Rocket Science

Monday, May 1…   

Beautiful Countryside!

It was a long haul, and the one grocery/post office stop we made was in pouring rain. But the countryside is beautiful and we thoroughly enjoyed our evening visit w/ Chris & Bill Wydro. [For any non-family members… I went to college with Bill’s first wife, Sue, and after graduation she came to teach in the same school district as me just outside D.C. A couple years later she & I attended some sort of USO function, which is where she met BIll. Twenty years later, after I married Greg, we and my 4 kids joined Bill & Sue’s family in Oregon for several days. A few years after that, Sue lost her battle w/ cancer, but Greg & I stayed in touch w/ Bill (whose brother now lives in Snohomish). Bill’s second wife, Chris, inherited family property near Lexington, VA, and they spend about a third of their time here.] Phew!

Lining up the ice...

We arrive late afternoon in breezy and intermittently rainy weather. Chris is en route from D.C. and Bill (a retired science teacher) is excited to launch a volley of tennis balls & stuffed animals for our amusement. (Dry ice is the propellant. This is a grown-up version of what 8th graders do every spring out on the baseball fields.) He has just purchased the dry ice, and the first thing he needs to do is slice the block into strips that fit in a 2-liter bottle and store them in a cooler.

First cut...

A third of the way...

Two thirds...

... and done!

As I said, we have intermittent rain. We never actually see sunshine, but during a dry spell Bill wheels his launcher (6” PVC drainpipe strapped to a moving dolly) out onto the lower lawn. We’re on the back deck, 30’ above him and about 50’ away. He begins to load: ice-filled plastic bottle in the bottom. On top of that a smaller PVC pipe filled w/ tennis balls and topped w/ a colorful stuffed animal. During the process, the rain starts up again, so Bill’s holding an umbrella in one hand, trying to load everything with the other hand, and – of course –taking much longer than usual. He steps back when everything is done, and several seconds later the ice vaporizes, destroying the bottle and sending Snoopy (or whatever) and the tennis balls high in the air. 

But not nearly as high as Bill expects (or, more importantly, wants – the launch was entertaining, but not impressive). A second bottle and payload are loaded… BOOM! Payload soars, scatters and lands. Not good enough. One more launch: boom, soar, scatter, land.  It’s still raining. Bill’s told us these balls sometimes go over the trees. Not today. (During all of this, the wheels in Greg’s brain are doing somersaults thinking of upgrades and/or new twists to this trick. Leave these 2 alone for a couple days and there’s no telling what they’d come up with!)

7000SF... and still a work in progress. 

 After Chris arrived we enjoyed salad, lasagna, great garlic bread, delicious (buttery) green beans with almonds… and brownies (the only thing I can manage in our convection microwave). Also lots of lively (and mostly intelligent) discussion, including family stories, architecture (Chris’s dad literally built this 7000sf home himself), NASCAR, motorcycles, church music, and some political pontificating. (Bill was very actively, but appropriately, engaged in anti-Trump campaigning.) At 11pm we finally said our good-byes, returned to the MH, and fell into bed. 

BlogThought… It's wonderful to have longtime friends like these. Even though we haven't seen them for years (and only met Chris once), conversation and laughter flow easily. And I can bring brownies for dessert as a reminder to Bill that he and Sue gave Larry (my previous husband) & me a case of brownie mix as a wedding present. Tonight, however, the brownies are from scratch!