Tuesday, May 02, 2006

It Blows Up Real Good. Yup, Real Good


Remember the Farm Report skit on Second City TV? That's where Joe Flaherty and John Candy begin a report on agriculture and end up blowing up one or more celebrity guests. Each time that happened Big Jim McBob (Flaherty) and Billy Sol Hurok (Candy) would say, “they blown up real good!”

Anyway, this would appeal to Big Jim and Billy Sol, I'm sure.

The Idaho Boomershoot took place a couple days ago. Truly, I'm sorry I missed this event. It sounds awfully entertaining, although a bit weird. If I understand this correctly, people shoot a bricks of high explosive with high powered rifles. If you hit the target, it blows up, real good. Here's a review from the local paper

CAVENDISH, Idaho – Because shooting at paper targets can get boring, there is Boomershoot, where the targets blow up.

The weekend-long event is held each spring in a remote Idaho farm field and is considered a "Magic Kingdom" for serious long-distance shooters, said organizer Joe Huffman.

Participants pay $100 for a slot on the firing line, from which they plink at hundreds of high-explosive targets, some not much bigger than a brick and barely visible to the naked eye from 2,100 feet. Even from that distance, the targets can produce a chest-thumping shock wave.

And, even better, there's ANVIL FIRING at halftime!
Steve Joachim, a welder from Tum Tum, Wash., blasted an 80-pound anvil high into the sky for halftime entertainment Sunday. As the shooters watched during their lunch cease-fire, a steel tube was packed with black powder, then covered by the anvil. Before the fuse was lighted, Huffman offered a critical piece of advice: "If it starts coming down on top of you, move."

The anvil blew 75 feet high, prompting shouts of "Make it go higher!" and "More powder!" and "You might be a redneck if…"

Joachim poured an even larger charge for the second attempt. It would be the biggest blast ever, he said, even bigger than last anvil launching on Easter.

This time the anvil soared for nearly 6 seconds.

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