BERSERKER!!! (Part III - A Flash In The Plan)
BERSERKER!!!
Note: First names only, for the sake of anonymity, or lacking if I didn't remember (sorry!) You know who you are!
SATURDAY MORNING
A late start around 9, but needing foodstuffs, I made a trip with Emily and Jason down to Calumet. Looks like the set of a 1930s hometown Americana movie. Even an old guy on the main street polishing the chrome of a vintage red roadster. Great red sandstone and granite buildings! There's also some lovely ruined mining buildings near a town called Gay. Yes, it has a bar; no, I didn't check it out. There was a burned out tavern along M-41, however, with a sign out front which read "Goodbye old friends!". Hmmm... never heard of a pub commiting suicide before...
Back to the sands, this time with a bit better direction and no offroad adventures, at a bit past 11. I needed breakfast! Mad scrambles with peppers, onions, cheese and Canadian bacon, toasted honey-wheat bagels and strawberry cream cheese. Yowza!! And I had chili yet to make for dinner...
PIXIES IN THE STICKS
One of the unexpected photo ops of the weekend was having Emily pose for me in the woods for about an hour. She had done a turn with Kevin earlier. Kevin has a thing for fur and chainmail bikinis, and she was getting into it just a bit too much, resulting in an injured toenail sustained while running blindfolded and handcuffed (her idea, she says)!! I tend to like more naturalistic settings, and we found the nearby waterfall by the campsite a perfect locale. Lush moss-covered rocks and horsetails everywhere, perfect noonday sun pouring straight down from overhead into this narrow little valley. Probably some of the best figure studies I've done outside the studio. Only two problems: the mosquitos were fierce, even in the daylight, and it was perhaps a little too close to the campsite for comfort (lucky for us, the only interuptions were adults, not kids). Next time, we might go a bit further afield for safety. Then too, there's a green garden hose from the old mines on the ridge above the sands which brings water down to the camp. It runs the length of the stream and goes right through the waterfall. I've spent a week now, editing the damn thing out of dozens of pictures! Had I only been thinking with the *big* head, maybe I'd have taken it out beforehand! Live and learn...
TALE OF THE BARMY BOMB-BARNEY
The order (or was it 'ordinance'?) of the day was attending to some unfinished blitz-ness from Friday night. Seems a certain annoying purple dinosaur had earned a reprieve from a fiery fate, owing to a blown circuit on the range safety fire-control box. This same little toy figure had survived several attempted rocket launches, and had had the business end of a potato cannon rammed into its nether regions, only to result in the potato going clean through its head rather than lofting it into oblivion. Needless to say, the crowd's enthusiasm was piqued. Having spent a frustrated night awaiting repairs to the firing switch, they were out for blood and foam-filled purple hide! I even heard a little four-year-old girl on her daddy's shoulders chirping "Barney go boom!"
The doll is once again placed atop a wooden file cabinet filled with flash powder. The countdown is resumed, the switch is thrown... BANG!! A billowing plume of fire, smoke and sand expands, and a decidedly solid-looking purple projectile lands intact amidst the splintered remnants of the cabinet. Singed and soiled but still enough left to be identifiable, Barney has defied death yet again and rises from the ashes of his pyre!
No chances will be taken now! The frustration and disappointment are palpable... nothing short of total annihilation will appease these people! Such attavism, for nothing more than a toy effigy, I have never seen! At last, Barney is stuffed with a claymore, propped up on a tripod of wooden dowels, and trotted back out to the field. Now, the moment of truth... the final effort to destroy the indestructible, the unmaking of the enduring evil which corrupts small minds!! And with a satisfying "Ka-BLAM!!!" we at last see fragments of cloth and smouldering bits of foam stuffing drift downwind.
Still, the crowd wants to be certain Barney is no more. Here's a piece of his belly which clearly reads "I Love You!" There's a piece of his cheesy grin and his burned out head. Enough remains that someone decides there ought to be one final sacrificial offering for later in the evening.
AN AFTERNOON ON AFTERBURNERS
Having dispatched the Purple Menace, thoughts turn from flying to floating. Marion wants to test out her pink styrofoam trimaran, with Pepsi bottle pontoons ducttaped to the hull. A 'D'-size model rocket engine of dubious vintage is strapped on top. We all march into the swamp to the edge of a pond. Several abortive attempts are made to get the boat's motor to ignite. The fuse cord doesn't seem to do anything, so they pour black powder in the rocket nozzle. Big flash, no whoosh. They replace the motor with a fresher one and try again. While all this is happening, my camcorder battery is winding down to the last dregs.
All throughout Friday, I'd been running my car to get power for my AC inverter; until the engine overheated, that is! Seems my electric cooling fan is broken and won't switch on while the engine is idling. With less than half an hour charging at a stretch, the camcorder battery gives me no more than about 10-15 minutes of footage. So, naturally, after wasting time on four misfires, it dies just as the boat sputters to life!
And what a sputter! It sounded like a misfiring car engine, a most uncharacteristic hesitation for a solid-fuel rocket. Fizzz! Pop! Fizzz!! Pop, pop, putter... The boat has at last begun to move tentatively off the bank, into the pond, but then goes quiet. Everyone wonders how they're going to retrieve it from the middle of the pond, when suddenly the motor whistles to life with a loud hissss! Flame and smoke belch out as the tiny craft becomes a mighty hydroplane, spinning round and round the pond twice until it comes to rest right in front of Marion! AND I GOT NONE OF IT ON TAPE!!!
Dermot was there with the glider we'd rescued from a treetop earlier, prepared to hand launch it. It took a second to light, then leapt up over the trees back toward the sands. I head off with two others to find it. We discovering a pile of broken wings, tail fins and a fuselage with a stick proudly clamped in its jaws! No sooner do we turn back to the pond than we hear rockets, whoops and yelps! In under five minutes, they'd reloaded and launched the boat a second time, this time becoming briefly airborne, and colliding with Tulio on the shore (without injury, thankfully). I missed that, too!
I was a little frustrated, but returned to camp to find Guy making five more batches of LOX icecream (spoiling everyone's appetite before dinner, for shame!) Nothing like icecream to brighten a momentary bout of gloom.
There were several interesting devices on display. There was a solar oven consisting of about a hundred CD-ROM discs in a large hexagon frame, pulled into a loosely parabolic dish, focused on a small pot of water with a thermometer in it. Never quite boiled... too many people watching it, I guess!
The other item of special note was a large vortex cannon, like the small handheld AirZookas I saw at Penguicon recently, only much bigger. Take an elastic membrane, cover one of the ends of an open barrel, pull and release. These small devices fire a rotating torus of air for several yards, capable of mussing hair or knocking empty cans off your head. The specimen on display here was a large polyethylene pickle barrel, ends cut out, with a doubled-over piece of blue tarpaulin plastic held around one end with a metal band. A disk in the middle had a handle on the outer side, and a loop of bungee cord attached to the inner edge of the opposite end of the barrel, running through an anchor on the inside of the disk. There was a large piece of tubing to serve as a handlebar on the operators side, keeping the whole thing aimed while pulling the elastic with the handle of the disk. All this was mounted on a base from an oscillating room fan. This moved quite a good deal of air very quickly and for a good distance. Someone had the bright idea to fill the barrel with puffs of smoke from a handheld beehive smoker. Upon firing the cannon, a well defined three-foot-wide smoke ring sailed out across the sands for nearly thirty feet! The setting sun backlit these apparitions perfectly, like ghosts gliding effortlessly along and dissipating wherever they hit a person or the ground. Splendid toy for demonstrating vortices, or for just having fun!
After snapping several really nice shots, it was time to make dinner.
Note: First names only, for the sake of anonymity, or lacking if I didn't remember (sorry!) You know who you are!
SATURDAY MORNING
A late start around 9, but needing foodstuffs, I made a trip with Emily and Jason down to Calumet. Looks like the set of a 1930s hometown Americana movie. Even an old guy on the main street polishing the chrome of a vintage red roadster. Great red sandstone and granite buildings! There's also some lovely ruined mining buildings near a town called Gay. Yes, it has a bar; no, I didn't check it out. There was a burned out tavern along M-41, however, with a sign out front which read "Goodbye old friends!". Hmmm... never heard of a pub commiting suicide before...
Back to the sands, this time with a bit better direction and no offroad adventures, at a bit past 11. I needed breakfast! Mad scrambles with peppers, onions, cheese and Canadian bacon, toasted honey-wheat bagels and strawberry cream cheese. Yowza!! And I had chili yet to make for dinner...
PIXIES IN THE STICKS
One of the unexpected photo ops of the weekend was having Emily pose for me in the woods for about an hour. She had done a turn with Kevin earlier. Kevin has a thing for fur and chainmail bikinis, and she was getting into it just a bit too much, resulting in an injured toenail sustained while running blindfolded and handcuffed (her idea, she says)!! I tend to like more naturalistic settings, and we found the nearby waterfall by the campsite a perfect locale. Lush moss-covered rocks and horsetails everywhere, perfect noonday sun pouring straight down from overhead into this narrow little valley. Probably some of the best figure studies I've done outside the studio. Only two problems: the mosquitos were fierce, even in the daylight, and it was perhaps a little too close to the campsite for comfort (lucky for us, the only interuptions were adults, not kids). Next time, we might go a bit further afield for safety. Then too, there's a green garden hose from the old mines on the ridge above the sands which brings water down to the camp. It runs the length of the stream and goes right through the waterfall. I've spent a week now, editing the damn thing out of dozens of pictures! Had I only been thinking with the *big* head, maybe I'd have taken it out beforehand! Live and learn...
TALE OF THE BARMY BOMB-BARNEY
The order (or was it 'ordinance'?) of the day was attending to some unfinished blitz-ness from Friday night. Seems a certain annoying purple dinosaur had earned a reprieve from a fiery fate, owing to a blown circuit on the range safety fire-control box. This same little toy figure had survived several attempted rocket launches, and had had the business end of a potato cannon rammed into its nether regions, only to result in the potato going clean through its head rather than lofting it into oblivion. Needless to say, the crowd's enthusiasm was piqued. Having spent a frustrated night awaiting repairs to the firing switch, they were out for blood and foam-filled purple hide! I even heard a little four-year-old girl on her daddy's shoulders chirping "Barney go boom!"
The doll is once again placed atop a wooden file cabinet filled with flash powder. The countdown is resumed, the switch is thrown... BANG!! A billowing plume of fire, smoke and sand expands, and a decidedly solid-looking purple projectile lands intact amidst the splintered remnants of the cabinet. Singed and soiled but still enough left to be identifiable, Barney has defied death yet again and rises from the ashes of his pyre!
No chances will be taken now! The frustration and disappointment are palpable... nothing short of total annihilation will appease these people! Such attavism, for nothing more than a toy effigy, I have never seen! At last, Barney is stuffed with a claymore, propped up on a tripod of wooden dowels, and trotted back out to the field. Now, the moment of truth... the final effort to destroy the indestructible, the unmaking of the enduring evil which corrupts small minds!! And with a satisfying "Ka-BLAM!!!" we at last see fragments of cloth and smouldering bits of foam stuffing drift downwind.
Still, the crowd wants to be certain Barney is no more. Here's a piece of his belly which clearly reads "I Love You!" There's a piece of his cheesy grin and his burned out head. Enough remains that someone decides there ought to be one final sacrificial offering for later in the evening.
AN AFTERNOON ON AFTERBURNERS
Having dispatched the Purple Menace, thoughts turn from flying to floating. Marion wants to test out her pink styrofoam trimaran, with Pepsi bottle pontoons ducttaped to the hull. A 'D'-size model rocket engine of dubious vintage is strapped on top. We all march into the swamp to the edge of a pond. Several abortive attempts are made to get the boat's motor to ignite. The fuse cord doesn't seem to do anything, so they pour black powder in the rocket nozzle. Big flash, no whoosh. They replace the motor with a fresher one and try again. While all this is happening, my camcorder battery is winding down to the last dregs.
All throughout Friday, I'd been running my car to get power for my AC inverter; until the engine overheated, that is! Seems my electric cooling fan is broken and won't switch on while the engine is idling. With less than half an hour charging at a stretch, the camcorder battery gives me no more than about 10-15 minutes of footage. So, naturally, after wasting time on four misfires, it dies just as the boat sputters to life!
And what a sputter! It sounded like a misfiring car engine, a most uncharacteristic hesitation for a solid-fuel rocket. Fizzz! Pop! Fizzz!! Pop, pop, putter... The boat has at last begun to move tentatively off the bank, into the pond, but then goes quiet. Everyone wonders how they're going to retrieve it from the middle of the pond, when suddenly the motor whistles to life with a loud hissss! Flame and smoke belch out as the tiny craft becomes a mighty hydroplane, spinning round and round the pond twice until it comes to rest right in front of Marion! AND I GOT NONE OF IT ON TAPE!!!
Dermot was there with the glider we'd rescued from a treetop earlier, prepared to hand launch it. It took a second to light, then leapt up over the trees back toward the sands. I head off with two others to find it. We discovering a pile of broken wings, tail fins and a fuselage with a stick proudly clamped in its jaws! No sooner do we turn back to the pond than we hear rockets, whoops and yelps! In under five minutes, they'd reloaded and launched the boat a second time, this time becoming briefly airborne, and colliding with Tulio on the shore (without injury, thankfully). I missed that, too!
I was a little frustrated, but returned to camp to find Guy making five more batches of LOX icecream (spoiling everyone's appetite before dinner, for shame!) Nothing like icecream to brighten a momentary bout of gloom.
There were several interesting devices on display. There was a solar oven consisting of about a hundred CD-ROM discs in a large hexagon frame, pulled into a loosely parabolic dish, focused on a small pot of water with a thermometer in it. Never quite boiled... too many people watching it, I guess!
The other item of special note was a large vortex cannon, like the small handheld AirZookas I saw at Penguicon recently, only much bigger. Take an elastic membrane, cover one of the ends of an open barrel, pull and release. These small devices fire a rotating torus of air for several yards, capable of mussing hair or knocking empty cans off your head. The specimen on display here was a large polyethylene pickle barrel, ends cut out, with a doubled-over piece of blue tarpaulin plastic held around one end with a metal band. A disk in the middle had a handle on the outer side, and a loop of bungee cord attached to the inner edge of the opposite end of the barrel, running through an anchor on the inside of the disk. There was a large piece of tubing to serve as a handlebar on the operators side, keeping the whole thing aimed while pulling the elastic with the handle of the disk. All this was mounted on a base from an oscillating room fan. This moved quite a good deal of air very quickly and for a good distance. Someone had the bright idea to fill the barrel with puffs of smoke from a handheld beehive smoker. Upon firing the cannon, a well defined three-foot-wide smoke ring sailed out across the sands for nearly thirty feet! The setting sun backlit these apparitions perfectly, like ghosts gliding effortlessly along and dissipating wherever they hit a person or the ground. Splendid toy for demonstrating vortices, or for just having fun!
After snapping several really nice shots, it was time to make dinner.