First of all, thanks to all for your suggestions. As it turned out,
though, I ended up not using any of it.

As I mentioned, I planned to smoke six slabs of ribs for a family
reunion this past weekend, but when I got to pricing ribs, I began to
have second thoughts! One Wal Mart I went to only had one slab of ribs
in the whole store (Tyson brand at $2.24/lb), so I went to Sam's Club
next door to see what they had to offer. Sam's did have 3-packs of spare
ribs for $2.47/lb (average $30/pack). No way I was going to spend $60 on
this cook and not even be preparing the main course! So...I decided to
cook a couple of pork butts, instead.

Thursday evening, I bought two Boston Butts, approximately 8 lbs each,
took them home and prepared them for cooking the next day with my
favorite rub. Friday afternoon, I took the butts out of the fridge and
started a chimney of charcoal. Put the meat on the ECB about 6:00 PM and
cooked it through the night, rotating the butts top-bottom/bottom-top
every couple of hours until about midnight, when I refilled the charcoal
pan and went to bed. Slept until 3:00 AM, when I got up to rotate the
meat and stir the coals a bit. Got up again at 6:00 AM to add charcoal
and rotate the meat one last time. The temp of the top butt was 182
degrees, and the bottom one was 175. Let 'em cook further until 8:00,
when I pulled the butts off the smoker. (Didn't think to check the temps
at this time, but the meat was falling apart when I took if off the
smoker.

Wrapped the butts in double layers of foil, put them in the cooler and
loaded the truck for the 2-1/2 hour trip to the state park. Once I got
to the park, I took the butts from the cooler and put them in large
plastic meat trays (from Wal Mart) and began pulling them. They were
still quite hot and so tender that they literally shredded as I pulled
them. Needless to say, there wasn't much of that pulled pork left to
take home!

On a side note, you know how you sometimes get a flash of inspiration
for an idea, only to have it turn sour on you? Well, I had it happen to
me, this weekend. When I was thinking of how to insulate the meat in the
cooler, it occurred to me that I had a big plastic bag full of those
styrofoam packing "peanuts" in the storeroom that I had been collecting
for several years, and that stuff should make excellent insulation. So,
I put a 3-4 inch layer of foam peanuts in the bottom of the cooler, put
the meat in on top of that, and then filled the cooler with more
peanuts! Worked great, but I neglected to consider one small thing. When
we got to the reunion, it was quite breezy, and every time I opened the
cooler, styrofoam peanuts flew everywhere! I finally managed to get the
meat out by opening the lid just far enough to get my hand in inside and
fish around for the meat and pull it out without too many pieces of foam
escaping. Oh, well...live and learn!

Stan Marks