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The Abraham Lincoln National
Railsplitting Festival was held on the weekend of September 20th and
21st. A number of contests were held on the 21st, including many of
the contests that were rained out due to the weather on that
Saturday.
One of these contests was a water boiling contest, that was exactly
what it sounds like. Teams of three worked together to gather water,
build a fire, and then boil the water over that fire. Each team had
a small metal grate with legs that they put wood under, a pile of
wood, and a box of matches.
When Bob Rankin, the contest
organizer, started the event, one person from each team grabbed a
metal one gallon can and ran to get it filled with water. While they
got the water and brought it back, the other members of the team
would work on getting the fire started. One of the teams was only
two members strong, but they powered through the best they could.
The fires were slow to start, with
each team trying to get their fires to keep. Each team had a board
of plywood that they used to keep the wind from killing their fires
in their infancy. Once the fires got going, however, teams would try
to introduce more oxygen to them by blowing on them or using hats to
fan them.
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After several minutes, there were
large amounts of smoke coming from several of the team's fires.
After a little while longer, some of the fires had grown quite
large, with the largest being about as tall as the can and the metal
stand it was set on. The first team to win won by a fairly large
margin. The other teams kept going even after the first place team
won, with all teams eventually getting their water to boil.
In the end, the team that won was
Cody Friedlein, Heidi Mueller, and Jonathon Norin.
[Matt Boutcher]
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