The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival

I remember first hearing about this via Dave Barry back in The Day and assumed it was something he made up.  This is apparently the 50 year anniversary of the...  event, and they re-mastered the original news footage for our viewing pleasure.  I shared this with my kids and I am fairly certain that they still think I'm pulling some sort of long-con joke on them.

How many of us think that our life's motto really should be "The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival"?

I like to think of it as:  

Explosives may not be the best solution to most problems, but that should never dissuade you from trying them.

Oregonians have always been wacky.  They were wacky in Kesey's "Sometimes a Great Notion,"  They were wacky 50 years ago when they were blowing up whales, and they're wacky today.

This never gets old. I do want this for my funeral. Everyone gets a poncho like a Gallagher show and my nieces and nephews will push down on one of those old detonators from the bugs bunny cartoons to send me off.  

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

That's very Hunter S. Thompson of you. 

Now thinking about your style and delivery z it's clear that you need to be embedded at more events, either in competition or as a volunteer, to recap and report on. Wally for Gonzo perspective

If he wasn't before, Wally is now what I want to grow up to be. 

This was the first video I ever downloaded off of the World Wide Web, thanks to Dave Barry.   It will forever hold a special place in my heart.

It had to be said...

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

That's very Hunter S. Thompson of you. 

 

Now thinking about your style and delivery z it's clear that you need to be embedded at more events, either in competition or as a volunteer, to recap and report on. Wally for Gonzo perspective

I remember when I lived in Colorado reading in the Rocky Mountain News about how Hunter S. Thompson kept getting pulled over and arrested by the Pitkin County Sheriff for carrying dynamite sticks in the trunk of his car. Not sure what he was going to use them for. 

Snowdoggie said:

I remember when I lived in Colorado reading in the Rocky Mountain News about how Hunter S. Thompson kept getting pulled over and arrested by the Pitkin County Sheriff for carrying dynamite sticks in the trunk of his car. Not sure what he was going to use them for. 

In all likelihood, neither did he.

I remember going to CU Boulder to hear Hunter S. Thompson speak after the infamous rape charge. He called it the "Ask Him Yourself" world tour. He said she sought him out and drank a lot of his Wild Turkey after she got there. He didn't remember her leaving his Woody Creek home by taxi the next morning. Later the prosecution dropped all charges including the one for finding dynamite improperly stored on the premises. My date for the evening had no idea who Hunter S. Thompson was and we never went out again. 

That does lead one to ask where the best place to acquire full sized sticks of dynamite are nowadays anyway?  I'd like to imagine back then that they were every corner five & dime store.

OMG, my wife almost shot Cheerios out her nose!

WonkoTheSane (Forum Supporter) said:

That does lead one to ask where the best place to acquire full sized sticks of dynamite are nowadays anyway?  I'd like to imagine back then that they were every corner five & dime store.

I imagine it's all about having connections in the right places.  Highway department, mining, demolition.

Hwhale

aircooled said:

I like to think of it as:  

Explosives may not be the best solution to most problems, but that should never dissuade you from trying them.

I like prima-cord more than sticks of dynamite.

Not sure who's idea the whale bomb was, but it never really stood a chance. The whole time all I could think about was the stench.

I would have engineered a shaped charge to propel the remains towards the water, not launch stuff vertically........

I think it could have been as simple as a berm and they had a tractor there!

In reply to bentwrench :

I'm going to memo the head of the Oregon Highway Department and let them know that the GRM think tank stands ready to assist in the planning and implementation of any future whale demolition projects.

I had my bachelor party in Florence. We didn't get to blow up any whales 

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

I've asked to be launched from a trebuchet while on fire, but I have my doubts that'll work out. 

Definitely needed more.

I thank my dad for teaching me at a tender age to blow beaver dams. How to crimp the cap, measure the fuse, drill the stick with the little wooden awl.... and I will forever remember the time one hung and he was almost back to the dam when it blew. It was like a scene from Platoon with him doing the 100 yard dash at Olympian speed in coveralls and rubber boots against a backdrop of water mud and sticks. Our Dutch neighbor was forever telling us what we did wrong on the  farm and he told us that dynamite was a waste of money. So to prove the point he blew up a massive stump with fertilizer and fuel. (Us farmers were always blowing E36 M3 up) it was a spectacular explosion and he put a massive chunk of stump through our barn a thousand  feet away. He went back to dynamite too after that so I guess my dad won that one sort of.

In reply to Mazdax605 :

Back then people put the h first!  Hwho, hwhat, hwhere hwhen hwhy. Hwheat is another one!

It's better to be shot out of a cannon,

Than squeezed out of a tube.

I started  laughing  uncontrollably when I heard 500lbs of dynamite and there was no blast mats.

aircooled said:

I like to think of it as:  

Explosives may not be the best solution to most problems, but that should never dissuade you from trying them.

Explosives are not always the BEST solution to a problem... but they are always A solution to a problem.