2004 - World Championship Punkin Chunkin

The competition got tight this year. Now a half-dozen machines have achieved mechanical parity. Since this leaves one at the mercy of the “vagaries of vegetables”, it becomes an odds game. All competitors had the same wind, though, and the Big 10 Inch rose to the occasion — at the end of the first day we were in first place with a hurl of 3770 feet. It was not to hold and by the end of the second day we dropped to fifth.

We will NOT, in the coming year, be like the football coach who plays for the “long bomb” and loses games because he didn’t drill the less glamorous basics. We may have spent too much time, as seasoned competitors, worrying about refinements at the expense of basics.