o0o Monday July 5, 1998, 8:38 a.m. o0o

The fourth of July, such a lovely holiday. I spent the first part of it watching movies, then around 2 p.m. we decided to go to the AT&T Family Fourth. It was overcast and there was a slight drizzle when we left and by the time we found a parking spot in the residential neighborhood near gasworks park it was raining.

Gasworks park, one of my favorite in Seattle, was converted from a oil refinery into a park. This large waterfront park sports views of the space needle, rolling hills (including a really big hill), a play ground, a large covered picnic area, and much more. It really is the perfect place for a large fireworks display.

We waited out the rain by eating lunch, then bravely set off to gasworks where we found several thousand people already waiting for the fireworks and enjoying all the free stuff. AT&T was giving out foam statue of liberty crowns and kite kits, Ocean Spray was giving out beach balls and several other companies and two radio stations were giving away prizes. We staked out a spot very close to the barge, where they were lighting off the fireworks.

I retrieved a kite kit:

one piece of diamond shaped plastic /w AT&T logo printed on it
two kite sticks
two plastic tubes (to hold the cross kite stick to the plastic)
One rubber band
One fifty foot length of kite string
Six Pieces of tape
One string loop

after we got it assembled my dad got it to fly (there were so many people there I couldn't just run with it to get it into the air) and after about three minutes we decided we wanted to make it grander so we got another kite kit and made our kit into a double kite. It flew decently, but it didn't take long before we decided to make it even grander and made it into a jumbo four kite kite. This required a bit of ingenuity.

We first put the four together by using the plastic tubes to hold the ends of the kite sticks together so as to keep the gentle bow vital to its flying ability intact and then taped everything into place. this design worked for a while, but when a particularly big gust of wind hit the kite folded in two :(

After we recovered the kite from the crowd, we decided that the connection between the two double kites needed the reinforcement of two more kite sticks, one strait and one curved. After adding the support we decided to fly our new kite with its 350 feet of kite string. It flew beautifully, it was very stable and caught the wind very well. There where other kites in the air over 200 probably (only 3 where kites brought from home, all the rest where the free ones), but only 2 or 3 where double kites three had three or four kites leveled on the same string though none came close to what my dad and I constructed.

It was flying really high and everything was perfect until the kite string broke and our beautiful innovative kite glided over the old gas refinery towers and out of sight :( A bit disheartened at the loss we went to find our downed kite.

The gasworks structure -- several large graffiti covered metal towers with connecting steel tubes and all the things an old refinery needed -- long out of service had been fenced off for public safety and turned into the base for the staff taking care of this event. We believed that our kite had fallen either on one of the towers or on the ground in this area. After talking to the staff member in the base who seemed to be in charge of retrieving downed kites and waiting for a long time we got our kite back.

It had survived the crash beautifully and only need a few minor repairs to be air worthy again, but by this time the sky was covered in kites leaving no room for ours with out the complication of crossed strings so we left our kite alone. Later in the day a kid offered to buy my kite, but I refused to sell.

As the day progressed the few thousand people morphed into over sixty thousand. Our spot that had once been spacious had filled with people and only our wool blankets remained unmolested by them, the allowance of three feet between parties no longer existed 2 hours before the show.

At ten p.m. the fireworks show began, everything was choreographed to music varying between classical, swing, Jimi Hendrix, wild Thing (my song), and others. When I saw the first of the mortars explode I couldn't help thinking that they looked like little death stars exploding (I watched Return of the Jedi that morning). The only flaw in the whole show was the smoke that blew the way of the crowd, though the wind was blowing fast enough for that not to pose a big problem. The fireworks show lasted 37 minutes, 13 minutes longer than Iver's show at Myrtle Edward's park.

I had noticed the Giant disco ball earlier in the day, but I had no idea what it's purpose was at the time. For the exit music they were playing disco music and had two spot lights on the disco ball, the light from the ball was hitting the trees behind it and that made an effect that looked like a bunch of green sparkly fireworks.

The traffic getting on to the freeway was horrible. A drive that would usually take less than five minutes took over thirty.

I hope this story didn't tire you to much :)

- 9:18 a.m.

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