Firewalking

Firewalking at Cort's Halloween Party



Firewalking at Cort's Halloween Party. Halloween 1999, Cort Dougan decided to try out firewalking. After my initial reaction of "You're nuts!", the idea grew on me and I determined to try firewalking also, along with several other foolhardy young people.

Why did I do it? Curiousity, I suppose. I've read a couple of articles about people firewalking and I wanted to find out for myself. Since we're a bunch of science geeks, we didn't try to put any spiritual spin on the thing. Physics is physics, and my spiritual whatchamawhoosit has nothing to do with whether I burn my feet or not.

So is firewalking for real? Yeah, but it's really no big deal. Please don't attempt to do this at home, based on what I say here, but if you prepare the coals properly, it's not very challenging. They're just not that hot. Walk at a reasonably speedy pace and try not to get any coals stuck between your toes and that's it. I ended up with two tiny burns on one foot - I think. I couldn't see them, but they felt different from the rest of my foot. Stepping on to the wet cold blanket at the end was much more painful than the firewalking.

Photographic "Proof." Photos of people firewalking didn't convince me that it could be done (that's the whole reason I did firewalk - I wanted to prove it myself), but here's some for your edification. You can't see it because of the camera flash, but the coals are glowing red in places.


The Death of My Toaster

My toaster broke a couple of days before the party. The little resistor that moderates the temperature of the wires broke, so I figured that burning Pop-Tarts in it would be in keeping with the theme for the rest of the party. I discovered how puny my ambitions were when the white gas came out... and the toaster dancing started...

Burning toaster

Toaster dancing

Hudston and Cort seem very gleeful.

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