Author: Kyle Dickerson

On Sunday, Aug 3, we went out to the fields between the high school and the elementary school to launch our rockets.

I can vaguely remember launching rockets in the same location as a kid, presumably when either Mike or Evan was making the rockets. I don’t think I had ever assembled my own rocket as a kid.

I went for a tiny rocket with no parachute and painted it in tiger stripes. I called it the Teeny Tiny Tiger. Heather named hers Dragonite. We can’t remember what Corinne called hers.

This took an inordinate amount of fidgeting as the igniters didn’t seem to be igniting energetically enough to light the fuel. After a long time fussing about and only getting one launch we tried attaching two ignition systems simultaneously and that did the trick. I suspect the engines had absorbed too much moisture and just needed more energy to get started. Unfortunately we had burned through half the igniters on failed attempts. But we did get all 3 rockets to fly at least once and we flew some twice.

That evening was s’mores in the driveway in which other family groups participated in shifts. At one point it included Megan’s family. Erin’s family arrived after Megan’s left (returning from a trip to Maine after the reunion). Seems like there was one more group too, but I can’t recall.

Now at August 2 we spent Saturday hanging around the house recovering from all the reunion excitement. The girls and I built our model rockets. Apparently we don’t have any pictures of the painting and building process. You’ll see the rockets in the next post when we launch them.

Heather got to experience the comics section of a newspaper.

After the reunion we drove down to Cromwell to stay at Grandma and Grandpa’s house for a few days. The girls zonked out on the way after days of morning-to-night zaniness.

We stopped for lunch at a Friendly’s. After arriving in Cromwell, I took the girls down to Amato’s in Middletown to buy some model rockets. Pizza from Freddy’s for dinner.