Misadventures with Skyrockets

This is my first post on my new blog. Just to see if this crazy thing really works, I've decided to paste in some ramblings about my various misadventures with skyrockets. My misadventures with skyrockets began at a very early age and have continued through most of my life. Here are some of the highlights:

Early Experiments

When I was about 10 years old, I made a small rocket by painstakingly cutting the small disks of gunpowder from about a hundred toy cap-gun caps and stuffing them into a segment of tube from a "monkey-tail" plant. I lit the little rocket with a magnifying glass. It shot straight up my sleeve and exploded in my armpit. That hurt a bit.

Mexican Garage Fireworks

When I was in college I went to Mexico with some friends. We bought a big bundle of large exploding rockets that were obviously made in someone's garage. Due to a little problem with a very fast-burning fuse, the rocket ended up ricocheting around inside a confined balcony space while a friend and I jumped and dodged to get out of its way. It eventually impacted my hip and exploded, leaving a small crater in my thigh. That also hurt a bit.

Flare Gun

Another time in college, some friends launched a rocket from an eighth-story dorm room across the quad into the common room of another dorm where it exploded, panicking the students studying there. The next day, housing authorities circulated a flyer soliciting any information regarding suspects who fired a “flare gun” through the dorm window.

A Brush with Fame

And on yet another night in college, my roommate attempted to launch two rockets simultaneously out of our dorm window with a homemade bazooka. One went out the window, but the other shot around the confined room and exploded, setting off the fire alarm. We went into a panic trying to air the room out before the whole building alarm went off. Olympic swimmer Matt Biondi lived one floor below. Suddenly he burst through our door, sucked in a huge Olympic-sized breath, and blew on the fire alarm until it shut off! Then he turned to us and told us to, “Quit fucking around!” He seemed to sort of resent the disturbance. That was my brush with flame…uh, I mean fame.

Another Confined Space

On my last night in the dorms, my friends and I were drinking tequila and firing rockets out the window, while some lunatic on the balcony next to us yelled, “Thunder! Lightning! Feel my power!” Apparently he thought he was causing the lights in the sky. My friend’s skyrocket technique was to stand well back from the window, light the fuse, wait for the rocket to start to flare, then throw it out the window. Eventually he missed the window, and I was able to re-experience the by-now-familiar thrill of dodging a rocket in a confined space as it shot around my dorm room and exploded. Another friend of mine, who stands about six foot four was able to prevent the fire alarm from sounding by holding a pillow over it while we aired the smoke out of the place. It’s good to have friends in high places.

Hechen Bala!

A few years later in San Felipe, some friends and I were launching rockets from the beach out into the ocean, when some locals in a house above us on a cliff sent a few jumping jack fireworks in our general direction. For some reason we took it personally and decided to launch our very last rocket back at them. You could not have asked for a better shot. The rocket soared up to the top of the cliff, barely cleared the wall around the yard, and exploded about ten feet off the ground, directly over their heads. Of course they returned fire, and because we were out of ammo, we spent the next fifteen minutes dodging rockets on the beach. When you visit another country, it’s important to remember that you represent all Americans.