There were 25 teams from all over the NASA community in Houston, including space shuttle and station projects, with teams ranging from the public affairs office to the 1995 astronaut class (the Flying Escargot) to a bunch of medical doctors. Surfin' Chili was probably the 5th oldest team with continuous representation, behind (in no particular order) PAO, Wrong Stuff, BARF, and Red Baron.
Note: drinking screwdrivers starting at 8 a.m. makes the day go a lot faster.
Our skit this year was an X-Files takeoff called X-Files: The Chili Incident. It has the X-Mobile, crop circles, mysterious disappearances, the Unabomber, Zeta Reticulans, and the return of Pat McGroin. And oh yeah, we deliberately chose to put a guy in drag to help our Showmanship chances. (Picture by Dale Martin, special to the Surfin' Chili page.)
FOD Awards:
Next year, guys...
The 1996 cookoff was the first one in which one of the teams had their own web page (this one, of course, which has been around since December 1995). At least one other team, impressed by the technical wizardry required for web page building, stole the idea and began to make their own. The Red Baron Chili page was up for a while, but apparently they found that they couldn't compete with Surfin' Chili and took it down.