Rain Gryphon

Local fireworks store explodes!

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Boat parade, featuring the Yellow Submarine!

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Tractor parade!

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A regular parade, with Antique Bicycle Lady, and more tractors!

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As friend Whitetail correctly surmised, I love living in a small town, doing small town things. For the longest time, I wanted to live in the city, and do city things. That's over :)

I regret not having watched Trump's stirring speech at Mount Rushmore. It was one for the ages.

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WHO changes its story yet again.

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Amazing amounts of fireworks visible this Fourth of July, and much of it mortars. I was using one and three-quarter inch bore, but many of the farms around were obviously using much larger mortars, judging by the height and the sheer amounts of fire and sparkly stuff in the bursts. I can see where a lot of the $1200 TrumpBux went:)

I could see most of the Mentone display to my south, of course, and bits of what I think were Etna Green's display far off in the north. Additionally, to the Southeast, pretty close by and plainly visible, was what appeared to be a professional display that rivalled the town's. I have no idea who that might have been.

There's something deeply satisfying about the solid *BOOM* that a mortar gives, and then standing below, watching the fuse of the spinning shell as it rises, and finally bursts with a report that you can actually feel, before smouldering bits of cardboard come raining down.

I had a box of these little things called "flashers", that were new to me. They came packed into an assortment of fountains, or I'd have never bought 'em. They looked pretty unpromising - little cardboard tubs, almost like bottlecaps, filled with some mixture, and a fuse sticking out the top. Well... The thing just about blinded me. It was some sort of pyro mixture with chunks of magnesium in it, and like a dumbass, I stared directly at it from a few feet away. I had a huge afterimage in my vision for the longest time, bit it's okay now.

The firework I miss is an old-fashioned type of fountain called a "Vesuvius Cone". It basically just shoots out big clouds of orange sparks. It's nothing too dramatic by modern standards, but I always enjoyed them. I don't think they even make them anymore.

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Ferrari put in a pretty dismal showing at the Austrian GP, despite LeClerc's second place. Mercedes, McLaren, and even Racing Point had the advantage over them. LeClerc got his second more through the failures of his rivals than anything, although he kept pressing as hard as he was able, and kept himself in a position to profit. The trophies were in the shape of the Österreichring. Bottas had to study his for a bit before he figured out how to set it down :) They're at the same track next weekend, it appears.

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Lots of blown tires at Indianapolis. A pretty good race overall, but the lack of testing and practice showed. That's a hard track on tires to begin with. Kevin Harvick won, after Hamlin popped his right front tire and went into the wall with seven laps to go. I very much doubt that Harvick was going to catch him otherwise.

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Suddenly, I'm getting an extremely unwelcome "trending searches" popup on the Google website, with no apparent way to turn it off.

You might reasonably expect that nothing could be more impressive than an exploding gas station. So, here's an exploding gas station filled with fireworks.