A touch of the hayseed

It appears you can the boy out of Idaho, but not the Idaho out of the boy. The other night an episode of Mythbusters was on TV, and it was the episode during which they were testing out various methods to start fires without matches. I told him I had a whole winter survival setup in the trunk of my car, with several ways to start a fire included. He seemed a bit taken aback by this, since "Idaho" and "survivalist" bring up very negative connotations.

Richard and I then saw the experiment where they tried to use gunpowder to light a fire. The team on TV soon found that blackpowder works much better than the more explosive, quicker burning modern gunpowder. For those confused by what I'm talking about, gunpowder is what most modern guns use now, while blackpowder is what muzzle loading muskets and such used a century or more ago. Just think of the kinds of old guns they used during the frontier days or the Civil War. Blackpowder burns slower, and thus is more likely to help start a fire, that is, if I understand things correctly.

While watching this, I mentioned to Richard that I had shot a .50 caliber muzzle loader before, and he looked at me as if I had just fallen off the turnip truck. He asked when and where I did such a thing, I told him we own a blackpowder muzzleloader. His eyebrows raised further when he found out we have a blowgun that shoots sharp metal darts. Apparently, for all my refined tastes in art, food, and travel, I still have an awful lot of Idaho hayseed in me at my core.