Made it to Pittsburgh in a bit over 3 hours, took an HOUR to go the last 8 miles… Pittsburgh was NOT expecting the amount of folks that showed up, traffic was snarled beyond belief!!!
Oh yeah, and my 8 miles in an hour was trumped by another gent who spent an hour going 1.2 not twelve, but 1.2 miles to get to the parking lot!!!
The NRA had a well set up procedure for getting folks in the show, the media passes were there, and I didn’t even get in the door before I started running into bloggers 🙂
Jay G was the first one I saw, closely followed by Say Uncle, Dennis from Dragon Leatherworks, ZerCool, William the Coroner, Newbius, Breda, Alan from Snarkybytes, Frank from Corn, Beans, Spent Brass, JB Miller, NJT, Weerd, Bubblehead Les, Heath and Amanda, Falnfenix, Caleb, MBtGE, Newbius, Cybrus (and Mrs. Cybrus) and at least 6 others that I sadly can’t remember… My apologies to you all. (they are all on the sidebar)
The first low pass was to VZ to find some grips for Jay (to match is new holster). Now I’ve heard of accessorizing, but it’s ‘normally’ women that do that…
And then the distractions started…
The obligatory pic of Jay with BIG pistols 🙂 .45-70s to be exact…
And Dennis is calculating how much leather THOSE would take…
As you can see, there was quite a crowd there; every aisle was at least this busy!
Needless to say, we got separated in about a half a heartbeat…
And I ran across this ‘thing’ at the Mossburg display. Looks more like a chainsaw than a shotgun, but what can I say, I ‘guess’ it is truly one of those if we make it, SOMEBODY will buy it…
And wondering around with Say Uncle, Alan and Breda we ran across this display 🙂
It’s a bra holster… Breda turned about the color of the bra, but it IS an interesting concept, the pistol fits on the bottom of the bra and is ‘concealed’ by the breasts so size DOES matter… Just sayin…
And the ONLY quiet place in the whole convention center… Only because it was blocked off!
I wandered quite a few aisles, saw some interesting weapons, some REALLY nice weapons, and some ‘accessories’ that I have NO idea what the hell they were even for…
As I said, the place was packed, young, old, males, females, families with children, and I noticed quite a few ladies in the crowd who were obviously shopping for themselves, not for anyone else.
The NRA folks I saw circulating were very polite, well informed, and more than willing to answer questions, point one in the right direction or any thing else they could do to help.
There are a number of notable shooters manning the booths of the various manufacturers, and willing to talk to the folks that came by and asked questions (more power to them, I’m SURE they have been asked the same questions time and time again)..
Frank and I decided not to go with the ‘kids’ to a party, and opted for food, since we were both starving. Frank is truly an impressive gentleman; very well read, knowledgeable on a wide range of weapons (it helps when you have a gun range in your back yard and ‘connections’…). Frank is also a curious individual, as he said, sitting on top of a tractor for hours on end gives him a LOT of time to think and it is obvious he’s done a lot of that over the years. He has taken on trying to find out all he can about night vision equipment and applies it to killing feral hogs; it gives him not only a real world test bed, it also helps out the farmers whose farms are being torn apart by the hogs. As a farmer, he’s also intimately familiar with the weather, crops and the vagaries of Mother Nature and what she can do to you when you least expect it.
Tomorrow is more walking the aisles, and I’m sure more good conversations with an outstanding bunch of bloggers, and I will try to do better with remembering whom I meet…
