Many years ago when I was a traveling Musician there was a place I hung out called the Raider Ranch.
it was an old house on several acres that had had a small fire in it and had the interior gutted because of the smoke damage.
A bunch of us long haired youth used to hang out there (it was owned by one of the boy's fathers.)
In the summer there were always interesting things going on there. the guys had fixed up the place and cleaned up the interior and made sort of an homage to Animal House. It was shabby yet clean with all sorts of weird artifacts contained within (including a scantily clad manikin who wore a Imperial Storm Trooper helmet and was named "Irma the Star Whore")
At one gathering just prior to the 4th of July weekend there was much activity to do with homemade fireworks. At the same time there was an ongoing archery tournament and well someone got the bright idea to make exploding arrows.
The first few were somewhat exciting in fact one was shot into the side of a cooler and it blew a sizable hole in the side. Then it was suggested to disassemble a roman candle and reconfigure it into a crossbow bolt and use the rather impressive crossbow one of the guys had instead of a bow and fire it into the sky.
Many attempts were made and finally the group explosive experts seemed to have made the proper adjustments and everyone gathered closely around the crossbowman for the attempt. The bolt was carefully loaded and the shooter brought the weapon to his shoulder and aimed it straight up. The Head explosive guy lit the fuse and the bolt was away and I assure you it was quite impressive shooting out balls of colored flame as it ascended to the darkened heavens.
There was a resounding round of applause and much backslapping and good cheer and them a voice rose above the din and said "Where did the bolt go?" And it was like someone shot a gun and the crowd scrambled realizing the shooter had shot it almost straight up and it soon would be back down.
As we are all scrambling we hear two quick sounds a sort of short flitting sound followed immediately by a loud "thunk" and when we investigated we had found the bolt had come down on a customized jeep with a cloth top and had stuck on the custom console the owner had put between the front seats. He left it there and he fixed the hole in the top and loved to tell the story when someone asked why he had a crossbow bolt stuck in his jeep's console!
When I look back on those days I am amazed I am still alive...
My son and I loved that story!
I think it was Mark Twain that quipped “It’s not fun unless it’s dangerous”.