You see, last night the Science rebroadcast their programming of the 2010 Punkin Chunkin World Championships. Since the boys had seen all the commercials for the event they REALLY wanted to see it. Well, being the educator that I am I said, "okay, but let's build our own too and get rid of these pumpkins that have been hanging around since Halloween." So we set out to build our Punkin' Chunker;
Okay, so it wasn't that big and it wasn't an air cannon, but how cool is that? I mean chunkin' a pumpkin 4491 feet? That's almost 15 football fields in length! A mile is only 5280 feet! That's insanity - but a challenge!
But no, we didn't build an air cannon (darn it all to heck!), nor did we build this amazing example of counterweight superiority;
No, unfortunately, ours was more of a "hey, I've got a barn, let's put on a show" variety. I knew I had lots of bungee cords (and what self-respecting father doesn't?) so I scrounged around to figure out what pieces of wood I had around the house. I thought I had lots of 2 x 4's but alas, no so I had to make due with some pieces of tongue and groove boards left over from the Smithtown house (yes, I'm a pack rat and I brought over leftover scraps of wood when we moved).
So, since I didn't have a REAL plan, the idea was to utilize what I had into some sort of throwing arm contraption with the goal of trying to shoot a small pumpkin (or a softball) at least 20 feet. So the boys and I sawed (okay, I did the sawing with the chop box), drilled (William liked that part especially), screwed (both boys enjoy using the power drill for that as well), glued and put it all together. Now, unfortunately I was a very bad father in that I didn't chronicle the step by step process. As it was it took us three hours to get it all put together and workable. Needless to say, the boys lost interest after about two hours and went inside telling me to "call us when it punkin' chunkin' time."
But eventually I got it constructed and firing on a decent trajectory. It has to be mentioned here that James took the colored chalk and created a "castle" on the concrete wall to use as a target which was complete with towers and a drawbridge. Finally I called the kids out.
The boys had their friend Sean over and all four kids took turns taking shots at the castle. But, as I feared, the design was not as structurally sound as it could have been, due to my lack of planning and the fact I was simply using materials I had around the house. After about ten shots the stopper arm started pulling away from the support arm causing a massive crack to run down the support arm. So we decided to keep going until we suffered catastrophic failure. We also found out that the current design works really well with softballs! It's all on the video;
So, when people ask me, what did you do on your Thanksgiving break I get to tell them I went Punkin' Chunkin'!!!!! Of course, it has now become a challenge and I am on a quest to create an even better version of this and I'll even go and buy three or four 2x4's and do it up right! NEXT YEAR WE ARE GOING FOR MORE POWER!!!!! I found a great plan for a catapault but its a little small for what I want - maybe I can supersize it! Or I might go for a torsion catapault and get it a little bit bigger. Maybe we can start our own little mini-Punkin' Chunkin and invite all the neighborhood kids! We can set it up in the front yard and try to chuck them across the street at the big retaining wall there!
Now granted, I did get SOME ride time in as I went for an epic 25 mile ride up and down as many hills as I could get in during my alotted hour and a half ride time on Saturday! I was facing headwind gusts of 15-20 miles an hour and climbing some steep hills but Betty handled it all in stride. I was riding so well that I decided to drop my stem about 10 mm to see if I can start getting a little more aero in my ride!
Letter are also going out this week soliciting sponsors for the Cross Country ride. I really am starting to get very nervous about this happening at all, much less this summer! Aside from Smiles for Scott (http://www.smilesforscott.org/), we haven't really gotten much in the way of sponsorships and I really have to ask people what gives? Someone can post on face book about eating turkey and get 50 comments but I post to my 700+ friends about needing sponsor contacts and only my sister Tamara and Sandie Ramos (from my Ansbach High School days) have answered. It sometimes really gets me depressed about how I can do good in the world when the world doesn't seem to care? I know there are an amazing number of people in my life that have business contacts but what do I have to do to get them to use them? Am I wrong? Is anybody out there? Can someone answer? Please?
Oh well, so I'm riding Pearl in tomorrow. I've converted her to a winter commuter bike with fenders and a rack, but she's still all black - why mess with perfection? So I'll write tomorrow about how that works out and in the meantime -- ride safe, AND GO CHUNK SOME PUNKIN'S!!!!!!
Stay well!
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