Shooting: Gun Control

The picture above, of First Sergeant Brad Kasal taken by Lucian Read, accompanies a post at Michael Yon's site.

So he's been shot seven times (!), he's positioned his body between his men and a grenade blast (!!), shooting and fighting are still going on, hell he's still fighting, but he has his finger off the trigger cause he's not pointing at a target.

That, faithful readers, is gun control---and Medal of Honor-scale valor.

Making Wine: Chateau Hopgoddess

Wine evaporates from the barrel (and not just from the mice stealing sips) and has to be topped up. Today, before topping, I pulled some samples for tasting. I have 3 barrels: 2003 Syrah, 2004 Merlot, and 2004 Merlot. The Syrah has an outrageous flowery smell, but is otherwise very tasty to me. Eventually, I'll need to seek a professional opinion. I think the volatile acidity is way too high, so it's a good thing that I don't have to try and sell it. The merlots taste pretty merloty. I think all the wine will be ready to bottle before harvest. That means getting organized for the 2006 crush.

All three of my barrels are different. One is all French Oak, but pretty old so I spike it with oak chips. One is American Oak staves and French Oak Heads. One is all American Oak (before using it for the merlot in 2004, I made a chardonnay in it when it was spanking new).

The old French Oak barrel may be moved to beer production (oak-aged doppelbock). That means I'll be needing a ton of grapes.

I'm thirsty.

Comic Media Experiment

Down below my profile on the right sidebar, I've put a Day by Day scroller. I've adjusted the vertical size so you should only have to scroll right. Not sure what will happen when Sunday rolls around. He's working on his site, so I guess I'm helping the beta-testing.

There is a graphic-novel-like comic on the web called Shooting War. It's not all done yet, so who knows what will happen. Usual suspension of disbelief rules apply.

Brewing: How Cheap Can You Make Your Own?

Soon to be roadkill hops

Sometimes people ask me how cheap could they make homebrew beer. In one sense, I'm the wrong person to ask because I spend lots of money to homebrew. Amortizing all my equipment, educational trips, etc. into the ingredient costs would make my homebrew into some pretty expensive beer. But if we are talking about just the ingredients that go into a beer and forgetting fixed or sunk costs, then well...you get this story.

One day a co-worker who knew I made beer announced that he wanted to grow some barley in his back yard. So, we being scientific types, we discussed it with a state extension agent and he agreed to send us some low-nitrogen barley samples (for free). This my co-worker cast in his backyard plot and didn't fertilize (I wanted low nitrogen) or add anything except some water that came from the yard sprinklers when he watered the rest of the lawn. He harvested it, and rough threshed the barleycorn. This he delivered to me---no cost so far.

I used an old bucket and some parts around the house to malt the barley and dry it in a fruit dryer---no cost so far (except house water, which is fixed cost and some electricity that I can't break out from the house).

After letting the malt rest a month, I brewed the beer using triple decoction in case I undermalted a little. For hops, I used some that fell off a truck (see above picture, did I mention I live in hop-growing country?). The trucks just have the hops laying across the top, and the trucks are in a hurry to get to the hop kiln. A drive down a back road in Yakima County during harvest time will usually net a wide variety of roadkill hops. Dried in fruit dryer. Still no real outlay.

For yeast, I reused some from a previous batch. Free yeast.

I kegged the beer and let it naturally carbonate. No caps or bottles or sugar added.

So, it's not exactly free beer. But it's really handmade beer, and pretty inexpensive.

Brewing: An Outdoor Sport

Mostly every year, my brewing club will set up an outdoor get together we call Brewstock. Assuming our desert is functioning properly, you can pretty much count on a day that looks like the above in the summer months. Russ, shown above checking his mash, is a professional brewer as well as a homebrewing enthusiast.

And no, the person who named it Brewstock isn't old enough to remember Woodstock, but probably just saw the movie.

Art in War

Disclaimer: No ancient oriental philosophy was harmed in the creation of this post. Oh, wait. That's Art of War.

One of the blogs I read is Fire and Ice, which has this post about creating the picture below.

Michael Fay

If you dig around on Michael Fay's site, you can find some fascinating pictures and artwork. I think being a Marine Corps Combat Artist is about as cool as being on the Army Pistol Team, although a lot more dangerous. Be careful---you may learn something about what is actually happening in Iraq if you read his posts between and about the art. Don't let any of this dangerous information slip at your next wine and cheese party. I will not be responsible for the consequences.

The next two pictures were taken by SSGT RL Klika of some troops guarding some forensic people looking for bodies at an Iraqi chemical dump. The pollution in the drainage canal behind the soldiers gives the whole scene an otherworldly look. I guess we could paste these fotos right into a sci-fi story.

SSGT RL Klika

SSGT RL Klika

To paraphrase George Orwell: I can drink beer safely in my home because on the frontier these rough men stand ready to do violence on my behalf. The link above goes to a Russian site with all Orwell's books and essays. Before 1989, who would've thought that would happen.

I'm too old and slow to help the guys in Iraq and Afganistan directly, but I'll be glad to stand them some beers when they get back.

Drinking Beer: Pizza

Today was my youngest son's birthday, so we took him out for pizza. One of the (probably few) nice things I can say about Seattle is that you can have great pizza with a pitcher of Pilsner Urquell.

It was worth the drive over to take him out on his actual birthday. We also took in X-Men 3 in Cinerama, another nice thing about Seattle. Paul Allen helped fix up the theater that he remembered fondly from boyhood days. Must be nice to be a billionaire. Harleys spotted in the film.

Drinking Beer: St. Pauli Girl

I'm thinking the most politically-incorrect major import would have to be St Pauli Girl. Like most imports to the US, it comes in a green bottle. In Europe, it is always in a brown bottle to protect the hops in the beer from becoming skunky from exposure to light. Somehow, Americans have come to associate a green bottle with a quality import beer, probably because of the Heineken importer.

A little while for a green bottle on the shelf in a sixpack is enough to ruin the beer in my opinion. Even my beloved Pilsner Urquell comes to these shores wrapped in a green mantle. What I do is wait for a sale involving 12packs that are sealed, so the beer is not so bad.

St Pauli Girls is not very hoppy, so as a pilsner style it falls flat for me. However with Brittany on the label, I can make it through a 12pack without being too critical of the lack of hops. Being un-PC can get you a long way with me. If you go to the website, you can see Brittany and some of the St Pauli Girls from the past.

Some beers that come in a clear bottle have had their hops chemically processed to remove the compounds that go skunky. That process is verboten by the Rheinheitsgebot of 1516 (Purity Law), which most German breweries still adhere to though it is no longer the law of the land (EU overlords forbid it).

There is probably a regulation against green bottles in EU countries (they all seem to be brown returnables), but they don't seem to care if they send stink bombs to us.

Why look, Brittany's already opened me another one.

Drinking Beer: Cool Desert Nights

There's probably these things all over the country---custom or restored cars to look at, local music from survivors of the battle of the bands, plus food booths.

The plan was to go to this house for drinks, then a walk to see the cars, then a BBQ. But it was so pleasant by the Columbia River, and all the guests were drinking Corona and leaving all the Guinness for me.

The cars will be back next year.

Drinking Beer: Personal Pils

Took a break from wine to tap into some of my homebrew pilsner. Amazingly when I make pils, I make it just the way I like it. Together with Kevin, my brewing partner, we can make 20 gallons of pils at a time with our two systems. Then we lager it in Kevin's garage because he happens to have a walk-in cooler in there. We get soft water in my garage because I happen to have a huge reverse osmosis filter in there. Lucky for us things just happened that way.

We make our pils with about 45 IBUs from a blend of noble hop varieties, dominated with Saaz. We use first-wort hopping and no late hops.

I only had one beer so I made it count---I used a liter mug.

Here's Xandie from the great internet happily handling Spaten mugs just like the one I was using. I was not as happy when mine was empty.

Drinking Beer: Orval

My favorite ale is the Belgian Trappist Ale Orval. One night in a pub on the North Sea coast I had one after another, though there is some controversy over how many. Since I was drinking them, I will defer to my wife's count, which was eight.

The occasion was meeting another American who also loved Orval. He was so pleased to meet another fan that he kept buying for me until closing, never letting me get a round. Perhaps its Abbey origins causes such devotion.

Though the beers in Holland cost only about a Euro, Orval costs $4-$6 a bottle here in the Northwest. So one every once in a while to remind me of beer-hunting trips on the continent meets my budget nowadays. I'm sure that adding air and hotel costs would make it cheaper to stay home and pay bottle costs 4x-5x higher, but...let's not think that rationally about beer.

The brewery website has a nice round up of the brewing process for this great beer, but it doesn't tell all the secrets. The main secret is known only to God---that is to say, it's the yeast.

In addition to beer, the Abbey also produces cheese.

The beer mats have a picture of the famous fish returning the lost golden ring to the princess. I wonder if you can train a fish to fetch a bottle?

Shooting: Last post on Area 1

Just to wrap it all up, let's look at how I did.

My classification against the best Production Shooter is 52.637% on certain standardized courses of fire. That's a little over middle C class. My overall score at Area 1 against the winning Grand Master is 57.26%. Frankly, I don't usually hold up that well in the field courses, so I guess I did OK.

I also did about 20 percentage points better against Dwight and James than I usually do. Plus, I got 666 match points---the devil you say?

All that says that I shot better than I usually do at the big tournament. A little something to make us little guys down in the seriatim feel like we won something---and I got a plaque.

Shooting: Ladies of IPSC

When my mother played golf and shot in tournaments, she was in the Ladies Division. So there would be awards for High Lady and Lady this and Lady that. I think that most sports of a certain age, will have a bracket called Lady---and IPSC is no different. However, I've noticed that the ladies seem to refer to themselves as Babes. For example, here is Babes with Bullets and also here. Be careful, because if you go to babesandbullets---the dot com version---you will get, as we say on the internet, pr0n (pornography). GalsAndGuns seem to have the same problem. Use a search engine to preview combinations of names---the first few lines that come up in the search will tell you what type of website it is.

First, let's meet Lisa. She's a Master class shooter. That means that from where I shoot, ya go up until ya run outta letters and start over.

Lisa: All done with her run and gun.

Next, let's just check out the scene:

All done and checking the hits

Kit getting ready to tape targets.

The most beautiful lady was the Kimber Girl.

Thinking through the stage

OK. I forgot what I was going to say.

Drinking Beer: Oregon

Nice thing about traveling in Oregon is that you can get great microbrewed beers in all bars and restaurants. While we were in Sherwood, we were too tired to really search out unlikely brews, but I did get some beers in unfamiliar packages.

At the Awards after the tournament, we were drinking Mac's Ale in the bottle, which was new for me---having only had it on tap before. It was not very hoppy, but well needed after waiting for everyone else to get big prizes while we were waiting our turn. I rarely drink ambers these days, but this one was pretty good.

When we had burgers at Chili's, I had Mirror Pond (a personal favorite) and Bridgeport IPA on draft. Both the links above may take you to an "over 21" or other bogus page; you may have to hunt around for the beers. I'd had Bridgeport IPA as cask-conditioned ale at a festival, but had heretofore only had the normal product in bottle.

Hopefully, we can swing by the Oregon Brewers Festival next month to do a more detailed look at the Oregon beer scene.

Shooting: Special Forces & Other

Some of the shooters are current military personnel. Below, striking a classic operator pose, is Shxxx, who was shooting in my squad. He and I were both shooting Production (and he finished just ahead of me, dang), but whereas I had replaced the sights and made some internal modifications to my Glock, he was shooting a stock-issue Beretta that he grabbed out of the gun rack with some borrowed magazines.

Operator Shxxx---picture supressed

We sure had a good time talking with Shxxx at the awards ceremony and bought him a few beers.

Here's an action shot of him taking a head shot before running the zig-zag. He and I shot virtually the same score on this stage, except he missed a target. However, with the ten seconds he had on me, he had time to unsling his M4 while I was figuring out where to go next.

Taking the shot---picture supressed again

Above is Shxxx at the start, shooting at the target he missed (I was the taper), but he looks really cool. Sometimes just keeping their heads down will do the job if you're fast enough---and he is. Shxxx pointed out that when he pulls out his pistol doing his day job, the world's about to end anyway.

Travis: a full-time member of the Army Pistol Team waiting for the Bus to Perdition

I saw Travis miss a few too, but he eventually got them. He's so fast, he shot 5 times at a steel popper that he was having trouble with in the same time I could get one shot off in. He was the Open class champion with the overall point lead of the tournament. So join the Army and shoot full time---if you're good enough.

In the pic above, Travis is waiting for a bus, which turns out to be full of bad guys. It's only going to take him about 10 and a half seconds to get 126 out of 130 available points. Unless you've seen these Grand Masters in person, it's hard to even imagine what shooting like that looks like.

shooting: Done

Finished the match with no new jams today. Now we're waiting in the lobby surfing the internet (i.e. killing time) until the awards ceremony. If I get called soon enough, there will still be good stuff on the prize table (it's random). There is supposed to be $90K on the table for the first walker to choose from.

Big win for the day was that we were done in time to get back to the hotel for a shower before we had to check out.

The Chronograph of DOOM.

The picture shows the little tunnel where they test how fast your bullets are going. Multiplied by the bullet weight in grains and divided by 1000 gives the power factor. Above 165 is major and below that and above 125 is minor. I shot Production, which is always minor no matter what. My friend James thought he was major and was 10th in Limited 10 when he encountered the Chrono of Doom. He wasn't major, so all his scores will be changed to minor---he will still beat me, but he will probably out of the top ten. Bummer.

However, I managed a bad joke out of it by mentioning that his wife might get in trouble for taking a minor across a state line for ... you know the rest.

Shooting: A1-Day 2

Behold the gun kart of DOOM!

So, not quite as fancy as the custom jobs. But I've got a cold box for refreshing drinks. Amazing what some bungies, tie-wraps, and lack of taste can accomplish. Functionally, it worked great.


IPSC will throw some weird shots at you. Here we have to shoot through a 55-gallon drum mounted in a wall. The black painted part of the targets count as misses when you hit it. I forgot what I was doing on this stage and had to come back for this tube. But this one still turned out pretty good for me.



Here's a shot of me standing on the fault line and shooting strong hand at some targets behind a pretend wall. The CRO behind me is watching my gun handling and the other RO is watching everything else. If I commit a safety infraction the CRO will instantly disqualify me. So my main goal for the tournament is not to get DQ'd---10 others have so far.

I had a double feed jam today that cost me over 20 seconds and dropped me down below the median on the list. We have a Grand Master with us in Production Division and I'm shooting a low C class percentage against him. That's about what I expect on field courses with lots of targets and moving for me. One course I did well on got thrown out because later shooters started gaming the dummy. Dang. Nice dummy, waiting for a bus, not wanting to be gamed.

Shooting: Dang Rain

We get up at 05:30 so we can get to the range by 08:00. Uh, huh. We get lost and spend 45 minutes seeing the back roads of Sherwood, OR. So I'm late, can't take time to put together my cart, but hump my bag over in time to see a couple of people shoot so I can at least know what to do. But DANG, it's raining and I have to shoot through the wet, blowing, baggies. Here's Perry air-shooting on the dummy stage where one of our squad got DQd---bummer, out for the tournament.


But, now it's sunny! I'm ready for the tunnel of what.


It's a family-friendly sport, but everyone needs ear protection---even when the muffs are bigger than your head.


The sun came out, but I still need baggies because our squad started with target condoms on. Makes us extra safe.

Does my butt really look like that? Must be on wide angle or something.

Shooting: A1-the hotel

We're at the hotel, and there are a lot of shooters---over 300. Shooter numbers go up into the 350s. The hotel is supposed to have wireless everywhere, but not our room. So I go down into the lobby and get good signal, but no connection. Today, I find out that the gateway is not being set by DHCP, but everything else is OK. So I made the default what it was supposed to be and now I can connect.

Goal for the check-in was reached: I have my schedule, and I'm in a squad with most of the people I know here. Pretty nice. I will have to work hard not to be bottom man on every stage.

Shooting: Area 1

Area 1 starts tomorrow so: woot! There are 12 stages, so I thought I should put together a cart. The picture at left is a commercial version of the one I whipped together this afternoon. Mine has an ice chest, for drinks, shooting bag, and a tool box. Eventually, I'll get some ATV gunracks...but first I need to get the rifle and shotgun to go in them. For now, cold drinks are more important.

I'm going in without a full complement of spare parts, but I shoot a Glock so I might be able to scrounge whatever breaks that I don't have. No chance of doing well in the tournament except by my "C" rating, but the prize table is by random drawing. So hopefully I'll win a gun or something.

If the hotel has wi-fi, I can keep this blog up to date on my exciting progress.

DVC! (Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas i.e. Accuracy, Power, Speed)

Drinking Wine: Whitman Cellars

I shared a bottle of Whitman Cellars 2004 Viognier, Walla Walla Valley (scroll down to bottom of link to see wine description) with my friend Andy. Nice fruit aroma, especially pear and pineapple. We both know the winemaker so it's really a pleasure to keep up with his exploits. This particular one got a 90 from the Wine Spectator, which is very good.

It's barrel fermented in new French oak and left on lees for three months. It's only slightly oaky. When I made a white wine and left it on new oak for only a little over a month, it came out really oaky---course I like that. Steve makes too much wine to drink all himself, unlike me, so he has to make good stuff.

Bravo Steve!

Shooting: Practical

Shot an IPSC/USPSA match on Sunday in La Grande, Oregon. They really had some interesting stages. There were lots of targets and I forgot to engage one on two stages in a row. The first and second time I've had a failure to engage. Probably because I was trying to go faster in anticipation of the big regional meet next weekend.

One stage I was a little slow, but I got a perfect score. It had a door triggered swinging target and a tunnel of loose boards that you had to crawl through while shooting without dislodging one.

The classifier is linked above. I got a high "C" class score, which matches my rating.

So I was expecting my score to be pretty low and I did end up 20th out of 32. However, I was still 96% of my expected average score against an experienced shooter I track. Based on our classifier scores, I should get 57.85% and got 55.57%.

Maybe I'll get some good pictures this weekend---hopefully of the really good shooters and not me, so much.

Drinking Beer: Festival

So, why is it called Finger Fest? I'm guessing that it is because of this lovable monstrosity: The Fingernail. It is alleged to be an acoustic shell---yeah, right. As to the analogy, I think most long fingernails are more or less symmetric, a property this landmark forwent to better do whatever it was intended to do. Certainly, its use of concrete and stucco is more creative than the Hollywood Bowl and other---more mundane---acoustic shells. Those colors. Course, what color could it be.

Be that as it may, it is a local favorite and dearly loved. Saturday, we set up the beer garden right in front of it, and had great seats for the music. Thai, Italian, Ribs, and sundry foods, were carried into the beer garden, but the beer had to stay in, which was just the way we liked it.

Interestingly, we were the only place in town where you could drink and smoke at the same time everywhere in the establishment. I don't smoke, but I know that more beer is sold when smokers are allowed to indulge. Directly by the smokers and indirectly by non-smokers trying to clear their throats. We had to shut down at 9pm, which was a bummer because we were probably doubling our income every hour by that time of day.

Money was important, because the state has changed the rules after lobbying by the bar and restaurant associations. A few years ago, we, as a non-profit, could buy the beer and charge a booth fee to bootstrap the finances. Later we could take a beer donation or a booth fee (rarely both). We as a club could make a few thousand dollars to give to, usually, childrens charities. After the lobbyists got through last year, we can't get donated beer or charge a booth fee. So with insurance costing up to $800 a day, the beer$, required fencing, armbands, you name it, we have started losing money on festivals. Presumably, that's what the lobbyists and legislators wanted to do: shut us down.

I had to work all day making it happen, so only a few beers---one of the hazards of helping put on these community happenings. A few, a brave few of the homebrew club ran the whole thing with the assistance of the winery reps talking about their wine.

In addition to the beers listed in the last post, we had three wines from Terra Blanca: Malbec, Cab Sav, and Viognier.

You can find the locations of the microbrewies whose beer we served and many more at the Washington Brewers Guild.

Drinking Beer: Finger Fest

Our club is running the beer garden tomorrow at the Finger Fest at Howard Amon Park. I may have a picture of why it's called that tomorrow or next week. It's run by "Frankie Four Finger" though that's probably not why.

We'll be serving: IPA and Tangerine Hefe from Ice Harbor, Hefe from Rattlesnake, Blond from Snipes, Pilsner from Alpine, and PGA (amber) from Snoqualmie.

Like every "club" our homebrew club seems to devolve the heavy lifting for festivals onto only a few people. In our case, mostly Kevin and some me. We will have a few other volunteers to pour beer, wine and take money, etc. However, getting the licensing, barriers, tables, chairs, beers, ice, cleaning tap boxes and setting them up---yep, us.

With my shooting club, it's a different set of people who do all the work. Not me, even though I keep asking to be "involved" it never seems to happen. Maybe it's just something about how clubs work.

Got to taste the Ice Harbor Brewery summer pilsner today---mmmm. It won't last long when it goes on tap for the public, I'm sure.

Drinking Wine: Arc en Ciel

Once upon a time, a married couple of our acquaintance---who were both wine makers at different wineries---made a wine called Arc en Ciel, which is French for rainbow. Well, in the middle of the aging process, she changed wineries and he did too. Most of the wine got "relabeled" because of various contractual complications, but a few cases came out under the Arc en Ciel label---we got three of them.

I guess it's kind of a one-time thing, but such quirkyness is what I really like about living in wine country. Arc en Ciel lasted long enough to make it into a news release about using Red Mountain grapes, but otherwise is known only in the regional tribal memory.

After a while, we got the word to start drinking them up, which we have thrown ourselves into. I find it very fruity, smooth and easy to drink. It's a very good wine to tempt new drinkers just starting to contemplate serious Washington wines. I wish I was reckless enough to open another bottle tonight.

Soon it shall all be gone---hoopla!

Ping Pong

Early in college, I began to take table tennis seriously---i.e. sticky rubber and fancy serves. I've played regularly in streaks in the years since.

Tried it again tonight so I'm kinda sore. The rubber on the paddles was in pretty good shape considering it was over five years old.

Better shape than me, who lost 6 games in a row to my son.

The governing organizations keep messing with the rules. Now my best serve is illegal and games go to 11 instead of 21. You only get 2 serves before it goes over. I think they do it to make it more attractive for TV---but they still don't get on TV.

Drinking Beer: 06-06-06

Once a century and ignoring zeros and dashes, we have a 666 day. A number that originally seems to have been an oblique reference to the Roman Emperor Nero but lately has come to stand for the devil. So I figured there would be some wild links today, but mostly got this.

Once a year also on this day is the anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the Battle of Normandy. There was much more interesting reading on that subject. The speech by Patton was especially interesting. Any general today talking at one hundredth of that level would be sacked immediately in today's PC environment. They might get it up to one twentieth if cameras or recorders weren't rolling.

The natural choice for drinking today would have been Duvel, but I had a taste for Oude Gueuze. Sorry that link's in Flemish, but there are a few pictures on the webpage. Here's an article by Stephen Beaumont about lambic. He mentions Hanssens Artisanaal. I ran into Stephen at the Bock/Bok Beer Festival in Amsterdam in 2001.

I love Hanssens. Their lambics are very smooth, especially in the case of the Oude Gueuze because it is blended from beers matured for over three years.

We had an especially good time drinking Hanssens in a lambic specialty cafe in North Brussels. I would like to say we had a lost day there, but the cafe closed at 8 pm before we could even get confused.

Drinking Beer: Cirque D-Bock

In the twilight of our microbrewery---before the Gotterdammerung--- I made a light-colored doppelbock of about 10 percent alcohol by volume. I lagered it in used merlot barrels that I'd burned all the tartrates out of with hot water. So there was no color added only mild oak flavor. I dry hopped in the barrel with Hallertau Mittelfruh. That was in 1999.

Because of the high alcohol and moderate hoppyness, it is the only beer from our brewery that is still in its element. I had some tonight, and it is still great---seven years on and better than the day we released it.

Someday it too will be no more, but it won't fall to a sell-by date. No it will go down swigging. While there are still those of us who remember it, beauty shall never truly perish from this world.

Shooting: Rain

Shot today at a new club---their forth ever match. New club, new range officers, and lots of young people running the show. They are very web-savvy as can be seen just by checking out their website. It's nice to see a club making such a big effort to bring in new people to the sport.

It was raining when I left for Spokane, raining when I got to the range, raining lightly and heavily by turns during the match, not raining when I left, and sun shining brilliantly from the suburbs of Spokane home.

I think the rain may have finally affected my pistol as it failed to completely extract a casing for the first time ever on the last stage after being in the rain for six hours---though I tried to keep it covered with my jacket. I need to remember use oil lubricant when it is raining since I usually stick to dry types because of the dirt and dust in our alleged desert.

The Bayern Pilsener was especially tasty.

Shooting: Practice

Did 5 hours of practice on the range today, trying to build speed while moving. Got better for a while, then started making errors that sent my times back up a few seconds. Two other shooters that stopped by, bettered my time the first time. But that's ok since they weren't a factor of two like they used to be.

We'll see if the practice helps at the match tomorrow.

I put in a picture of what my Glock 17c looked like brand new (click picture for a bigger copy). It's got different sights and a non-ported barrel (required for Production Class) now.

Five hours doesn't sound like much, but that much time shooting field courses really wears me out. But that's a good thang.

Shooting: RO

The outdoor range we go to has days where the range is open to the public since the land itself is ultimately owned by the people. As a RO (range officer), I get certain special privileges, but they are paid for by duty days. So today, my wife and I ran the Rose Iris range.

The 50 BMG folks were also having a practice day for their meet this weekend. They were up on the 1000 yard range on top of the hill, but we could still hear them. Those are impressive rifles.

You would think that shooting ranges would be bad places for wildlife. But that doesn't seem to be the case since deer and elk are often seen crossing in front of live fire, knowing that they are not targets---so too the gophers that dig tunnels in the embankments. Today, my wife saw what looked like a wolf---she is familiar with coyotes and it didn't look like one of those. The wolf was happy with the gunfire, but became concerned when it heard voices. Besides the possibility this was a wild wolf, we have club members that bring their full-wolf pets out to the range. Maybe one of those was out for walkies. We also saw dozens of pelicans on the Yakima River huddled together on a little island. Eventually, they took off and flew away in a group. I guess they didn't like flying in the rain and were waiting for it to stop.

Have I mentioned I live in a supposed desert?

Drinking Wine: Mystery Bottle

One of the charms of making wine and knowing others who make wine is that sooner or later an unmarked bottle will present itself. Usually, I mark the bottle or the cork or attach a label by rubber band. Yet, over the half decade or so of aging, things happen.

So tonight I'm having something that I've decided is a merlot. Who made it, how old is it---no clue.

But hey, it's good. So thanks, whoever gave this to me.