The 4th

Following tradition we headed up to Evanston Wyoming for the 4th. For those unaware, the residents of Evanston take the 4th as an open challenge. Almost as if someone told them that they thought they (the residents of Evanston) could not set the sky on fire. And the residents of Evanston responded by raising their fists into the air and replying with an exuberant "Oh yeah!" and so they try... and make a pretty good run at it.

We started the evening while it was still light by launching water rockets. It is important to warm up to events such as lighting up the midnight sky with pyrotechnic wonderment. launching water rockets stretches the neck muscles used to stare skyward at your bombs bursting in air. It also improves your trajectory tracking response. very necessary for admiring the rocketing tinders of Hell attempting propel themselves into heaven.

Ultimately the best metric for judging a home firework display is the "oooohhhh!" to "Oh SH!#!!!" ratio. and we did have a handful of them. You see, I made the mistake of buying the cheap fireworks from Jolly Roger's firework emporium and used tire shack. And My nephew Riley made the mistake of lighting fireworks that were beyond their expiration. We started with the expired firework. When you can't light a the fuse on a mortar, there is probably a reason... a good reason, probably divine intervention even. With much tribulation we finally got the fuse to light. The mortar shot about 5 feet in the air and blew up right in front of us. our first "Oh SH!#!!" Then I tested a bargain basement mortar that allegedly launched a parachute with a strobe. It launched about 30 feet in the air, took a look around, found a target and when the strobe parachute "deployed" it launched itself in a straight line for the trampoline in my brother's back yard. Shawn has cat-like reactions and almost ethereal intuition when it comes to fireworks. He moved so fast he nearly met the firework at the trampoline. He kicked it off before it could do any damage.
Later my nephew Trevor placed a "cake" a battery of mortars on a bucket and lit the fuse. We were thoroughly impressed by the show, but even more so when it fell off of the bucket. Once again Shawn was on the double and willing to risk setting himself on fire for the sake of our safety. The blur in the picture is Shawn.




And finally, I tried another cheap-o parachute mortar. this time it shot perhaps 10 feet in the air, spied another target, this time a homemade blanket, that had been completed the previous day and shot directly toward the blanket and set immediate fire to it. The Blur shown in the picture is Mandy and I rushing to extinguish the fire.




My final observation of the evening was my brother-in-law who is usually a flurry of activity, fluttering from one activity to the next. He usually has 20 irons in the fire and is tending to all of them. I watched him walk to the crest of the hill that overlooked town and stand there motionless and simply say "Wow!!!" You will notice in all of the pictures that there are fireworks exploding in the background. That is because any direction the camera was pointed, there were fireworks exploding... in a daft attempt to light the sky sans solar, Evanston style.