Threes…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Well, we always hear everything happens in threes, and it’s happened again…


AD gets a deer with his truck, Farm Girl’s engine gives up the ghost, and I get a damn busted windshield… sigh…

That’ll teach me to take a short cut! Two $^&((@ miles from getting back on the Interstate and I get whapped with a lug nut!

How do I know you may ask? Because it left a six sided impression in the windshield! And, scared the crap outta me in the process!!!

I’m back on the road, and $336 dollar poorer, but I wasn’t about to charge my insurance. If I had, I’m sure my rates would have gone up.

FarmFam got AD back on the road today, so the only one with a dead vehicle is Farm Girl, which makes me feel bad, because this is the “thanks” she gets for the outstanding hosting this weekend.

I have to attend a number of pretty high level conferences that are “hosted” by professionals, and in all honesty, FarmFam did a better job than most if not all of the so called pros…

Plus the food was OUTSTANDING, and I now have to go on a diet… dammit…

And I’ve got a butt load of guns to clean, but I don’t mind that a bit! 🙂

Happy 234th Marines…

Posted on by March 6, 2013


During the American Revolution, many important political discussions took place in the inns and taverns of Philadelphia, including the founding of the Marine Corps.

A committee of the Continental Congress met at Tun Tavern to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore.

The resolution was approved on November 10, 1775, officially forming the Continental Marines.

As the first order of business, Samuel Nicholas became Commandant of the newly formed Marines. Tun Tavern’s owner and popular patriot, Robert Mullan, became his first captain and recruiter. They began gathering support and were ready for action by early 1776.

Each year, the Marine Corps marks November 10th with a celebration of the brave spirit which compelled these men and thousands since to defend our country as United States Marines.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARINES!!!

Blogorado update 3…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

And for the final act…


Matt and JPG rolled in about 0400, so they parked at the restaurant to wait on us. Not being fools, we called them rather than knocking on the car window… 🙂

I never cease to be amazed at the twists, turns, tangents and flat out weird segues conversations take with this bunch… We covered a bunch of ‘random’ subjects at breakfast, starting with the Internet, sliding into newspapers, with a tangent into porn, wrapping back around to blogs, and into a discussion on the fairness doctrine. And this was in about 30 minutes…

At the range, we repainted, refaced, and everybody was back on the line as soon as they could get there. I heard a lot of, “oh, I want to shoot THAT one again.” And people were shooting much better today (or more were shooting at the same targets), because we were having to stop and reset a LOT. Christina LMT brought some coke cans (full ones) to get a more reactive target, and of course those became the prime targets. Matt and JPG jumped in with a vengeance to make up for lost time, and Matt embarrassed us all by taking out his snub nose and knocking down the plates with it…

We had one popper than just would NOT go down, until Lawdog got ticked and used Stingray’s 44 magnum on it. It didn’t fall per se, but he knocked it over on it’s side, so I guess that counted!

Farm Dad had set up a couple of longer range targets, one at 500 and one at 950 yards, so after everybody got warmed up on the rifles, Breda tried an M-14; JPG and Matt were going from AR to AR, trying the different sights and burying the 50 yard target. Stingray was also plinking the target with his M-1. Snarky and Christina LMT were both trying various rifles too! Ad and Katy Beth were shooting some of the clays and Katy Beth busted every one of them with her Cricket!

We went cold and reset to shoot some real long range stuff…

Meanwhile, Matt, JPG and Lawdog were shooting at the 500 yard barrel with PISTOLS just for fun (I swear they hit it, but we didn’t find any holes)…

The 950 yard target was a bit of a tester, as we had a 10-15 kt gusting wind that was a quartering tailwind.

After a couple of ranging shots, I got the M-24 on the barrel, shot a couple of rounds, and then we started putting folks on the gun. Breda 2 of 5, Rita 2 of 5, AD 2 of 5, JPG 3 of 4, and the winner was Farm Girl, she hit 5 of 5!!!

EDIT- Breda was 4 of 5, not 2 of 5 as she rather POINTEDLY reminded me, also I missed Christina completely, she got 3 of 5.


EDIT 2- STINGRAY was 4 of 5 also…

My list of people NOT to get pissed at me just got a LOT longer!!!

After a pick up/clean up session, we started back to town for dinner. About half way there, I see cars stopped on the road, so we pull over to find that AD had gotten a deer, only problem was he did it with a perfect 65mph trajectory with the truck…

We’re thinking the truck is toast, but it appears to be repairable fairly quickly, and the damage is not a serious as originally thought.

Nobody was hurt, except the deer, so we piled out pistols and flashlights in hand and started looking for the deer. We found it about 50 yards out in the field next to the road, and it had expired. It was a BIG 4 point (western count) or 8 point (eastern count) buck and weighed about 300 lbs. We drug it back to the road (with a couple of breaks), and waited for the authorities to show up. While we were waiting a guy from DNR drove up and told us we could keep the deer but NOT the head. AD was NOT happy…

The first on scene were the paramedics, and the female paramedic dissed AD’s deer, calling it a baby, saying she’d killed a bigger one last week!

And then the fight started… 🙂

We literally got out the tape and measured the rack, finally getting the female paramedic to admit, that yeah, this ‘probably’ was a 150 deer.

After refusing transport, they departed and this being a rural area, and us being bored, the head got duly removed from the carcass, and mounted on the hood of the truck, hat on it’s head, and cigarette in it’s mouth. About this time the Sheriff’s Deputy came on scene.

Have you ever seen someone do a triple take? This poor officer literally stopped dead in his tracks looked at the deer, looked at us, and was probably thinking oh @#^& what in hell have I walked into NOW???


Of course we are laughing, talking, taking pictures (the above pic is from Snarky) and, oh by the way, most of us are open carrying pistols…

The Deputy gets the info he required, and told us about a 40 minute wait for CSP to show up. The DNR guy came back by and took the head, and since he’d told us we could have the deer, AD took his frustrations out on the sucker, dressing him out and we bagged the shoulders, loins, and backstraps.

Matt invented a new dance, the Deer Dressing Twister- You put your hand behind your back grab a front hoof, you put your right foot on the pelvis to help spread it, and hang on while the slicing and dicing continued!

Note to self, a Sawz-all make a GREAT addition to the ability to dress out a deer in a hurry…

Now the Deputy is still on scene, waiting for CSP, so he’s walking back and forth, looking at us, etc… He finally allows as how we are an “interesting” group of individuals…

The CSP officer finally comes on scene as we are finishing up the deer butchering, and the paperwork gets wrapped up about the same time the deer gets wrapped up.

Stingray and Labrat towed AD’s busted truck over to Farm Dad’s and Farm Dad and AD will get on it tomorrow am.

We all finally rolled back into town about 2030, minimally cleaned up and headed over for dinner (much delayed, but much needed).

As we were relaxing and laughing over the incident, AD pulled out the deer’s testicles, swearing he’s going to mount them on his rifle like Stingray has done with the 20 sided fuzzy dice…

Matt finally says, “You know, if I’d run up on us, acting the way we were, I’d have been lining everybody up for a breathalyzer; figuring I’d have caught a bunch of drunks…”

Since people are departing early am tomorrow, we said out good-bys, thanked the Farm Family for hosting a VERY interesting event, and headed off to bed.

I’m sure there will be numerous posts, with pictures of all this; but I’m telling ya, somebody is going to have to go a LONG way to top this weekend… Old friends, new friends, good fun, LOTS of trigger time, and smiles all around.

It just doesn’t get any better than this… Sigh…

Now I’ve gotta go back to reality…

Blogorado update 2…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Well,, it’s been a LONG day… I was too busy to take pictures, but there were plenty taken!


Breakfast was ‘supposed to be’ at 0900, but we really started about 0800, with people straggling in until we had to move to a ‘private’ room…

In case we got rowdy…

We caravaned out to the range about 10ish, and the unloading started, and kept unloading and loading…

We had 4X8 tables for rifles and pistols on their respective ranges, and quickly ran out of room, so the late comers had to stick stuff under the tables!

We had- multiple 1911s and variants, BHPs, 9mms, .40s, .22s, .380s, Colt and S&W wheel guns in 357, 44 Magnum, .22 (and those were just the ones I saw on the table…

AR-15s and variants, one AK, lever actions in everything from .22 to 30-30, M-1s, M-14, M-40A1 and M-24 in .308, and a few more I just glanced at…

Snarky and Christina LMT, being new shooters, had PLENTY of coaches (gee, I wonder why), and people were going up and down the line going- “Here, try THIS one”…

All I saw were smiles as people shot different guns; and for some, like Breda who had never shot steels or poppers, the immediate response was, “I LIKE this!”

Oh yeah, Breda also shot her first tin cans today, and so did a few other city folk…

Phlegmmy and Lawdog got there about noon, and jumped in with the rest of the crowd, and the ohhing and ahhing continued. Phlegmmy got to shoot a Python and came off the line saying she HAD to have one of those…

Suffice to say, Lawdog CAN shoot too… Run from him, you will just die tired…

AD and Katy Beth shot together and at one point we had three people on the line shooting the poppers and the plates and cleaning up when someone missed!

Alan brought out his subgun, so some folks went off and shot it and quickly learned muzzle rise IS a fact of life…

Over on the rifle side, it sounded like a small war was going on, so obviously people were having fun. After a great lunch (gotta love those brisket dogs), everybody kinda swapped places, so the rifle shooters moved over to the pistols and we moved over to the rifles.

Again, smiles ALL around… And then somebody decided they wanted some reactive targets on the rifle side, and out came the tennis balls…

About five people were all trying to shoot the balls at the same time, and at least once, I heard “Hey, I was trying to hit that one!” “Well, so was I, and I got it first!”

Again the trading off and on the different guns, and Breda tried Alan’s National Match AR-15. She was hitting a reactive half size torso target out at 238 yds, which replicates a 500 yard shot. People were on and off the sniper rifles (remind me NOT to get Lawdog mad at me…)

Breda wanted to try it, so we put her down on the rifle, and folks I will tell you she is a GOOD shot! She went five for five on the reactive torso on a gun she had never shot! I’m not gonna piss her off either!!!

Lawdog, AeJim, and Farm Dad shot the sniper rifle, as as one of them said, it got boring with a ‘good’ rifle. then AD got on the gun, and I told him what Breda had done; he looked up at me, and said, “Oh, no pressure huh?” My answer, “Nah, no pressure”… 🙂

He did pull a five for five though!

Another split and some folks went off to shoot some trap, and a friend of Farm Dad who had been watching decided he’d like to try a rifle. Since he was in a wheel chair, we put him on AeJim’s AR with an EOTech sight. He shot offhand, and did well, including popping the reactive torso offhand!

AD and Katy Beth came over, and Katy Beth shot her pink Cricket .22 and hit the water bottle target, much to everyone’s delight!

AeJim came back mumbling, saying it was pretty bad when he got outshot with his own gun…

It was getting late, so we put some Tannerite down range and had Phlegmmy, Christina and Breda shoot at it (of course we DIDN’T tell them what was in the cup). Breda hit it, it exploded, blew the barrel over and Breda looked up and asked, “Did I hit it???”

We all died laughing, and then explained that yes she had (now I’m REALLY not going to get her mad at me).

It was getting on to dusk, so AeJim took his AR and shot a magazine of tracers at the barrel, to the ohhs and ahhs of all.

Pick up and clean up was followed by caravaning back to Farm Family’s house for dinner; including an “interesting” appetizer, followed by home made Chicken Fried Steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

I’ll let others post about the “interesting” appetizer and certain people’s reactions to them…

And then the stories and jokes started, suffice to say, a fun time was had by all, but the crowning moment was AD giving AeJim a lap dance… You had to be there to believe it!!!

As usual, folks were in chat at the same time, comments, multiple conversations, the Atomic Nerds beer supply was significantly diminished and general relaxation was the order of the evening…

Matt and JPG called, they will be in tomorrow am, and we’re gonna do this all over again! Also tomorrow we should have a .50 cal, and a few more ‘interesting’ guns showing up…

Blogorado update…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

The shooting range is in 🙂


After spending the morning touring the town, and visiting the Museum/Library (well Breda IS a librarian after all), a good lunch, and a few quick clothing changes, it was off to ride horses…

Farm Girl was going to get everybody rides that wanted one; since I’ve ridden a few horses over the years, AeJim and I pulled off with Farm Dad to go set up the range. Thankfully there were only the three of us, since we’re all qualified RSOs, we spent at least an hour looking at sight lines, backstop/berm, distances, etc…

And THEN the arguments started… 🙂

We finally ended up with two separate ranges, separated by a berm with a pistol range going out to 20 yards, and a rifle range going out to 250 yards. We built the plate rack, target backers, dug the poppers in and safety checked all of it, then built and placed the target backers for the rifle range.

This is a shot of the pistol range, paper targets to the left, poppers in the middle and plates to the right. I’m standing at the 20 yard line…


After we finished, we headed over to the riding area, but they had finished, so it was back to the range, for everybody to get a look (and critique our work). And realized there was an extra truck in the parade, AD and his daughter had pulled in!

Then it was back to town, watching a beautiful sunset as I drove, and no I’m not posting my lousy picture of it; then dinner (oh man, I’m stuffed)…

You can go to Snarkybytes and see a MUCH better picture than I took…

Blogorado is up and running…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

The gathering has begun…


1981 miles and I made it, only to get stopped 10 miles short of here by a State Trooper, and honestly, he had me cold…

Luckily he was a nice guy, and knows Farm Girl, so I got a stiff warning (after we spent about 15 minutes talking guns and shooting)… It didn’t hurt that AeJim and he both knew people in common.

Since we were the first to roll in, Farm Dad and Farm Mom put us to work from the git go; prepping the brisket and pork butts for dinner, but since we were cutting we also had to taste test 🙂

DAYUM, that was some good brisket, pork, and ham and beans, and cornbread, and some mild salsa, and cheesecake brownies. By the time dinner rolled around, I was already full…

Farm Girl and Snarky got back first, closely followed by Christina LMT, Gay Cynic, Alan, the Atomic Nerds, and Breda. Christian and Gay Cynic won for the longest drive (20+ hours) so far. And the nerds brought beer, which naturally had to be taste tested!

We were all pretty tired, but everybody settled in the garage and the snark started flying. It was funny that at one point at least 6-7 people were in the chat while simultaneously talking in the real world, and pictures were being taken, and food being eaten, and Farm Gram was saying I have a perfectly good house in there… 🙂

More people will be arriving tomorrow, and today will be the horse riding for those who choose, a museum tour, and some of us get to go put the range together…

And to add insult to injury, we all just got banned from the Gun Blogger Chat as bots, since there were five of us signed on from the same IP addy at the hotel… Just lovely….

More later…

Sadly, the events at Ft. Hood are front and center on the news today- Please keep those folks in your thoughts and prayers.

Uh oh…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Looks like President Unicorn is slipping…


He went up to New Joisey four or five times, and campaigned for Corzine and called on ‘his’ supporters to come out a re-elect his Partner Corzine (A Dem Governor who was in serious trouble, because of taxes and corruption)… Guess what, it didn’t work!!!

The Blacks didn’t show up, the young didn’t show up, and the independents who fell for his lines last November didn’t bite this time; even the dead voters in NJ weren’t enough to put Corzine over the top. This was even after an “unknown” group funded robocalls for Daggett hoping to siphon off enough votes to kill Christie’s chances.

In Virginia, the Unicorn did a couple of campaign stops in Northern VA, but after Deeds refused to be identified as an “Obama” Democrat, the unicorn and his minions threw Deeds under the bus…

Hmmm, not a lot of support there; wonder if that was a message to the rest of the crowd, either toe the line or you’re history…

McDonell won BIG in VA, along with Republicans taking both the LT Governor and AG posts. How? Jobs, taxes and transportation- ALL problems in VA, when all Deeds was proposing more taxes…

Oh yeah, ya just gotta love Gibbsy’s out and out lie that the Unicorn didn’t even care about or watch the election results!!! IF that ‘really’ was the truth, it is yet again another demonstration of his ineptness in office. He continues to show that he cannot govern, only knows how to play “Chicago” politics and shift blame for failure…

It was interesting to note yesterday as I was driving cross country and flipping through stations that the Dems prostitutes like Beckel were out early and often saying these elections meant nothing, nope, not a thing; move along, nothing to see here; just local issues…

And this was BEFORE the votes were even counted!!!

But they DID win one- NY 23, after the “Republican” in the race was in third place behind a completely unknown conservative, dropped out and endorsed the Democrat!

Of course THAT one is a “historic” change, first time in 100+ years a dem, yada, yada, yada…

And now Axelrod is out there spouting about NY 23 and spinning/ignoring everything else.

Now what?

I think President Unicorn is gonna beat Pelosi and Reid like stepchildren to get Cap and Trade and “Health” care rammed though as soon as they can and anyone that crosses them will be thrown under the bus in 2010, because they are now seeing the handwriting on the wall.

It is writ large that the American public DOES NOT care for the current direction of the country, nor the policies the administration is trying to ram down our throats, but the administration doesn’t seem to care…

I wonder if President Unicorn has now realized he’s going to be a one term president and is just going to push his agenda to the detriment of the US, both internally and externally…

Sigh…

Somebody PLEASE tell me I’m wrong…

On the bright side, I’m on the way to Blogorado to shoot things, see old friends, make new ones, and kick back for a few days!!! 🙂

The Ant and the Grasshopper, new version…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

A valid comparison??? Maybe so…

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the GovernmentGreenCzar.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in (which just happens to be the ant’s old house), crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is later found dead in a drug-related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

Ghosties, Goblins and other strange sightings…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

We all hear about haunted houses, church yards, and various other things, but how often have you heard of an ENTIRE building being haunted???


Now granted, the Japanese look at ancestors and ‘spirits’ a little differently than we do, BUT…

There is an entire housing tower on this particular base that the Japanese categorically refuse to enter at any time, day or night!

They swear it is built on ground where a number of Okinawans were killed in WWII and they supposedly inhabit the building (and dislike the Japanese intensely). Since the Japanese won’t clean it, it can’t be occupied; plus there are supposedly a number of stories surrounding things that occurred in that building, like heating and cooling turning on/off on it’s own, raining in some rooms, lights turning on/off, etc…

The second is a house known as the Samurai house- This is another location where the housing office cannot put any family to live. It appears this house is ‘haunted’ by a band of 13th century Samurai, who have parties on occasion, including horses, sword fights, etc… Apparently the APs have made numerous responses to this house over the years based on calls.

The story (with pictures of the damage) is also told of a group of Airmen who were going to make the house a haunted house for Halloween one year. After decorating the house, they left on a Thursday night, intending to return Saturday night. Friday night the APs were called to a reported “brawl” at the house, only to find it locked, no lights, nothing…

Upon entry, they discovered massive damage to ALL the props, etc. for the haunted house, and the pictures indicated much of the damage was made with long sharp objects based on the cuts and slices… One four inch post was sliced completely through at a 45 deg angle…

In other sightings, going to work yesterday I passed the Marine bicycle race team on the perimeter road. As I passed, I realized ‘something’ didn’t look right… Sure enough, in the middle of the group was a Japanese sitting upright, riding a Schwinn single speed wearing a Steel Pot!

Yesterday afternoon I ran into the Master Gunny at the barracks and asked him about it, turns out the Japanese Officer is the liaison officer for the squadron, and decided he wanted to participate, but didn’t have a bike or bike helmet, so he ‘borrowed’ a maintenance bike and grabbed his pot out of his car! The Master Gunny said he kept up for almost 5 miles, and they slowed down so as not to embarrass him!

In other news- Packout is done, most of the team is gone/going today; and I’m outta here tomorrow! Good timing since there is ANOTHER @#^&* typhoon on the way… sigh…


Can’t find the damn cats…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Okay already… enough with the #^&( typhoons… sigh…

We’ve had one count ’em ONE day of sunshine since we’ve been here; NOW we’ve got THIS screwing up my schedule, so I’ve actually got a couple of hours off…

Oh yeah, this is Typhoon Lupit…

On a lighter note- in the last post I posted a bunch of car and truck model names. Well, I’ve done some more ‘investigation’ of this (read I went as asked somebody).

According to Haruji-san, it’s different versions of the SAME model…

He took me down to the local Toyota dealer, and (now understand I don’t speak Japanese, the dealer didn’t speak English, and Haruji’s translations are “close”) this is what I came away with….

As an oh by the way, car dealers over here dress JUST like their US counterparts… perfectly coiffed helmet hair (never moves in the wind at all), long sleeve dress shirts with French cuffs, obnoxious cufflinks, obnoxious ties, expensive shoes, etc…

In the US, we have, for example a Ford Taurus, it may be a Taurus, Taurus L, Taurus XL, or Taurus XLE; so four models total…

Over here, that could be as many as TWELVE different models with different names, based on interior trim level (the more “expensive” the name, the higher the level), engine/drivetrain package, and/or exterior trim levels.

There is even a baby SUV called “Terios Kid”, named after a popular VIDEO GAME!!!

That thing has chrome everything, wings, nav system, mag wheels, and a cloth interior that replicates the game characters. It’s marketed to the young male population, and I about fell out when Haruji called a “pimp car”… J

Now Haruji is a character himself- He’s about 5’2”, either 75 or 76, and survived the Battle of Okinawa as a child by walking the length of the island with his family. I asked him one time about his education, and he held up his hands and said, “these are my education…

He owns four businesses, three of which are run by his sons. His other business is providing port services to the Navy and others that use the military port at Naha. He is also a car nut, and has a hot-rodded 20 year old Nissan Skyline with twin turbos that he built himself (and claims he has never been beaten, after riding with him init, I BELIEVE him).

He is also pretty well connected over here- We needed a 100 ton crane on a Japanese holiday weekend on short notice, two hours later it showed up, driven by the President of the crane company! I am NOT about to get Haruji mad at me…

Now back to your regularly scheduled BS…