Good music.  Good snacks.  Sucky fireworks.  

Our Independence Day tradition, which is a tradition of all of one year, consists of us going over to the house of a family from church who puts on a family musical performance before the fireworks start.  The advantage in that?  The backyard of their house faces the lake over which the fireworks are shot.  No need to fight for parking among the 10,000 other residents of our small town.  Plus did I say the snacks were yummy?

Since they don't live very far from our house (2.36 miles according to my bike's odometer), I decided to ride there while Jen drove the kiddos over.  It wasn't a bad ride, except for the fact that I had to dodge stray fireworks, crash through a roadblock, and endure the grueling humidity Arkansas is so infamous for.  

The musical performance was entertaining as the family sang a variety of patriotic songs, popular pop favorites, with a smidgen of Disney songs thrown in for the kiddos.  Even if they were interrupted every 2.3 seconds by rogue fireworks being set off in the neighborhood.  In fact, once I stopped sweating buckets (a drawback of riding in this summer heat), people were actually more inclined to come talk to me.  Just kidding of course.

The fireworks began promptly at 9:30pm, and they ended as promptly as they begun.  I spent a good part of the show trying to capture the fireworks with my new camera, which basically entailed anticipating when the fireworks were going to go off and to press the shutter button precisely 0.334214 seconds before that.  After a while of getting more bad shots than good, I decided to wait for the finale of which I was certain I would be able to get some great shots.  

Not so fast.  What I failed to realize was that whoever was conducting the fireworks show only had 4.2342 seconds worth of a finale planned.  No joke.  The finale consisted of them shooting up somewhere around 8-10 fireworks simultaneously and that was that.  Boo.  Hiss.  So do I get my money back?  By the time I got my digital camera turned on, memory scanned, "let's lock and load", the sky was dark again and people were clapping.  For what?  The lamest fireworks show I've ever seen?  

I guess since the "regular" portion of the show consisted of them shooting up either one or two fireworks at a time, shooting up more than two can constitute a "finale" per se.  But it wasn't anything to write home about.  That's why I'm writing here in my journal.  Writing home - no.  Writing in journal - barely acceptable.  

Riding home was an equally harrowing experience.  Except this time I didn't have to crash through the roadblock because I took a different route.  And in addition to dodging rogue fireworks (including the one that missed me by several feet - Hell-o!), this time I had to compete with disappointed revelers commuting home.  Everytime a car pulled up behind me, I hugged the curb as much as I could, prepared to throw myself off of my bike into the grass/ditch/sign/whathaveyou in case they wanted to take their disappointment out on me.  You never can be too careful.  Fortunately I didn't encounter any of the likes of Doofus, Complete Fool, and Utter Moron.  

After barely making up this mountain of a hill we live on, I collapsed in a heap on our front lawn as my legs liquified.  Have I told you how much I dislike, ok, hate living on this mountain for that very fact?  I always have to remember to keep 15.432% of my energy in reserve just so I can make it home.  Unfortunately this time, since I didn't have time to eat dinner, and my sustenance was comprised entirely of Doritos, chex mix, and a sugar cookie (in other words - nothing of any nutritional value whatsoever), the climb was brutal, and I only made it up due to sheer willpower.  

As I'm lying in the dewy grass, chest heaving, legs burning, sweating buckets yet again, wondering why I torture myself so, our neighbor Kelly drives up with a bag full of fireworks.  Ha.  "Vengeance is best served cold," is my first thought as I consider giving the idiot who nearly put out my eye a taste of his own medicine.  

For the next hour or so, Ariel and the neighbor kids light off bottle rocket after bottle rocket, twirl sparklers in the dark, and set off firecrackers I'm sure the neighbors loved hearing at 11pm.  All of this is interspersed with countless cautions and warnings from our maternal counterparts, "Ariel, get back!; Jamon, be careful!; Watch out!;  Don't get so close."  Us dads seemed to be less concerned.  You can see where our priorities lie.  At least until our wives got after us for being too lax.  Then you found us joining right in alongside our overly-, I mean protective spouses.  

So after spending another hour chatting with our neighbors inside their house and spending part of that time comparing our respective digital cameras (yes, it is a guy thing), we finally get back to our own home around midnight.  All in all, it was a fun day.  Next year I am seriously considering boycotting our city fireworks show though.  Either that or crashing the fireworks and giving them a finale that won't EVAR be forgotten.  Heheh.