Der uber-pumpkin

Have you ever had a pumpkin last seven months without rotting? Neither had I, until this year. Last October, we went out to the pumpkin patch to buy a pumpkin, which we intended to carve into a jack-o-lantern. What wound up happening was we set the pumpkin in the kitchen and proceeded to walk around it while we did other things.

Such was the state of things for several months, until some time after New Years we realized that that really was a pumpkin from two months ago, and it hadn't turned to mush all over the floor yet. At that point, a friendly competition began over who could guess the date of the pumpkin molding the most accurately.

Even our furthest prediction only got us into mid-March.

So we proceeded to watch the pumpkin carefully for a few weeks. Weeks turned into a month, and a month into several. Finally, between Cinco de Mayo and Memorial Day, the pumpkin (which we had now dubbed the Uber-Pumpkin--I'd like to buy an umlaut, please?) finally got a few spots of mold. The mold didn't actually compromise the structural integrity of our friendly neighborhood uberpumpkin until Memorial Day weekend, at which point we declared an end to the experiment and proceeded to remove the toxic gourd from our back patio (we had decided to put it out there) in "the best way possible." You know what I'm getting at. Moldy Pumpkin Machete Baseball.*

Originally invented by Wes Sturr of Eastern Wyoming, the game consits of taking turns lobbing the moldy pumpkin (usually a jack-o-lantern in November, but this was a special case) at one another, and swinging at it baseball-style with a machete. Once the peices are too small to hit anymore, or all the parties are too grossed out to continue, the game is over. Whoever got the last hit wins.

We don't keep machetes around (shame on us), so we just ground a coarse edge onto a peice of steel flatstock. Ta-da!

With der uber-pumpkin eliminated, life could continue.

*I honestly thought I'd never get to use that tag again, but I actaully did.

Redneck sports

Give me a baseball bat and a baseball, both about three inches in diameter, and I can't get them to connect to save my life. Give me a broom handle and a soda can, and suddenly I have a .900 batting average. I don't get it either.

So I'm building a sandboard. I've modeled it more off of the "snurfer" than modern snowboards, but it has elemets of both. Not having bindings that I can fit my workboots in and not having snowboard boots, I decided to bolt the uppers from a pair of inline skates to the board. This way or may not work, I'll find out sometime between tomorrow and Sunday, when we go to Alamosa and I actually get it on the sand. So all ya'll ain't gonna hear from me for a while. As a matter of fact, I hope the dunes are as big as I remember them. That could be a dealbreaker.

As for the truck and the wheels from the red wagon, I have taken the regular wheels off of a longboard-type skateboard that I have in order to be less likely to be tempted to try something that will result in more road rash. What I really need is a mountainboard. Those things are cool, and much more useful and fun than regular skateboards. Plus, they don't have the same talent that skateboards have to almost break my neck.

The plan is to put the wheels from the wagon onto the longboard deck, bolt on some straps like a mountainboard of wakeboard would have, and do the land version of wakeboarding. It is really a pastime in the flatter areas of the country, to get dragged by your buddy's truck as you stand on something with wheels. In fact, I don't even need a truck, I just need two people: one to watch me from the vehicle and make sure I'm alright, and the other one to drive the vehicle. Motorcycle, truck, car, El Camino, I don't care.

Alternately, if I can figure out how to work and obtain a kite, I intend to kitesurf on land with it. That would be fun beyond words, and would even be worth driving out to the flatlands to do it. Or even hilly open space.