Let me tell you about my experience with rockets.
When I was in 1st grade I joined this group called the Royal Rangers – the church equivalent of Boy Scouts. We spent many weekends camping in the rain, drinking Tang and having pancake eating contests (during which I distinctly remember a guy by the name of John Reihl eating 37 pancakes – the passing of 27 years MAY have caused that number to inflate, but not by more than 10%).
Anyway, as I look back on my days in the RR, there are a few activities that stick out in my mind: the Pinewood Derby Car races (where you could easily tell the dads were more involved than the boys due to the Lamborghini-like designs and wheel alterations and weight changes made after the weigh-in); memorizing the various creeds (which I can still spit out by heart); and the rockets.
Yes, the rockets.
* * * * *
I never actually built a rocket – it was an activity solely for the over-12 year old age bracket. But those things were awesome. They put these toilet-paper roll-like tubes together, pasted some fins on the outside, stuck some explosives up the tail end, sat the rocket on this wiry launch pad. Step back. Press the ignition button.
A whistling whoosh, and the rocket flew up in the air, too high to see. A chute popped out and us younger kids would chase it across the fields, trying to catch it before it smashed into the field and broke.
* * * * *
Sometimes we stuck a little army man in the rocket, attached to the parachute. Occasionally he returned to earth unscathed. More often than not he arrived a melted lump of plastic, 3rd-degree plastic burns. We buried those guys in a small army graveyard beside the church (ironically, most of the attendants of that particular church had grown up anabaptist, and pacifist – I’m not sure about their stance on having a military graveyard on church property).
* * * * *
Since I wasn’t old enough to launch a rocket, sometimes I would ball an army man up in a parachute and try to toss him high in the air, but I just couldn’t throw him high enough to get the chute to open up. Sometimes, you just need a rocket.
* * * * *
Having trouble getting your blog to take off? Feel like you need to inject some life and new ideas and perhaps a little rocket fuel up the tail end? Check out Bryan Allain’s new blog-coaching website: Blogrocket. He’s got some great tips, an amazing e-book about blogging, and you can even check out an option to have him personally coach your blog to higher levels. He’s been blogging for almost 10 years, has over 1000 subscribers and 6,000 – 8,000 unique readers every month.
It’s time to hitch your blog to a rocket.
