While it wasn’t obvious at the time, my troubles started in the early 1990s with the odd impulse buy of a roman candle. It was several years before the joy of lighting corner store grade 40mm aerials, one at a time with a Bic lighter, then running like hell, backwards, started to fade. I then drafted several friends as shooters, armed them with self igniting torches and walkie-talkies and introduced simultaneous ignition to the fun.
Inspired by the aesthetic potential of choreography, the shows grew from a handful of shells to over 50. Toward the late 90s, we discovered cakes, which are commercially available bundles of single shot mortar/shells ganged together with wick to fire in interesting series/parallel patterns. After several particularly memorable shows where cakes jumped and landed on their sides mid sequence, shooting a barrage of deceptively small charges sideways at the speed of sound for 3 seconds before exploding into green stars, red chrysanthemums and multi colored peonies, very close to the shooters, running like hell, backwards, we began to cobble together anchoring systems, mortars and mortar racks.
By 2005, we were using as many shells as three of us could carry in daylight, multiple launch sites, a combination of ganging with wick, shooters with radios, torches and electric ignition. Despite more ignition failures than I can count, generally random choreography, large unplanned delays in shows, significant time spent in the disposal of shell carcasses, losing an entire show to a thunderstorm, we press on in good spirit.
My goal is to get my Display Operators License,
and reliable ignition.
To be a photographer,
and drive a train.
Mike.
