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No worries: it’s still going to be a great weekend! And welcome!

After all the weather-related delays, don't you dare forget to send pictures when it arrives on Friday. That matte blue/black pebble has got to be a beauty. Congratulations, Croadie. Hope you get some sleep over the weekend. I doubt that I would. :>)

Good luck for Friday!

Can't wait to see the pictures! Welcome and get ready. Benton

Aside from being better designed and built, the KK does handle differently from other ceramic cookers, as those of us who came from other cookers can attest. It acts like it is both better insulated (it is) and has greater thermal mass (perhaps also an artifact of the insulation). Landing a jet is different from landing an airplane, and sweating pipes with MAPP gas is different from sweating pipes with propane, even though each pair is logically the same. I found myself making adjustments when I switched to the KK. I use both CoCo Char (KK Extruded Coconut Shell Charcoal, for low and slow or critical cooks) and local hardwood briquettes (no off-tasting fillers) for everything else. Were I rich I'd just use CoCo Char, along with the occasional bincho or lump for effect. CoCo Char is so neutral and clean, one only worries about the heat soaking itself. CoCo Char is poor man's bincho. With any other charcoal, I find that fire handling dominates heat soaking in my thinking. The Achilles heel of all charcoal cookers is fire handling. In our dreams we have multiple hardwood fires, and we move beautifully mature embers from our seed fire to the cook fire. The occasional green wood makes an appearance to show off our advanced skills, but no flavors from the initial combustion of wood are accidentally introduced. The fire is deliberate, we are distilling the wood as an armagnac distiller is choosing the best part of the mash. Using a cast iron Dutch oven smoke pot, it is practical to control our smoking woods. It is harder to control our fuel charcoal. There are two kinds of charcoal fires: All coals burn together in an arc for a short cook, or the fire works its way through a day's supply for a low & slow. Many of us can identify a sooty taste from lesser charcoal as raw charcoal lights in the latter case, and that is why we exclusively use CoCo Char for these cooks. For any other charcoal, I want the fire to be everywhere, as one gets using a chimney in a Weber, before cooking. It helps to light everywhere with a weed burner torch. It helps to wait. Beyond this, there are still other motivations to wait. Grilled chicken is a prime example: As a guest, having Weber grilled chicken is an exercise in enduring the off tastes of burning chicken fat. Still, with better equipment, we associate that taste with grilled chicken. When manufactures first tried to move away from cans for tomatoes, consumers missed the taste of the can. The ideal paella socarrat crust is golden, not tending to black, but countless fond memories of beach paella make Spaniards rather tolerant of socarrat that is "further cooked". Some people who try smoke pots miss the off tastes of combusting smoke wood; were it simply a matter of flavor strength, they'd use a bigger smoke pot or take more care to get the pot going. When there is time, I like to cook chicken indirect on the tail of a too-hot fire, so the chicken cooks primarily from radiant heat from the KK walls, with no taste of burning fat. This is a choice, and the timing takes practice. A KK stays hot for a long time after the fire dies down; take advantage of this. We also like to use the tails of fires for other purposes, if we are staying up: A foil-covered Spanish cazuela is great for roasting potatoes and onions tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and pimenton. This is the ideal potato component for a tortilla (Spanish omelet), even if the original recipe instead deep-fries the potato. Or a half dozen sliced red bell peppers, tossed in salt and olive oil, cooked down till the liquid is nearly gone. With a hotter fire, give a carbon steel pan such as a paella pan another round of seasoning: heat it, rub in a very thin coat of lard, and let it blacken and cool at no higher than 600 F. With other ceramic cookers, a very long preheat can be critical for handling loads at the brink of capacity, such as 25-30 lbs of butt in a K5. With my friend's K5 I then heat the smoke pot in a gas grill, and add it while rebuilding the fire before adding the meat. This saves staying up for hours wondering if the cook will ever stabilize.

Part of the reason I bought a KK is to show off its beauty. Considering there have been ceramic cookers that have lasted 10 years without being covered that do not have an elastomeric adhesive I don't think there are many issues regarding compromising the integrity of the cooker however if it makes it easier to get the snow or other debris off that would be a good reason to have one. In Ga we get a lot of rain but not much snow so I would never cover mine. The way I see it is its a personal preference however its not a necessity (in my opinion) in any climate.