This adventure is a little bit out of the norm for me. I don't normally do this sort of thing, but what the heck, it was a lot of fun.

Some of my mates live near a massive multi-story car park which is near a busy shopping centre. Some of the car park is indeed part of the shopping centre roof. Close to new years 2002 we 'aquired' some rather loud crackers which we decided would be well worth testing out.

These included a box of 30 crackers that were known as Maroon-Bs. They are really loud. The first time I tried one of these we were sitting in the mall at night eating fish and chips. I light one and threw it into some bushes about 10 metres away. At first I thought it had not gone off, but then there was a massive boom and a shockwave that washed over us. To my annoyance an alarm in a nearby shop went off. My mates and I had to grab our fish and chips and run. I belive the bush was all right though.

Near new years, we went out on a night of exploring to find ways of entering the locked car park at night, ready for our planned New Years eve surprise. We chose our course carefully, checked for cameras and then climbed a fence into the car park.

On the roof of the car park, there is suburbs out there, but they are too dark to see.

Admiring a telecomunications building across the road.

A mate edges his way across a narrow ledge

Locked gates, easily scaled

Not really the best view of a mate of mine

Contemplating getting up there

Air con plant. Now if we climb up on this rail here....

Maybe that should read site unsafe.

To be expected, launching the fireworks off of the building proved to be a lot of fun. On another occasion another guy came with us and we were able to just walk into the car park one night. We took with us about 50 fireworks. 30 small ones that sparkled and made a small noise. 12 that made a loud noise with no sparkles and 8 that were dodgy as crap as they were hard to light. The other guy had a slingshot. Thuis fine tool allowed us to fire the fire crackers clear across a 50 metre wide avenue.

So, we stood about the top of this car park and waited for our victims. We didn't want to hurt people, or cause an accident. BVut we did want some fun.

Sadly there were not many people about, so we had to settle for firing the crakers on to the road well in front of approaching cars. I'm sure we surprised a few people, but not as many as we hoped. Most often our aim was off, but a few cars did slow down a bit. One lady in particular stopped as she pulled into a car park, so we bounced fire crackers off the garden beds around her car. A few pedestrians walked past, and we managed to scare the heck out of a couple, but only for a short while. I felt guilty about doing this, but it was harmless fun.

As an offside to this, some weeks later my mates were driving around in their car without me, throwing fire crackers at poor innocent people. As my mate relates, all did not go well.

"I don't know if I haddn't put it out properly or if the ciggaret lighter was just hot. But I put it in the box with the fire crackers and they started going off.in the box. I threw the box down at my feet but they kept on going off. Then those big Maroon-Bs started going off too. It melted my socks. I've bits of my legs where my hair is never going to grow again."

My other mate explains further.

"We were driving along when he puts the cigarette lighter into the box with the fireworks and they start going off. Instead of throwing the box out of the window he puts it in the bag with the other boxes. I'm trying to steer the car because we were coming up to a corner. The car's filling up with smoke from the fire crackers and there's light everywhere. Then the Maroon-B's start going off and there was about eight of them. He's just sitting there and I've got my door open and seat belt off ready to go. He's got all of these fireworks going off at his feet and this shocked look on his face.

It was lucky there was no one about because they would have wondered what the hell was going on. He has big patches on his legs where there's no hair. All he needs to do now is start taking estrogen shots."

I gather they did not crash the car, but it was filled with smoke for a while after it stopped. They ended up tgelling some mates, who told some mates who ended up telling the local radio station. They won second place on the Idoit of the week competition.

Like I said, all harmless fun.