Author Topic: Fireworks (Read 586 times)

BlueJ1 · « **Reply #15 on:** July 03, 2006, 09:51:52 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Meatwad
waving balloons and handing out free bottlerockets

So thats what they call it these days.

Meatwad · « **Reply #16 on:** July 03, 2006, 09:54:25 PM »

Just around the 4th. I insulted one when I offered her $20 to see some real balloons

DiabloTX · « **Reply #17 on:** July 03, 2006, 09:55:46 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by BlueJ1
Thats why you set boundries. And if someone violates them they face the firing squad of roman candles.

Jeez...were so stupid...oh well.

Boundaries??? ARE YOU CRAZY????? Heck, that was half the fun! You spotted the enemy and tried to get one off before they knew what was up. It was great! We had this large open field with trees all around and a creek that was down at the bottom of a ravine...it was like Europe in WWII. When you have about 15 - 20 people running around just before dusk it made for the most fun you can (legally) have!

lasersailor184 · « **Reply #18 on:** July 03, 2006, 10:11:46 PM »

Well, I have bought no fireworks (being a PA resident). However, tomorrow night I'll be attending the 5th largest Fireworks display in the US right here at Penn State.

The show is set to go off for around 33 minutes of nonstop fireworks. The fireworks will be coordinated with the local radiostation.

And for the finally, it's supposed to go for about a minute and a half shooting off 50 shells per second.

Leslie · « **Reply #19 on:** July 03, 2006, 11:09:21 PM »

What looks cool is tossing a bottle rocket into the water and watching it blow up underwater at night. Used to love bottle rocket wars back in the day.

............................. ...

Hehe, one time back when I was 16, my friends and I were riding around shooting bottle rockets from the car at houses. I was driving. We musta fired some rockets at a house while the man was in his driveway, because we drove on and about 2 minutes later, while we were engaged in rocket firing at another house...a car speeded up and slammed on brakes in front of us to cut us off. Out jumped a man who proceeded to fire a revolver into the air over our car...bang, bang, bang bang. LOL Sounded like a .38.

One of my buddies yelled "Let's get the hell outta here Les!" And I floored it in reverse and backed up tires squealing. It seems comical now that I think of it, because we outran the guy by the time he got back in his car. No one was shot. But he did chase us for awhile. It was all thrills, we weren't as scared as we should have been. That was the early 70s. If we did that nowadays we mighta been shot.

Our car was a 64 Rambler Ambassador 990 with the 327 I think. Anyway, it was a fast car for a Rambler. Another time, my friends lit a string of firecrackers in the car while we were going down the interstate. That was interesting. Made lots of smoke. The worst part was the windows were up, and with that particular car if you rolled down more than one electric window at a time, the fuse would blow...and that's what happened. We had to pull over and open the doors.

Les

nirvana · « **Reply #20 on:** July 04, 2006, 01:19:30 AM »

rpm · « **Reply #21 on:** July 04, 2006, 03:37:13 AM »

Fireworks have been banned here this year because of the drought. You can buy them, you can sell them, but you can not use them. It is a minimum $300 fine and they are serious about enforcing it.
Link

nirvana · « **Reply #22 on:** July 04, 2006, 03:42:44 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by rpm
Fireworks have been banned here this year because of the drought. You can buy them, you can sell them, but you can not use them. It is a minimum $300 fine and they are serious about enforcing it.
Link

Exactamundo, same thing they did here. I had heard they also banned the sale of them but that appears to be false as no tents have closed.

beet1e · « **Reply #23 on:** July 04, 2006, 03:52:28 AM »

LOL - you guys are telling me that fireworks are... b-b-b-b-b-BANNED in some US states? Whatever next? Maybe they'll ban dildoes - oh wait, they already have in TX!

Well bugger, I've decided I'll do fireworks this year. Our national firework day is on Nov. 5, anniversary of the 1605 gunpowder plot. My favourites are Catherine Wheels, air bomb batteries, jack-in-the-box and the big rockets. The problem with catherine wheels and six point stars is that you need a tree or fence to which they can be nailed. Could be a fire hazard, but not in England on a damp November day!

eagl · « **Reply #24 on:** July 04, 2006, 04:00:02 AM »

One really good thing about the UK is that they have AWESOME fireworks available for sale to the general public. Holy cow those suckers rock. They go waaay over the line for use by "amatures", and in my experience, Americans who didn't grow up using these suckers tend to be a bit over their heads when they start playing around with them.

We had a guy trip over the launch tube at a party, and he sent a spark into the bucket full of on-call artillery. Funny as hell watching everyone dive for cover until one rocket hit the only pregnant woman square in the chest... Luckily she wasn't even slightly injured, but most Americans are just noobs when it comes to real fireworks. Our nanny state has made it so we're freaking dangerous when trying to handle fireworks that even "youngsters" are allowed to buy in the UK.

The worst mishap I personally had with fireworks in the UK was when a defective stabilization stick broke on launch at about 4 ft altitude and the rocket took a hard turn and bounced off the side of the house before detonating in the shrubbery. I'm not sure what I could have done about that since a post-mortem investigation revealed that the stick had a knot in it just a few inches from the rocket and the knot cleanly sheared off during the launch, but it could have been ugly if the rocket had gone in a less favorable direction. Maybe if my government had let me use fireworks while growing up, I would have recognized the defect before lighting the fuse. Maybe.

Of course most of the world considers the US to be dangerous when playing with almost anything that the rest of the world figured out how to handle in an adult manner a few hundred years ago, but whatcha gonna do about it punk? We gots NUKES so BOOYAH!

beet1e · « **Reply #25 on:** July 04, 2006, 05:12:36 AM »

LOL eagl! I had that same thing happen with a rocket that I launched from an incinerator. It was WAY too big to launch from a bottle, but the mesh which formed the bottom of the incinerator was about 12 inches off the ground and was perfect. Because of drizzle, the rocket was slightly damp, so it took off slowly, turned horizontal, and then - just as all the damp powder had been burnt off, it flew horizontally at full power across the garden, punching a hole in the neighbour's fence where it remained lodged, burning, screeching, discharging coloured balls which exploded all around us...

Those were the days. We didn't have a nanny government back then, and people didn't sue the firework maker if they got burned. Compare that with today when, under Blair's nannydom, children are adviced to wear goggles when playing conkers "in case a flying conker fragment went in someone's eye".

eagl · « **Reply #26 on:** July 04, 2006, 05:25:09 AM »

That would be so much more meaningful if I knew what a conker was, but thanks anyhow

Seriously, yea I hope you guys don't lose your cool fireworks. It was fun living in Cambridge and hearing all the fireworks every Friday/Sat night, especially when school terms ended. I'd sometimes set up a chair near a window that opened towards city center to watch the fun, and hope that the guy on the adjacent street wouldn't send one my way by "accident"

DiabloTX · « **Reply #27 on:** July 04, 2006, 05:27:53 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by rpm
Fireworks have been banned here this year because of the drought. You can buy them, you can sell them, but you can not use them. It is a minimum $300 fine and they are serious about enforcing it.
Link

It's rained here in Houston everyday for the last 3 days. We're ready for some 'splosions!!! KA-POWWWWW!!!!!!

beet1e · « **Reply #28 on:** July 04, 2006, 05:30:12 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
That would be so much more meaningful if I knew what a conker was, but thanks anyhow

Link: http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/conkers.html

Yes, I heard lots of fireworks on Saturday, after England's departure from the World Cup! Nothing to celebrate, but having bought the fireworks, what else was there to do with them?

eagl · « **Reply #29 on:** July 04, 2006, 06:21:43 AM »

I remember playing a similiar game in school but lacking chesnuts, we used the official "#2" pencils handed out for tests at school. At the time synthetic wood pencils were starting to be manufactured and they would bend and break fairly easily, so the real wood pencils handed out by the school were prized posessions for both writing and playing little snap the pencil sorts of games. Pretty much the same rules, except that instead of a good pencil maintaining a score, the winner got to write with his beaten but intact pencil while all the losers had to use the two remaining halves for the rest of the day or until they could get a new pencil. Posers would discard their broken pencils for those cheapo fake wood pencils in the same way that jobless ricers now use fake pop-off valves to pretend they have a turbo under the hood, but a quick challenge and humiliating defeat by someone with a real wood pencil would put the posers in their place pretty quick.

The school got wise to the games and started requiring us to turn our pencils back in, so people started turning in the fake wood pencils or pencils nearing the end of their useful writing life. At that point, selling real wood pencils on campus at a substantial price markup became, for a while, more profitable than selling firecrackers.

I remember getting a case of about 500 wood pencils for $10, and I sold them all for 25 cents each in about 3 days.