mix of hickory and apple wood chunks on top of the charcoal bed. I wanted to use Oak, but forgot to order Oak chunks. Next time will have Oak on hand.

I lit both ends of the charcoal bed using starter cubes, basically the same as starting up the egg. Once the starters were consumed and the charcoal was going, I inserted the drip pan/heat diffuser, closed the lid and got temps stable around 225*. Kept it stable for about 45 minutes, then got the pig out of the cooler and onto the cooking grid. Then loaded the cooker grid with pig into the cooler.

This year I remembered to hang a metal bucket on the drip spout, forgot that last year and it made a huge mess.

I had my Maverick monitoring temp of cooking grid and one ham temp. My buddy had a cheapo wireless therm we put in the opposite shoulder from the ham we were monitoring. I set the lower pit alarm at 200* and upper at 275*. At the beginning of the cook grid temp was higher than dome. I think that was because I had the grid probe between the rear legs and that was almost directly above where the fire was lit. I think next time I'll put the pit probe at a more central location.

Gave it an hour to make sure things were settled in after putting the pig on, then turned in. The alarm didn't go off once. Over time, the dome temp was higher than grid, but both were between 200* and 250*. Grid temp ran 225* +/- the whole time. I backed it down in the afternoon to prolong the cook. I could have put the pig on later, but I wanted to get some sleep. The final IT was 204*. There was no need for a knife at all. I simply put on my long vinyl BBQ gloves (Black Knight 7714R-10) and rolled it over to it's back. Then reached in and pulled meat out into a clean food grade 5 gallon bucket. Did my best to separate the bones/cartilage and toss those. Hit the meat with the Ro-Man Pork Puller, dumped into the chaffing table tray. Once the tray started getting low, same process.

I got lots of compliments, and it was so much less stressful this year since it wasn't my first try. Last year I had only been BBQ'ing for real with my BGE for about 3 months, and I was really stressed, didn't sleep much at all. I also didn't have my Maverick with alarms, so I was up checking temps constantly. This year the whole thing was much more relaxing.

I just looked up your coordinates in your signature, if you ever decide to do one I'd be happy to lend a hand.