Kathianne
11-01-2008, 04:30 PM
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/home_journal_news/4289786.html
Halloween has never been kind to pumpkins. But in Sussex County, Delaware, this weekend, hundreds of the gourds will meet a particularly gruesome end: Loaded into hulking compressed-air cannons, fired like artillery shells across an empty field, their ground-splattering detonations will be cheered on by thousands of spectators. Other pumpkins will be vaulted into the air by modern incarnations of medieval siege machines, trebuchets and catapults that whip payloads thousands of feet through the air.
To say that the three-day-long Annual World Championship Punkin' Chunkin' competition—now in its 23rd year—is a labor of love is not only a cliche, but a gross misrepresentation. Chunkin' is a feat of obsessive, competitive engineering. According to Frank Shade, President of the Punkin' Chunkin' Association, some of the machines in competition would cost between a quarter and three-quarters of a million dollars to build from scratch. In most cases, improvements have been heaped on through the years; some devices started in the youth classes and eventually graduated to the corresponding adult group. ...
Halloween has never been kind to pumpkins. But in Sussex County, Delaware, this weekend, hundreds of the gourds will meet a particularly gruesome end: Loaded into hulking compressed-air cannons, fired like artillery shells across an empty field, their ground-splattering detonations will be cheered on by thousands of spectators. Other pumpkins will be vaulted into the air by modern incarnations of medieval siege machines, trebuchets and catapults that whip payloads thousands of feet through the air.
To say that the three-day-long Annual World Championship Punkin' Chunkin' competition—now in its 23rd year—is a labor of love is not only a cliche, but a gross misrepresentation. Chunkin' is a feat of obsessive, competitive engineering. According to Frank Shade, President of the Punkin' Chunkin' Association, some of the machines in competition would cost between a quarter and three-quarters of a million dollars to build from scratch. In most cases, improvements have been heaped on through the years; some devices started in the youth classes and eventually graduated to the corresponding adult group. ...