JenEric: 4th of July

Jen, her brother Josh and I drove up to Florida for the 4th of July to our grandparent's house on Cook's Bayou in Panama City. Every year Jen's family competes with the neighboring "Dawg House" (the Tiki Hut-style bar across the bayou) for the best fireworks show. Every year before the show Jen's family (the Pickles) heads across the bayou to talk trash to the Tiki Hut (all in fun). After dark the show begins... First up is the Dawg House. Their show was not bad this year. They had most of their fireworks launched from a boat in the middle of the bayou and they had quite an arsenal. But next up was the Pickles (Jen's mother's maiden name :)... but first I need to rewind...

Jen's uncle Bobby (from Virginia) found a fireworks dealer that would actually ship into Florida (buying fireworks in Florida is difficult unless you want snakes and sparklers...and we spent weeks trying to find somebody to deliver the fireworks because state lines and fireworks do not agree with each other). So Bobby, his son Nate, and good friend John spent hours of research online to check out videos of each firework to make sure they were good enough to be in our show. Once they made their selection and sent in their order, the shipment arrived in Florida. The boxes of fireworks were a staggering 4ft x 4ft x 6ft. Now the work began...

The entire show was timed and planned to be as precise as possible. There were 4 stations set up: First was the barge on the lake which shot off all of the "cakes" (the multi-shot fireworks, saturn missles, etc - there were a total of 3,210 saturn missle shots alone!); The remaining 3 stations were all dedicated to mortar shells (which make for a great show). The mortar shells are single shots, which wasn't going to work for our show. That's where our safety fuse came in. Hours were spent in testing the fuse for timing and then taping fuses together to make sets of 3. When it came time for the show the cakes on the barge created a constant pace, while each station set off their mortars in the perfect sequence. This was the best show I've ever been a part of, and it will continue to grow and become more amazing as the years go by. Needless to say, we had a good time at the Tiki Hut talking more trash after we won.

Here is our stack of fireworks