Trojan Implosion

Are you as peppy as I am if you have to get up at 3.45am? It's amazing how much energy I can store on such little sleep. Such was the case last Sunday morning for the Trojan Implosion Flickr field trip. I was happy to have a big hand in organizing the outing…from contacting people, to reconissaince, to getting the coffee and doughnuts for the adventure.

I spent two mornings doing recon work trying to find the best place to watch the demo. I drove all up and down Neer City Road (in the hills above Hwy 30) and didn't find much. No place would let me get the *whole* view of Trojan. I did find an interesting cemetary, though. The oldest person there was born in 1825…a nun I think. She was born on Christmas day, too.

Two days later I went to the Washington side. I found "the best* viewing spot in the world. I figured (as well as everyone else) that we'd be the only ones out there. Boy was I wrong! We arrived at the good spot at 6 am Sunday morning (t-minus 1 hour) to find my good spot FULL! Absolutely packed! I was so bummed to find there was not extra space to pack in a tripod (or 5).

Erik ran up a hillside and found an amazing spot. We tromped in on some people's campsite, but yea for doughnuts to thank them for our amazing views. It turns out one of the dude's went to OSU and we had calculus classes together. What a small world!!

There was a warning shot fired about a minute out. By that time we all had our tripods set up and film and/or digital ready to go. My 75-300IS lens was all ready, with my remote shutter in my left hand. In my right had was my dad's Pentax Spotmatic II. Holding both (remember…I have to crank the film after a picture) was quite a task, but I practiced before hand. All these test shots to make sure I was ready for the "real thing". (It's not like they can do it again!) So after all this preparation, Morgann and I were talking when Trojan began falling!! We couldn't believe it! The picture above was the first one I clicked off. Thankfully my finger was still on the remote shutter!

After it was all over (check out YouTube if you missed it), it was very exciting to look at other people's pictures. The five of us formed a Trojan Explosion group and have found other people to join the group with their pictures. I am very happy to see the count on my pictures go up so much! I almost have 1000 views on the picture above, at the time I write this. I feel so special to know that my picture made it to Flickr Interestingness (May 21, page 4)! I have one minute of fame! =D The funny thing is, my picture is super grainy and it's close up, but not that good. Oh well.

In the photo (left to right) are Erik, Angie, Morgann, and Joe.