In Fingalstown, PA, there were two boy inventors: Grover Leland and Joey Weatherton. Because they were of different social status and attended different schools,the two boys had never met. Joey, however, knew of Grover. He had seen him on the local TV station demonstrating his gas-turbine and ramjet-powered motorcycle, Velociraptor I, at Bonneville, attaining an unofficial speed of 261 mph.

Like Grover, Joey was obsessed with motorcycles, but , whereas Grover had built his on a drastically modified Bridgestone. Joey buzzed around town on a 5-speed 50cc. "Little Honda". Velociraptor I inspired Joey to modify his Honda into a rocket-boosted motorcycle.

Joey had read the Darwin Award posthumously (of course) bestowed on the man who had attached a JATO rocket to his motorcycle, apparently blissfully unaware of two important facts about Jet-Assisted TakeOff. First, that it can't be shut off once ignited and second, that a rocket intended to lift a fighter plane into the air is MUCH too strong for a motorcycle. The unfortunate experimenter had learned these two facts just before being splattered over the face of a mountain.

Joey intended to use a large but low-thrust black-powder rocket. He would reduce the thrust by adulterating the charcoal in the black-powder formula with sawdust. It took several weeks of experimentation to arrive at a mixture that would burn but not too rapidly and would not explode if packed to uniform density. He had much difficulty controlling the moisture content of the powder and was uncertain what would happen if it dried further after being packed into the rocket casing.

After examining several 4th-of-July skyrockets, Joey concluded that a heavy-duty mailing tube would be strong enough and light enough for the casing of his booster rocket. He chose a 4" diameter mailing tube with a wall thickness of 5/16" and a length of 36". Next, a problem arose. To make the exhaust nozzle, the nose cone, and especially, the mandrel about which the powder would be packed, called for machine tools. All Joey had access to was his grandfather's old wood-turning lathe.

Unlike Grover, whose father had given him a Bridgeport milling machine for his 15th birthday, Joey was no machinist. His first efforts to turn anything on his granddad's wood-turning lathe were dismal flops. The least critical was the nose cone which Joey turned from pine. After several tries, from which he learned a great deal, Joey turned out a satisfactory one. The exhaust nozzle ought to be made of metal. Perforce, Joey had to turn it from wood . He chose oak and failed six times to turn anything resembling what he had in mind from the hard wood.

The nozzle had only to last until the powder charge burned out, a matter of minutes. After finally making one the right shape, Joey tried to make it heat-resistant by soaking it in water-glass and precipitating out the silica with muriatic acid. The nozzle warped out of shape. Four more attempts were needed to produce a usable one.

The most important thing about the mandrel was that the surface be smooth. Much sanding and varnishing finally produced a glass-smooth reasonably conical mandrel,Packing the powder around this would produce a conical cavity throughout the length of the powder charge. Joey had drilled a 1/8" hole alongside the exhaust nozzle through which to thread about 4" of dynamite fuse.

When the rocket was finally assembled, the problem was where and how to mount it on the motorbike. Grover's two ramjets were mounted very low, below the pegs and canted outward to avoid burning the rear tire. Joey had only one rocket. If he mounted it on either side, it would tend to push the bike to the opposite side . The only place it could go would be in the center-line. That would mean that he'd have to remove the seat and sit astride the rocket. His Honda would really be a crotch rocket then. There was another solution, but it didn't occur to him then.

Joey removed the seat and fastened the rocket to the frame and the rear fender with strap iron. He glued a 1" thick pad of urethane foam to the rocket casing where the seat would have been. As much as possible, he intended to stand on the pegs and keep his ass off the rocket.

He enlisted the help of his friend, Corey, to light the rocket. Joey had chosen a stretch of level straight county road , passing through cornfields. Joey would bring the Honda up to top speed, about 62 mph, while Corey followed him closely on his Yamaha holding a gas grill lighter. If the draft didn't blow it out, he was to apply the flame to the fuse when Joey blew his horn. Then Corey would fall back to avoid the rocket's exhaust. Several dry runs showed that the flame might last just long enough.

The test run of Joey's Crotch Rocket was delayed nearly three weeks after its completion. Despite the fact that the summer was very hot and extremely dry, Joey caught a nasty summer cold and didn't feel up to doing much of anything for two weeks. Then Corey had to visit his grandmother in Virginia. Finally, everything was in readiness for the test.

Joey shone the beam of a flashlight up the cavity of the rocket looking for obvious cracks due to drying of the powder. Finding none, he assumed that it was safe to use. He and Corey rode out to County Road 2625 on their bikes, Joey standing on the pegs to protect the rocket from impact. The road was bumpier than Joey had expected, but, finally, they found a straight stretch which was fairly smooth.

Corey held the gas grill lighter in his left hand and steered with his right hand. Joey gunned the motor of the Honda and gradually accelerated with Corey following closely on his right. When Joey's speedometer read 62 in 5th gear, he honked his horn and Corey tried to light the fuse. The flame kept going out from the draft, but on the fourth try, he was able to touch the flame to the fuse. As it began to sparkle, Corey fell back.

The rocket ignited with a loud rushing sound, spewing out black smoky exhaust from the sawdust-adulterated black powder. Very slowly, the speedometer needle crept upward. To avoid over-revving the motor, Joey disengaged the clutch. 70..... 75..... 80....... 85........ 90.......... 95.......... 96........... 97.............. 98................. 99.................... 100........

..............101...BANG !!!!

Joey had been hunched forward and sitting directly on the foam pad when the rocket exploded, directly under him, throwing him off the motorcycle and several feet into the air with his shorts on fire. The Honda veered off the road to the right into a cornfield, setting the dry corn stalks afire. Joey fell down and forward, still at nearly 100 mph, into the cornfield on the left, screaming and plowing a trench through the dry corn stalks for nearly 20 yards, his blazing shorts setting them afire. He came to rest, still screaming, surrounded by burning corn stalks.

Corey rushed up on his Yamaha, grabbed the water bottle off his handlebar, and ran into the cornfield to Joey. He poured the water on Joey's burning shorts, and , after a second's hesitation for fear that he might injure Joey worse, dragged Joey out of the burning cornfield into the middle of the road.

He was cut and bleeding all over from the sharp broken corn stalks and , in the crotch of his shorts was a smouldering cavity. Corey called 911 on his cell phone, explained to the dispatcher carefully what had happened and where they were, and requested a fire engine and an ambulance.

Fingalstown Fire Department station No. 3 was no more than a half mile from the end of County Road 2625. While waiting for the ambulance and fire engine, Corey 'phoned the Weathertons and told them what had happened to Joey and that he would meet them at the ER of Fingalstown General Hospital.

By the time Corey was done talking to the Weathertons, the ambulance was there and two minutes later, Joey was on his way to the hospital. Corey followed on his Yamaha. He arrived at the ER somewhat before the Weathertons and they waited together for word on Joey's condition. Joey's parents had known nothing of his rocket-boosted motorcycle experiment and Corey filled them in on the details.

After some 20 minutes, a young doctor in surgical scrubs came out to them and told them about Joey's condition. "Is he going to be alright ?" asked Joey's mother. "Well, though he is in critical condition, he is expected to live." answered the doctor, then , noticing Corey who did not look like a member of the family, he said "Perhaps I'd better discuss this with you privately." Sam Weatherton shook his head. "Corey saved his life by dragging him out of that burning cornfield where he'd have burned to death."

"Well, as I said, he's expected to live, but he has no sex organs. Everything was blown off in the explosion. He'll have to wear a urinal strapped to his leg for the rest of his life. If the blast had hit him a few inches further back, it would have gone up his rectum and killed him." Corey and Mr. Weatherton winced and Joey's mother bursted into tears.

"When can we see him?" she asked. "He'll be going down to Intensive Care in a few minutes. As soon as he's conscious you may see him, one at a time, family members only, for no more than five minutes." answered the doctor. "I'll be running along, then." said Corey, "But I'd like to see him as soon as he's out of Intensive Care."

It was to be four days before Joey was out of Intensive Care and in a semi-private room with a motorcyclist who had lost his right leg above the knee by side-swiping a rough stone bridge parapet. Corey was the first to see him. "God, Joey, I'm so sorry about the way this turned out." he stammered. "Don't be; I hear you saved my life by pulling me out of a fire. I'm glad now that I didn't hook up an electric igniter for the fuse. Then you might not have been there to save me. " Corey looked embarrassed. "Actually, I was afraid I'd hurt you worse by pulling you out to the road, but I decided that you'd burn to death if I didn't."

"Y'know, what happened to me isn't really as bad as you might think. I've never really thought much about sex or done anything except jerk off occasionally, which it wouldn't really bother me to live without. It's not as if I was sexually active the way some guys my age are. I don't really know what I'm missing. I don't plan to take hormones, so I won't have a sex urge that I can't satisfy. Except for the nuisance of having to wear a urinal strapped to my leg all the time, my life won't be much different from what it has been."

"Have you figured out why the rocket exploded ?" asked Corey. "I think so." answered Joey. "For one thing the powder charge dried out and shrank during those three weeks. That made it crack, probably in many places that I couldn't see when I inspected it. But worse, on that bumpy road, I couldn't keep my ass up off the rocket and I bumped it pretty hard a couple of times which must have cracked the powder right under the foam pad. Wherever it was most cracked, it'd burn faster because it would have more specific surface. That's why it exploded right under my crotch. If I'd thought further ahead, I could have prevented that. 20/20 hindsight !

Just then the nurse put her head in through the door and said "Joey, you have another visitor." Joey said "OK, fine." The young man who entered the room was a stranger, a geeky-looking teenager wearing thick glasses for myopia and carrying a Texas Instruments programmable scientific calculator in his shirt pocket. "Hello, Joey" he said in a nasal voice which was somehow slightly familiar. "I'm Grover Leland."

"Well I'll be damned." exclaimed Joey. "Oh I hope not." replied Grover with grin. "You see, in a sense, I feel that I may be somewhat responsible for your accident." Joey knitted his brows. "Huh ? How ?" "It occurred to me," said Grover, "that your rocket-boosted Honda might have been inspired by my ramjet-powered Bridgestone." Joey nodded. "Yes, it was, but that's not your fault." Grover looked sad. "I wish you could have discussed your design with me before building it."

Joey pointed out quite logically, "But I couldn't; we'd never met." "Well, don't be too ashamed about not anticipating everything that could go wrong . I've done the same. See these ?" Grover pulled up the legs of his shorts and showed two ugly scars on the insides of his thighs. "That's how I learned to put heat shields around the gas turbines , second degree burns. Have you noticed that the ramjets are canted outward ?" Joey nodded. "I learned that from wrecking the Bridgestone by melting the rear tire."

"Well," said Joey, "I learned too late what I ought to have done on my rocket bike. I should have shock-mounted the rocket, put a heat shield over it, and mounted the seat above it on struts isolated from the rocket itself." Grover pondered Joey's words and then commented "All excellent ideas were it not that the fundamental concept is flawed ." Joey looked quizzical. "Solid-state rockets are no damned good !" exclaimed Grover very emphatically."The Challenger explosion was an accident waiting to happen. By the way, I refuse to call it a disaster. Seven people die in a rocket explosion and it's a disaster. 250 people die in an airliner crash and that's just an accident."

"Did you ever hear of Wan Hu ?" Joey shook his head. "Wan Hu was an early Chinese experimenter in the area of rocket flight. He had about two dozen rockets fastened to a chair, all pointed upward, seated himself in the chair, lighted the rockets , and vanished in a thunderous explosion, never having got off the ground.

I can think of other improvements to your rocket bike also, but none of them would eliminate the danger of explosion as long as you continued to use gunpowder as your propellant."

"Well, I don't plan to repeat the experiment." said Joey rather sadly. "For one thing, I don't have a bike any more." Grover smiled. "You're as much of a motorcycle nut as I am, aren't you, Joey ?" Joey nodded. "Well, how would you like to help me work on the Velociraptor ?" "WOW !, would I ? You bet." Grover exchanged high-fives with Joey and left, saying. "See you at my lab when you're up and around."

Joey was starry-eyed as Corey left also, exchanging high-fives with him and saying "I can't tell you how glad I am for you, Joey . Ask him if I could help out, too, will ya ?"