Road trip day 14: I am getting beat up by a grill

Yes, that headline is correct; I am getting beat up physically and emotionally by a grill.

During my cross-country expedition, I brought along with me a little grill so I could eat and also make some grilling content (you win this round Donny). Little did I know, it would be easier for me to do open heart surgery than assemble this little grill.

I didn’t think too much of it before I left (definitely should have looking back). I had just bought a larger grill in Pittsburgh and only had to assemble the legs (that took me about an hour to do), and I assumed this grill I brought with me would be the same deal.

Boy was I wrong.

I have to assemble the thing from scratch and have had two nights of eating tortilla chips for dinner because I gave up assembling it in the dark.

You may be asking yourself why do I not just assemble this in the day? I am also wondering about that. But alas, in my efforts to grill, I bought some chicken wings from a tiny Mexican store in nowhere southern California and was set to assemble this son of a gun for the final time.

I arrived at my humble abode for the night (a rest stop off Highway 40) and looked to slay my demons. The first step I had to do was screw in the baseplates. Seems easy enough, but I didn’t bring any tools with me because why would I need a screwdriver? So, I used my pocket knife instead.

That was certainly a dumb idea because as I was trying to balance everything on the backseat of my car which is now my bed, everything fell over, and the knife (which was very much open) fell and sliced my foot. Thankfully, I am a warrior and only needed one paper towel (and no tears) to stop the bleeding.

I knew I needed to persevere, I needed to assemble this grill, and I needed to eat a real dinner. That was until I couldn’t find one of the very important pieces to actually have a flame.

Yep that sucked.

As I’m sweating my ass off in the desert heat, my foot bleeding, and in pitch black darkness except for my lantern, I called it quits for the night and opened up my bag of tortilla chips.

Give this round again yet again to this grill.

I have yet to find this piece, and will most likely find it on my last day on the road. I also still have the chicken wings in my cooler (still on ice) and have no idea what to do with them.

Please give me any advice you have, so I can finally get back to grilling.

Recaps

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13