3-2-1 Lift Off
“Where have you been the last couple weeks,” has been the common question we’ve been asked recently when bumping into friends at work or while climbing. Our answer is that we spent a nice amount of time with my family in Pittsburgh celebrating Thanksgiving. It would be too much text if I started describing all of the delicious meals (including Thanksgiving dinner) we had so I’ll just mention a dinner conversation that we had which led us into mischief. When we were talking about a place to take a hike one of the days I mentioned going to Laurel Hill State Park near Seven Springs Ski Resort. My Dad said, “Oh yeah, that’s a nice place to hike. I remember when we used to camp there and shoot off those model rockets you’d build.” I said,”Ohhhh yeah I miss shooting those things off.” On the way home from our hike the next day we stopped off and bought a little model rocket. A couple days later we were standing outside in the bitter cold hurrying to get the ignitor wires connected to a 9V battery. My Dad counted down, “5-4-3, no, no, we used to go from 10. Ok…10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 GO!” I put the wires to the battery and whooshhhh. The rocket soared off over my parents city neighborhood. It was awesome.
The rocket soared way up, almost out of sight and then the parachute popped out. The rocket fell back to Earth nice and slow until it touched down right next to some guy’s truck. Whoops. Close call. That guy was actually working construction and watched the whole launch and probably wondered if what we did was legal. Actually, was what we did really legal? ha ha. This was just one of the many fun moments and memories that we got to share with my parents over a great Thanksgiving vacation.
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