Happy 6th of July!

Posted on July 6, 2007 by Kris Nelson

Happy belated Independence Day! How’d you spend it? If you were competitive chowhound Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi, you spent it suffering through a Nathan’s hot dog gorge fest with a recent wisdom tooth extraction and a paralyzing jaw injury. Kobayashi also spent the last few moments of the neck-and-neck race violently vomiting into his hands, and then ate the vomit to regain that “lost” hot dog point. Now that’s athleticism. The new victor of Nathan’s hot dog eating competition is 23-year-old San Jose-ite Joey Chestnut (who I mistook for Vic Chestnutt, sorry) who swallowed an incredible 66 wieners in 12 minutes.

Chris and I got to witness Kobayashi’s last win last year along with 30,000 other screaming loonies at Coney Island. It was pretty awesome, didn’t even feel squished. Brooklyn is just how I imagined it but cleaner. Damn corrupting movies.

This year we were among the few lucky ones (karma I tell you, it’s real!) that got to park on the top deck of the SF Bay Bridge and get a perfect unobstructed bird’s eye view of the two pier stations pumping the fireworks. So awesome and so romantic, I’ll never tire of fireworks *sigh* As always, every year there’s a new design displayed and this time there were at least two. One a variation on the “Saturn” looking one with radiating sparkling sprays in lieu of the controlled concentric hula hoops. The other was a giant sphere with dynamic squiggles bounding within its imaginary walls. Chris and I, being the science/mathy nerds we are, simultaneously quipped, “Atoms! Electrons!”

I promised myself to just enjoy the pyrotechnics this year and not worry about taking pictures, so you’re just going to have to take my word on this. Hope you had a great holiday! :)