Cohetes

My husband has a friend who is getting a master's in development at UCLA, and since he's a relatively short drive away he and some friends came down and spent last weekend with us. When people are in town to visit us we tend to shell out a little more cash on entertainment, to make sure our guests enjoy themselves. So, we eat out more, go out on fishing boats, rent ATVs to ride around the dunes (not my idea), etc. Oh, and buy fireworks. Domestically produced fireworks. I pause here to remind my fair readers that quality control and manufacturing regulations are not the what they are north of the border.

There is a bizarre, pyromaniacal pleasure to living in a place where recreational explosives are totally legal and can be bought on the roadside. This was our first adventure with Mexican fireworks, which have alarmingly short wicks. In the desert around town there's nothing to burn. Except us, that is. Nobody caught on fire, but we did have a few that went off right next to our heads, and more than a few bottle rocks that shot not up, but horizontally, sometimes straight at us. One shot straight under the car, and for an arrhythmia-inducing moment we all worried that it would go off under the gas tank. I guess it didn't, because it's all in one piece and unscorched. It was a hoot. It reminded me of younger, more devious days driving down long country roads, shooting bottle rockets out the car windows with wild cousins. Those were the days.

Sigh. There are some aspects of our little strip of desert-meets-the-sea that I will miss. Some. Thank heaven for Wyoming.