Beware Flying Pumpkins

Dry your eyes, Halloween-lovers. Another year’s ghoulish day may have come and passed, but pumpkin enthusiasts can still get their kicks this weekend at the holiday’s last hurrah: the World Championship of Punkin Chunkin. The annual festival draws thousands of folks to Nassau, Delaware, to see who can hurl a pumpkin through the air the farthest.

According to IT friend-of-a-friend Chris Moore, a local who’s been to the zany festival “more times than he cares to admit”:

The contestants are insanely competitive; the objective of the event is two-fold:  Drink as much as humanly possible, and see how far you can launch a pumpkin . . . . There really is nothing else like it on Earth.

Team Second Amendment (reigning champs from four of the past five years) snatched the world record in 2003, with an impressive 4,434-foot “chunk” blasted from a 100-foot air cannon. 

The event itself started back in 1986, when a few friends were “playing around one day and somebody started talking about throwing pumpkins,” explains co-founder John Ellsworth on the Punkin Chunkin website. Last year’s festivities drew more than 20,000 revelers and earned some $100,000 in profits, the majority of which was donated to community organizations and distributed as scholarships.

If you know of any crazy pumpkin traditions in your pockets of the globe, share in the comment section!

Photo: IT Editor Janelle shows off her pumpkin carving skills