Fireworking

This is a hopelessly late post that was written minutes after the fourth of july but was not posted for reasons involving emotional childhood memories, long-division and gaudy flowered hats.

The Fourth of July has always held a special place in my heart. Something about projectiles of fire in the air, for no other purpose than celebration delights a part of me that is otherwise satisfied only in the event of a water landing. I feel more like the thrill-seeking, immature kid that I can become (with proper amounts of sugar and caffeine) on the fourth than on any other day of the year, for reasons that are more pyromaniacal than patriotic.

2004’s celebration quenched the thirst quite sufficiently with a special, planned trip to purchase fireworks, complete with lists and recommendations for alterations, resulting in an almost choreographed home display of National Pride and combustibility. Firecrackers popped as Picolo Pete’s wailed and screamed as the mortars that could only be described as “Illegal” went up like we were sieging Bastogne. Roman Candles were plentiful. Supervision was not.

This year may be the first year to pass without a single firework set off in my presence. Not a boom was heard. The anticipatory hiss of a lighted fuse was absent from my Independence Day. I traded the serene lap of waves against the shore for the adrenaline rush of ringing ears and a duct-taped two liter bottle with a bag of gunpowder inside, my day riding my bike down a mountain instead of trying to show the neighbors’ display up.
Nothing says Land of the Free like being free to go out in the land, so we exchanged fireworks for food and spent the day in the sun at Todd Lake.

I have pictures to prove it. Hopefully they will be available on this website soon.

Besides looking at and taking pictures of the beautiful surrounding mountains (Broken Top and Mt. Bachelor) there’s not a lot to do at Todd Lake. No rope swings from trees, paddleboats, waterfalls… I had to invent my own sport. The sport consists of me jumping over a log with a bagel in my mouth. I call it Bagel Jumping, which actually makes as much sense as calling my sport Log Eating, but my decision stands anyway. I don’t have high goals for this sport, maybe get it on ESPN 2 with a devoted following of people who have tried to play, kind of like Soccer.

Just kidding about Soccer, I love it at approximately the same level that a stereotypical overweight youth loves cake.

Recipe for excitement: a cowboy who talks like a pirate is riding a beautiful dragon on the way to rescue a horse, which is being guarded by a fire-breathing princess.
This is based on a recurring dream I have that seems to be fraught with indecipherable hidden meaning but so far has only revealed this snippet of a scene for what seems to be shrek 3.

If you have a really bad caffeine addiction, try getting a bad sunburn. You’ll forget all about it.