Punkin Chunkin

For those of you who were able to rouse yourself from a Thanksgiving Day food coma, you might have seen on television the annual 2008 Punkin Chunkin World Championship, this year held in Delaware. Yes, that is punkin chunkin (and not pumpkin chunking), for reasons known only to the organizers and participants. This competition includes four major classes of devices – catapult, centrifugal, trebuchet, and air cannon – which are used to hurl pumpkins or other assorted gourds as far as they can. The world record for the air canon is just under one mile, which is pretty impressive, but the class I am the most interested in is the trebuchet. For the uninitiated, a trebuchet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet) was used in the Middle Ages as a weapon to smash walls or hurl items over them. What is most amazing is that the trebuchet that won this year’s world championship (with a world record 1,897 feet), and the five previous ones, is the Yankee Siege from our very own neighboring town of Greenfield. They have built a 5-story tall, 55,000 pound replica of an original trebuchet, and every weekend during the fall season you can go to their field opposite the Yankee Farmer farm stand (http://www.yankeesiege.com/) and watch an afternoon of pumpkin hurling. What is cooler than traveling down a 2-lane, winding back road and coming upon a field with a ersatz moat and castle with a huge punkin chunkin trebuchet? Only in N.H….