The more sand, the better

As I was writing the post last week, I realized that I touched on another awesome kid thing to do: be buried in the sand. Being buried in the sand rocks, as does burying friends in the sand and then doing unpleasant (note: euphemism) things to their face.

I can't find the photos from my experience with friends a few years ago in Hawaii. But needless to say, the fun involved a failed attempt to use towels to shield the events unfolding within from nearby beach-going families, resulting in innumerable wives covering their eyes in horror and innumerable husbands/sons falling over in uncontrollable laughter.

As a side note, I have no idea who the kid in this photo is, I just found it on a random google image search for "buried in sand" and "awesome". But I'd say he embodies pretty well the overall sentiment of this post and this blog; clearly no one in the world was having more fun at that moment than him.

One grain at a time.. sort of

Last Friday I ventured for the first time over to Revere Beach, the lone T-accessible beach in the Boston area, with a few friends to check out the annual New England Sand Sculpting Festival. There were 8 "professional" sand sculptors from around the country there, each given 48 hours to complete a sand creation from which one would be selected as the winner.

As you can see, these sand castles were pretty amazing, and also included subjects such as a tree full of bananas, broken glass in mid air, a fist with a single extended finger doing something deep and philosophical, and some other stuff that hadn't yet materialized into meaningful objects/ideas by the time I had arrived. There also was a single larger "demonstration" display of a winter cottage amongst trees in the woods that, according to the workers, had been created over the course of a week or so by a small army of sculptors and was not a part of the competition.

Sand castles are pretty cool. I suppose in this case adults were in fact the ones partaking in the fun, but of course it's almost always the little kids out on the beach building things and watching it all wash away in fickle frustration as the tide rolls in. It's not often that you see an adult walking out of the beach shop, neon green plastic pale and shovel in hand.

Not that I am claiming the alternative--laying quietly on the beach listening to the crashing waves--is a consolation prize to cry about. But it wouldn't hurt to see a few more sand castles out there just to prove that imagination doesn't whither away beyond age 12. If nothing else, though, at least entertain the folks around you and let yourself be buried next to one.

Bam!

Okay, I am being kind of lazy, but I want to get up a post. This past week didn't offer anything specifically amazing to talk about, unfortunately. So I figure I'd reach into the bag of past awesome kid things and pull out one of the namesakes of this blog: bumper cars.

Bumper cars are awesome. Period. I love them and I wish they were always around. At my age (and height) I can typically barely fit into one, and I also typically get mild whiplash when slamming head on into someone else. But wow is it fun.

This photo is of two of my friends in a bumper car with a big rainbow "Peace" flag attached at a month-long outdoor carnival in the Plainpalais neighborhood of Geneva, Switzerland in December 2007. I'll assume this is like one of those snapshot photos you see in bad scary movies that is taken immediately prior to something terrible happening. And as you can tell from the look of mischievous terror on the face of the driver (I'll keep friends anonymous here :), this is clearly one millisecond prior to a horrifically awesome bumper car collision.

If only all cars came equipped with bumpers. Life would be infinitely better. And our necks would all be a little stronger.

Fireworks!

So this one was easy following the 4th of July weekend. Who doesn't love fireworks? (I assume those who are simultaneously deaf and blind are not reading this blog) Certainly kids do, although for once this is a subject that is acceptable for adults to enjoy, too. That said, though, laws inhibit our ability to shoot off fireworks of varying degrees from state to state:
So up here in Massachusetts, no fireworks are allowed apparently, although that certainly didn't prevent people from firing them off this past weekend for the 4th of July. Bonus points to Pennsylvania for bucking the anti-fireworks trend in the region and allowing "essentially all consumer fireworks".

And as a fun side note, if you want to blow up fireworks its clear that you should move to Arkansas, which is the only completely "freedom-locked" state (if you will) in the union.