RE: [Paddlewise] Flares

Oh, well, I might as well get this off my chest.

I was worried that I had never launched a flare.  How could I depend on
launching a flare in bouncy water during an emergency if I'd never tried it
ahead of time?  The problem is that in normal paddling situations, you don't
want to send off a flare without cause.  What if someone came to rescue me
after I had launched a test flare?

So I came up with a great idea.  I would wait until July 4 when people are
launching stuff into the sky all the time.  I could then shoot off a  flare
during the obligatory fire works show for my kids without causing undue
attention from any rescue personnel. I was quite pleased with my clever
solution to this problem.

July 4th arrived.  Alll the neighborhood kids were there as were many of
their parents.  I checked the wind direction and carefully angled the flare
so it would fall harmlessly into the street. Several people pointed out that
this was a risky operation but i assured them that I knew what I was doing.
Besides,  If I misestimated the flare's burn time or how far it would shoot,
I was still safe since there was a vacant lot on the other side of the
street. 

Off went the flare.  You can imagine the horror on my face when the flare
shot into the sky and hit some wind moving in an unanticipated direction.
The horror turned to dread when the flare burned longer and higher than I
expected and landed on my neighbors roof.  

Of course, the roof caught on fire.  I ran to get a hose, but the hose
wasn't long enough.  I ran to get another hose so I could get water onto the
fire.  Fortunately, I have a very quick thinking neighbor and while I was
running around getting hoses,  he grabbed a ladder, climbed up on the roof
and put out the fire with his coat.  Because of his quick thinking, the
total damages (which I paid, of course) were modest and a tragedy was
averted.

Everyone was very nice about it (including the owner of the house), but I
must say, I have never felt so stupid in my entire life.  Even now, almost 6
months after the event, the neighborhood kids enjoy teasing me about it.
Its been a good object lesson for my kids.  When they feel bad about doing
something stupid, I just remind them of my great flare test -- even grownups
do really stupid things sometimes.

As for the  lessons learned,  I was really surprised at how hard it was to
load the small flare canister onto the launcher.  Once loaded, it took
considerable dexterity to get the firing pin to snap onto the flare and
launch it.   I question my ability to launch a flare if I was in bouncing
water and had limited hand function due to the cold.  I also learned that
these small harmless looking projectile flares need to be treated with great
respect.  You could do serious damage to someone if you hit them with a
flare.  

--Tim



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