Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire!

[On location in Fairfax, Virginia]
To celebrate the 4th of July last week, I mostly just lounged around and did nothing. It was a vacation day, after all, and I was frustrated enough with work that I didn’t want to do anything work-related, so mostly I just piddled around with stuff on my computer, read a bit, took a nap. Yeah, it was a lazy day. In the late afternoon I went over to Scott & Yvette’s place for a fun meteo cookout. Can you get more American than having a beer while eating meat off a grill before blowing stuff up? I think not. But even though they have a decent view of the fireworks from their front lawn, I decided I wanted to get closer than 2 miles away. A lot closer.
Tracy, Amanda & Dan were all working at the bug fair tent all afternoon at the Central PA 4th Fest, and in return they were given several VIP tickets for free. As it turned out, they had a couple extra passes, so they asked if I’d like one. (Thank you, thank you, thank you!!) At first I wasn’t sure how much better a view I could get in the VIP lot than I got last year behind the right-center field wall of Medlar Field. Oh how naïve I was for thinking that!
The VIP are for viewing fireworks here in State College is in a grassy field behind Beaver Stadium and next to Medlar Field that’s used for tailgating for football games. The main advantage of it is that it gives you an unobstructed view of the entire fireworks display, including all the close-to-the-ground pyrotechnics that they set off (and those are *only* visible to those in the VIP area). So yes, while it costs $25/person to get in, and might seem a bit steep, after having sat there to watch the fireworks once, I don’t think I’ll ever watch the fireworks anywhere else if I have any say about it. Even if I have to pay for my ticket next year, I think I’d splurge. It’s totally worth it.
Of course, it wouldn’t be worth it if the fireworks display was any ordinary fireworks show. But State College has far from an ordinary display. According to FireworksGuide.com, here are the top ten July 4th fireworks displays in the United States:
1. New York City
2. Boston
3. State College
4. Philadelphia
5. Washington DC
6. Seattle
7. New Orleans
8. Buffalo
9. Lake Tahoe
10. Houston
That’s right, State College has the #3-rated fireworks display in the country for July 4th shows (and #5-rated overall fireworks display anytime during the year). The show is 45 minutes long, and choreographed to a whole series of songs. Prior to the grand finale, they shoot off an average of 4 shells per second. And then during the grand finale, they shoot off an average of 49 shells per second. That’s a lot of fireworks!!
I managed to get quite a few good photos of the fireworks with my new camera, using its preset fireworks setting (2 sec. exposure, F8.0), and my handy-dandy flexible tripod. And the flexible LCD screen allowed me to be able to keep my eye primarily on the sky, only needing to glance down occasionally at the LCD to make sure the fireworks were in the frame.

I also took seven videos, which I’ve uploaded to YouTube (I have much better versions on my computer):

Surfin’ USA:

Rodeo: Hoe-Down:

Sing, Sing, Sing:

Great Balls of Fire:
(and yes, there were several large fireballs that were set off)

Wizards of Winter:

Final Countdown:


And then came the Grand Finale. There wasn’t a break before the start of the Grand Finale though, and I didn’t realize we were in the midst of the finale until about a minute into it. Surely if the rest of the show hadn’t been so awesome I would’ve recognized sooner that the finale had started, haha. So while I did miss getting the first minute of the Grand Finale on video, I did get a few pictures.

And then here’s my video of the last portion of the Grand Finale:

As you can see from the videos and photos above, it was quite an awesome fireworks display! I’m already looking forward to next year’s show! In fact, I’m considering volunteering with the 4th Fest pyrotechnics crew next year, because it’d be really cool to be a part of setting all this up. And it’d be another way to get a free VIP ticket again. 😉 But part of what makes the Central PA 4th Fest fireworks show amazing is that the whole thing is 100% volunteer. From the planning to the choreographing to the setup, it’s all done by volunteers. And they start working in September to put together the following year’s show. At least they get a couple months off, haha.
Today’s the last day of the conference, woohoo! My talk on Tuesday afternoon went well. Walter gave his talk immediately after me, and our presentations weren’t without some drama. The session chair, who for historical and political reasons has an axe to grind with our group at Penn State, asked kind of a snide question of Walter, but then during his talk (which he arranged to be immediately after Walter’s & mine), the session chair launched into a rant in which he was basically slamming the entire basis of both of our talks. That didn’t make our sponsors (who were also his former sponsors — that’s part of why he’s so bitter toward PSU) very happy. I also heard via the grapevine that some other conference attendees likened the session chair’s behavior to “academic child abuse,” which I found to be a rather amusing term. Anyway, some people came up to both Walter & I at the end of the day to tell us how good they thought our talks were, and how out of line they thought the session chair was. Apparently we must’ve done something right. 🙂
We have eleven Penn Staters down here in total, eight of whom have already given their presentations (Kerrie, me, Walter, Luna, Joel, Brian G., Brian R., Sue), and only Andrew has yet to give his presentation. There have been some interesting talks, and some really bad talks. I’m always amazed at how many people have now idea how to put together or give a decent presentation. At least today it seems like they have the microphone working fairly consistently. Prior to today it’d work intermittently, and so many people were talking so quietly that it was very hard to hear them.
The conference ends at 5pm today, and I’ll get back to State College around 11pm tonight, meeting up with Carl and his friend Seth from Cornell. And then *early* tomorrow morning we’ll start the 17-hr drive to Cumberland, Wisconsin. It’ll probably be a few days before I get a chance to blog again though, because I’ll be so busy on my “vacation.” Busy in a good way though.
Well, this talk seems potentially interesting, so I should probably pay attention to it. 🙂