Traditions have to start somewhere. One of my favorite traditions began in 2009 with a simple, spur-of-the-moment dinner invitation from our very close friends Steve and Tracy Nees. It’s a dinner we now do every year on the day after Christmas.
What makes this tradition special is that simple means getting back to the core of what a tradition is: great friends, lots of laughing and great food and drink.
The cooking, oh yes, the cooking: hearty, rustic dishes cooked in cast iron pots and pans placed over lava-orange coals in an open living room fireplace. The friends and laughing: animated and fueled by bottles of good red wine as the day turns from afternoon to early evening…and continues late into the night.
The menu for this year’s post-Christmas gathering included coq au vin, bison filet and collard greens. Liquid accompaniments included a bottle of one of my all-time favorite wines (Bogle Phantom), Dogfish Head’s My Antonia and warming nightcaps of Schonauer Apfel Schnapps and an organic pre-temperance alcoholic Root Tea.
It doesn’t take generations to establish a tradition. Sometimes all it takes is good friends, an open day on the calendar, and a desire to unplug from the hustle and bustle of our everyday to create a lasting memory.
For the second year in a row, we trucked out to the middle of a Delaware farmer’s field to watch teams launch pumpkins through the Fall sky. The field was ringed with contraptions powered by air, tension and torsion.
It was the torsion contraptions that we were most interested, as Team Chucky was once again vying for another world champion title. And they didn’t let their fans down — nor did they let their newfound celebrity go to their heads (they are to the Science Channel what Sig Hansen and his crew are to Deadliest Catch) — taking the top spots in the hotly-contested, Jack Daniels-fueled Torsion and Catapult categories.
Our tailgating crew gets larger each year, our spread more elaborate (big thanks to my dad for carting the keg of 16 Mile brew to the contest), our arrival earlier, and our departure later.
If you’ve never experienced Punkin Chunkin up close and personal rather than watching from a turkey-induced coma from your couch after a big Thanksgiving meal, make sure you don’t miss out next year…the more, the merrier (and if this year was any indication, Punkin Chunkin 2011 should be the merriest yet).
Late this afternoon will mark the fifteenth anniversary of the day my life changed forever. On September 23, 1995, I married a beautiful girl named Jennifer Anne Vreeland. Over the past 15 years, she’s not only become a beautiful woman, but also a wonderful wife, a trusted friend, and a loving and caring mother.
To honor the life we’ve shared over the past decade and a half, I thought I’d share a few of the memories we’ve made together. So enjoy while I take a stroll down memory avenue and recall the time…
Update: Minor corrections and added a must-watch video.
Update: Rumor has it Chucky III got a throw off on the last day for a distance of 1,000+ feet. Way to go!
“Fire in the hole!”
It’s the first warning you get that a 10 pound pumpkin is about to fly out of an air canon for nearly a mile at speeds close to 600 miles per hour. And it’s the rallying cry for the Punkin Chunkin 2009 World Championship.
The what?
Yup, Punkin Chunkin…or pumpkin chucking for those less informed. It’s a 25 year-old tradition in Delaware where teams compete to see who can launch a pumpkin the farthest distance. Come to find out, it’s also one helluva day of tailgating.
The Punkin Chunkin Anthem
Written in 1989 by William and Dawn Thompson. Part of the opening ceremonies.
It was the end of October, the beginning of November.
The air was cold and clear and I said, Boys listen here,
I think I can make a punkin fly.
John said, Cannot. I said, Can too.
So we put that punkin in a bucket, swung around, away it flew.
John said, No fair. We said, Hell, it’s in the air.
So the challenge was made and the gauntlet was laid
To build a machine to power a punkin through the air.
John said, Springs are the way to go. Bill said, I don’t believe so.
It’s Punkin Chunkin time again.
Come on, all you neighbors and friends.
I’ll show you how to make a punkin fly..rain, snow or blow.
Them punkins are gonna go!
Not knowing exactly what to expect, Jenn and I packed the girls and the mother-in-law into the family truckster and shot down I-95 to my parents’ house in Delaware to experience a Saturday of pumpkin chuckin. Well, we knew a little of what to expect, since Jenn’s childhood friend was part of the 2008 adult torsion record-holding team, Chucky II (which managed to chuck a pumpkin 3091.78 feet in 2008) and my parents TiVo’ed the Discovery/Science Channel’s coverage of the 2008 competition. Even that wasn’t enough to prepare us for the day.
Pulling into the parking lot — er, into this massive farmer’s field — we were greeted by the sound of a jet plane taking off from a carrier deck about 100 meters away. Except it wasn’t a jet. It was a pumpkin launching out of a 50 foot-long cannon sticking out of the top of a converted yellow school bus. Car parked, we set up our chairs and cooler near the fence behind Team Chucky and started the day’s festivities (fueled in part by some nice bottles of wine and Landshark Lager). The tailgating scene is best painted as an unholy trinity of Jimmy Buffett, NASCAR and MIT. The party atmosphere represented the best of a Jimmy Buffett pre-concert parking lot, complete with funny costumes, games of beer pong and camaraderie; the look of a NASCAR race, complete with cowboy hats and couches in the beds of jacked-up pickup trucks; and the brains of MIT, complete with feats of engineering normally reserved for endeavors more suited to national safety than gourd chucking.
The competitors lined up in a semicircle along the outside edges of the field. At the far end, were the children’s launchers, followed by the giant air cannons piercing the sky, the mechanical trebuchets and catapults, and the torsion-powered launchers like Chucky III. All-in-all there were more than 100 contraptions, each manned (and womanned) by teams of 5-20 people, watched by a crowd of 80,000. The contraptions were as varied as the crowd: some made out of pure wood, some scrapped together from junkyard parts, and others looking like they were built by NASA using leftover rocket parts. And the teams were just as eclectic: Chucky III was built by a team that included an IT exec and a botanist.
Alas, Chucky III failed to launch the day we watched, the result of a new design and not enough time to test it (as if having 80,000 people waiting for you to launch a pumpkin 5,000 feet isn’t enough, each team only gets to take one shot a day…three over the entire competition). But that’s ok. Like Team Chucky, we’ll be back next year, stronger and more prepared (although our preparations will be of the tailgating kind). Until then, make sure you catch the 2009 Punkin Chunkin World Championships this Thanksgiving eve, November 26, at 8pm ET on the Science/Discovery Channel and check out my 2009 Punkin Chunkin photostream.
I finally got around to posting the video from last month’s family trip to Disney World in Orlando. You can check it out by clicking on the image below (or going to this link: http://gallery.me.com/mikemaney#100000). It’s roughly nine minutes long, so let the cache build up for the best viewing experience.
It was 34 degrees when I awoke this morning. The trees around my house are transitioning from a solid wall of summer green to a palette of reds, oranges and yellows. The late-October Bucks County Covered Bridges ride approaches. Killington is blowing snow.
It’s one of the most exciting times of the year for me. While others see it as a time of hibernation, I see it as a time for being outdoors to ski and ride and to enjoy spending time with my family on a Sunday afternoon experimenting in the kitchen.
A few random lessons learned from last week’s family trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando:
I am pretty sure the phrase “Let me make the magic” when uttered by a tired bus shuttle attendant is equivalent to “These tourists missed their bus again so I have to make a side trip to drop them off at their hotel.”
You will spend more time trading pins with Disney’s cast members than actually going on the rides.
It really is a small world, after all.
Nine year-olds and six year-olds have the ability to make instant friends while standing in line to catch a bus.
Amazingly, people aren’t embarrassed to wear Boston Red Sox paraphernalia in public. Go figure.
If you think city governments have gone too far requiring restaurants to post fat/calorie numbers on their menus or calling for sugar/soda taxes, take a walk down Disney’s Main Street U.S.A. It’s like central casting for Wall-E (those of you who saw the movie know which part I’m referencing).
If you visit Disney, have kids and want to have a fun dinner, make reservations at Fort Wilderness Lodge’s “Whispering Canyon.” Don’t forget to ask for the ketchup (or catsup, depending on how you pronounce it).
Matt Asay is fond of reminding people about the gazillion benefits of working from home near the mountains of Utah (often reminding us by posting videos from his helmet cam as he does midday cruises down the fine Utah powdered slopes).
I don’t live near the Wasatch, but I do have a career that allows me the flexibility to work where I need to (have phone, have laptop, will travel). So, while it may not be ripping through the bumps while on a conference call, I’ll take being around to see my five-year-old ride a two-wheeler for the first time over a time-sucking commute any day.
Mike Maney 
