It's like walking on hot coals, except you eat them

I have several interests including, but not limited to:

• confidently making up answers to questions I don't know the real answer to to see if anyone believes me,
• storytelling,
• making people laugh and
• putting people up to challenges. Seemingly the majority of these challenges involve food or eating things, like pet fish.

My latest food challenge involved my boss and Buffalo Wild Wings' "Blazin' Wing Challenge." My boss, Cindy, is from Texas and loves hot, spicy food. If we go to a mexican restaurant she asks them to bring the hottest salsa out and I'm pretty sure she eats jalapenos like most people eat carrots. It's awesome.

So sometime this past summer it came up that she always ordered the wing sauce one notch lower than the hottest at BWW. We will now switch to a dialog format to really make you feel like you were there.

Erin: "Well, if you can do that one, you should totally do the Blazin' Wing Challenge."

Cindy: "What's that?"

Erin: "You have to eat something like 12 wings with the Blazin' wing sauce in 6 minutes"

Cindy: "Oh, easy I could do that."

Erin: "Ok, that's what I want to do for my birthday lunch next year. Please!?!?! You can spend your maternity leave training for it if you need to."

Cindy: "Alright, I'll do it."

Erin: "SERIOUSLY!?! I can't for my birthday now!"

Skip ahead 6 or so odd months later and it's time for my birthday lunch at work.

The task: Eat 12 traditional wings with the Blazin' wing sauce in 6 minutes. You have to get all the meat off the bone, but not the "gristle or cartilage" (I really am quoting there, the word cartilage make me gag so I wouldn't voluntarily use it). You cannot use any dressing, eat anything else, like fries, you cannot drink and you cannot wipe your face or hands.

Here Cindy is with her 12 wings. She made all of us smell the wings so we could sort of know what she was going to be enduring.

Here is Dave, the Regional Training Manager, announcing over the sound system that she was doing the challenge.

The first wing.

We negotiated the photos that would be taken. We could capture the first wing and at the end, but nothing in between. I also feel it's important to mention I offered her my hair band to pull her hair back, but she scoffed saying, "I'm not going to have this all over my face, amateur. I'm going to be very dainty."

And she was! Look at that, no sauce on her face. I get sauce on my ear just when I'm eating wings at a normal pace, let a lone 12 in 6 minutes!

But I digress...did she conquer the challenge or not?!!?

She nailed it in a time of 5 minutes 58 seconds.

Bravo, Boss Lady!

And if any of you readers out there are inspired now to do this challenge please do and report back. There was one guy who apparently did the challenge in 56 seconds and I'm not entirely sure how that is humanly possible.