Journal of a Gypsy Cowboy
formerly Combined Fulltime RV
and Cowboy Action Shooting Journal
February 2008
February 28-29, 2008
Thursday-Friday
More practice. The other parts came for the behihd the ear ear protectors, small foam inserts that go pretty deep in the ear. Very difficult to put on. Got more instructions from Peter Larson. Still not my favorite ear protectors.
From an email
Taxes after Clinton 1999 Taxes after Bush 2008
Single making 30K - tax $8,400 Single making 30K - tax $4,500
Single making 50K - tax $14,000 Single making 50K - tax $12,500
Single making 75K - tax $23,250 Single making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 60K - tax $16,800 Married making 60K- tax $9,000
Married making 75K - tax $21,000 Married making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 125K - tax $38,750 Married making 125K - tax $31,25
Source: www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html <http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151
February 25-27, 2008
Monday-Wednesday
More practice in the mornings. SportEar seems to have lost my electronic ear protectors. Whoever shipped them back also used the Post Office and neglected to log the shipment. They're doing the right thing, but I won't have them for WR. They sent a pair of behind-the-ear loaners, and forgot some of the parts. Another shipment due.
Conversations with Cody Conagher and Taylor's about the Trapper '73 on order. It didn't come in, along with 8 Cody had on order. They offered a Deluxe Border Rifle with an 18" barrel for a few dollars more. Took it. Cody'll have it done for me at WR. He'll be checking out my '73 on Wednesday morning before the warm up match.
Omaha John and Patti arrived Monday. Margaritas at 5. Went out to dinner with them Monday and Tuesday. Too tired Wednesday.
February 24, 2008
Sunday
No workers on Sunday morning. For an hour no other shooters. A couple more showed up. Good practice session.
Back at the shop I made some dummy .45-70 ammunition and learned that if you eject dummies from a Handi-Rifle, they don't fly over your head like empties. They hit you on the temple. Never thought I'd need a helmet to do dry-fire practice.
February 23, 2008
Saturday
Went to practice, found half the membership of the club there working on stages (for Fire and Ice next weekend). Normally I would have offered to help, but since I'm far behind on so many things, I ran like a rabbit. Reloaded .45-70 for the Plainsman rifle. I believe it took me longer to find all of the pieces for the hand primer than it did to do 100 rounds. I use a RCBS Turret Press, which was probably a mistake. After I bought it someone said, "Why didn't you just get a 550?" Why, indeed. I did speed things up by mounting the Dillon powder measure instead of the @#@%! Lyman BP measure. Don't need it anyway. The only bullets I could find were smokeless, so I used APP.
Went back to Cowtown. Figured the workers would be gone by 1500. They were. Tried out the 2 loads I made up for the .45-70, one for normal distance targets, one for longer range, as if I could hit them. Those loads are pretty strong. The loads for close targets is light. I remember at Comin' Atcha when a contestant fired a full-charge 500 gr. load from his Trapdoor and almost penetrated it, making a fist sized dent in the target, repeated quickly on the other targets.
February 22, 2008
Friday
At the range practicing by 0900. I'm liking this schedule. The Redhead made breakfast yesterday and today. She doesn't if we don't get up early. Hmm.
Getting to the point in practicing of figuring out some of the things I've been doing wrong. I shoot 4 stages using the ROAs, then switch to the Evil Roys and work on problem areas noted in shooting stages. Main weak point is still the shotgun. Still fumbling too much. When it works, it's okay (5.50). When it doesn't, shells fly everywhere but into the shotgun. While dry-firing late in the afternoon I finally remembered Col. Couch's dictum: "Never hurry. Not even in combat. Move with deliberate speed." Slowed down. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
Also have a weak point in transition from one revolver to the other. I can't shoot double duelist. The right thumb screams at me if I try to cock the revolver and hold it at the same time. So I have to go from, say left revolver, left hand to right revolver left hand. This has been taking 2 seconds. So I did a long string of shoot one left shoot one right. Finally got both to below 3 seconds consistently, about 1.4--1.5 shot to shot.
Also have had a problem with rifle reloads not being consistent. I could do some in 2 seconds, but others looked like Oliver Hardy tries SASS. Then I realized that the problem was holding the rifle by the lever and dropping the round in the top with the weak hand. Remembering that the fastest way to load a '87 shotgun was to use the strong hand. Much more consistent with much less comedy. Will work on this more.
A little comment on rifle reloads. Most of the time we need to be able to do them because we jack a live round out trying to go fast. Other times there'll be a bonus of 5 seconds for reloading and hitting a target. For most shooters, the thing to do is to ignore this and go to the next gun. The average shooter can't reload and hit a (often difficult, small, or distant) target in 5 seconds. Hell's Comin' can reload so fast you'll miss it if you blink, but Average Joe can't. (Apologies if there is an Average Joe alias issued.)
And Now For Something Completely Different:
In the fall of 1969 I had a Vietnamese (ARVN) Recon Company. We worked out of the Intel Shed. One day I went in, and the Major in charge tossed me a classified document and said, "Read this."
It was a debriefing report on two US pilots who had been in the Hanoi Hilton and had accepted early release. This would forever make them pariahs with the POWs who stayed, but it was invaluable to us because intel immediately debriefed them.
They described their treatment. It's common knowledge now except among Jane Fonda fans, but reading about it in the fall of 1969 made my stomach churn. The description of the tortures they had survived (and some didn't), read by someone who could possibly join them, was a horror story that would have been too much for Edgar Allan Poe or Wes Craven. The report was long and detailed. It mentioned that some men had refused repatriation. One of them was the son of Admiral McCain.
I thought at the time, "What a man. I'm sure if I'd been through those tortures I would do anything to get out of it."
Jack Broughton's book, Thud Ridge, was a best seller among military types. We knew that Johnson had sent F105s on virtual suicide missions by specifying, from Washington, altitudes and routes, enabling the North Vietnamese to line Thud Ridge with the most concentrated anti-aircraft fire in the history of aerial warfare. So our best pilots were being slaughtered needlessly, and a lot of them wound up in the Hanoi Hilton. Finding out how badly they were being tortured just added to the tragedy of it.
The Code of Conduct, of course, prohibits accepting favors not given to other prisoners, but think of it. You're being tortured day and night, kept in solitary confinement in a cold, dark cell, and told that since you're a war criminal, they can kill you if they want to. You see no hope. You know other men have died under torture. I would have a hard time not taking a way out of it. It's easy to talk about honor when you're not in the line of fire. It's much harder when things get difficult. I can't imagine conditions getting any more difficult than the Hanoi Hilton.
Now that officer is running for President. Someday the next President will have to make difficult choices. He won't take a poll or worry about approval ratings. He'll do what's right. He also won't send our troops into combat unless it's absolutely necessary. And he won't abandon them when it's convenient.
We're in a war. Our future depends on our winning it. Everything else is secondary. Right now we know the Democratic candidate is running on a platform of surrender.
There isn't much more that needs to be said.
I'll try to avoid politics for a while and stick to CAS, RVing, and living with 4 demanding pets.
February 20-21, 2008
Wednesday, Thursday
Practiced both days. Larsen E. Pettifogger mentioned he was going to the NMLRA Championship at Ben Avery to buy black powder. Met him there Thursday. Didn't buy black powder,not that much of a deal, but bought all of the Remington #10 caps one vendor had at very old price. Also bought all his Hornady .457 round balls equally underpriced. Larsen and I split the Treso Ruger Old Army nipples found there because of a FALSE rumor that Treso had gone out of business.
In order to go there with Larsen I was at the range at 0830. Loved it. Had the place to myself for a while before Hell's Comin' showed up. Watching him shoot is a school in itself.
February 19, 2008
Tuesday
I read in The Shooting Wire that Ray Chapman died. I attended his intermediate and advanced pistol courses in the early eighties. Heck of a guy. Great instructor. World Champion, Marine combat veteran of the south Pacific in WWII and Korea. A "father of Modern pistolcraft". I had Bill Wilson build a Colt Series 70 to Ray's specs. It's had over 50,000 rounds and is still one of my favorite .45s. It was last used when I loaned it to a young Infantry lieutenant to shoot at Thunder Ranch after 9/11. I'll probably shoot it in Wild Bunch competition at Buffalo Stampede and EOT.
Ray's contributions to modern pistolcraft can't be over estimated. Every time a cop takes out a bad guy using some of the techniques he devised, he had a hand in it. Ray's gone. Jeff's gone. Their teachings live on.
Practiced at Cowtown. I'd gotten 4 shotgun knockdowns down to 5.50 seconds yesterday. Today I got help from Larsen E. Pettifogger, who watched me and gave me some hints. Following them I was able to do 4 in 10 seconds. Stage times still in the high 20s, which I haven't been able to do in a match shooting Frontiersman. I'm convinced the match timers are fixed.
For the humor impaired readers, the above was a joke.
The '73, with its sledgehammer gunsmithed extractor, continues to work like a charm when I manage to work the lever properly and pull the trigger when I can see the target through the smoke. So far, efforts to find high-tech glasses that will allow me to see through smoke have proved fruitless. Spur Roberts won't tell me where he got his.
Made up 250 rounds of match .38 ammo. 250 rounds of regular ammo would take somewhere between half an hour and 45 minutes. But i'd like these to work all the time. First i loaded the primers using a primer pickup tube instead of the RF100 to make sure none were in the machine upside down. (This is probably a time waster, -culling the ones with upside down primers takes less time). Then rounds are all dropped into the chambers of a revolver and put into 50 round boxes, primer up (thus allowing me to see the upside down primers). Evil Roy got me out of the habit of boxing my normal ammo neatly because it wastes time. But practice ammo with upside down primers in it and split cases is no big deal. Match ammo uses all new Starline brass. That also makes it easy to visually check for powder in the shiny cases. Of course I have a powder check die and use it religiously.
Match shotgun ammo is made from once fired hulls, currently from the expensive Featherlights I'm using to practice. When I was talking to a Dillon guy about problems with the SL900, he said their machines work best with Winchester hulls and primers. Thus I'm using them. The machine is working very well, and only about 2 out of 100 are rejected. If it wouldn't kick primers to the floor with undue frequency, the 900 would be a dream machine. Now I just need about 5,000 cheap once fired Winchester AA hulls. (Well, that would call for 357 lb. of shot, which at current prices would probably buy a new Mercedes).
February 18, 2008
Monday
Practiced again today. Broke the extractor on the '73. I was asking about a gunsmith in the Phoenix area when Hell's Comin' drove up. I told him I needed a gunsmith for a broken extractor. He proceeded to disassemble the rifle and replace the extractor with one from his parts box. What was more remarkable was the tools used. Various items were used to punch the pin out, and the only hammer available was a 2 lb. sledge for tapping the new pin in. A nail file from my Swiss Army/Mercedes-Benz Letherman was used to file it to fit.
I'll be ordering spares for the '73 tonight.
Tonight's Margaritas were more exciting than most. George S. Patton, Jr. jumped up on the couch and knocked a full Margarita out of The Redhead's hand, spilling it pretty much everywhere, including all over her laptop. I took same to the garage and used the compressor to clean it off and dry it out. It seems to be working, except for the cursor. She's using my wireless mouse.
I'm getting pretty good at emergency computer drying from spilled Margaritas, unfortunately. Emerald has been known to spill some of my Margarita onto the MacBook.
February 17, 2008
Sunday
Life at Pioneer RV Park:
The view from our parking spot Sunday morning
Noplace but Arizona
Our parking spot at Pioneer RV Park
Yes, we did have to back the monster into this site--with the help of a retired trucker
Arthur Pendragon watching the balloons
February 16, 2008
Saturday
Cowtown
These people like to shoot. 8 stages. Went pretty fast. We were faster than the posse ahead, and ours was full. They like to shoot in order here. This time it was the order we signed up. I was last. They have unloading and loading tables combined. The unloading table for one is the loading table for the next. There's plenty of room, but the loaders always crowd into the unloading area. I was using an unused unloading area (a one stage space between us and the posse before us) to charge the pistols, and someone went out of his way to tell me I needed to do that at my guncart, that if another posse had been behind us, I wouldn't have had room. As prickly as I am when someone messes with me when I'm charging pistols, I said nothing and didn't whop him up side the head with one of them, the appropriate but little used response for messing with people when they're charging pistols in competition. Then two non-shooting spectators told me how right he was, that they were from Pennsylvania, and they wouldn't tolerate charging pistols at an unloading table. Saying nothing I swept them with my pistols while charging them at the gun cart. (Just kidding, not really.)
For those CAS types reading this who know nothing about Frontiersmen, here's a little primer
Frontiersmen "charge" their pistols by putting in powder and balls (and lubricated wads or over-the-ball lubricant if using wholly black). This requires, at the least, holding the weapon vertically:
better yet, a loading stand:
or (when they work), a cylinder loading stand
All of the methods of charging a percussion pistol require taking it from your holster. Ideally, when you do that, you need to be in a position where no one is or can be between you and the berm. Why? You're going to have to turn that pistol from muzzle down to muzzle up.
Good match, as expected at Cowtown. Other shooters had told me bad things about Cowtown, that they shoot at targets up the side of the hill, that they give 10 second penalties for misses. These things were once true, but the only time I've shot at the long range targets up the side of the hill was a precision side match. The pistol targets are at 7 paces, and the rifle at 15, more or less. Shotgun targets are at 7. Rifle and pistol targets are big, just like it says in the SASS Handbook.
They do like to name sweeps. Instead of saying, 2 shots on R1, 2 on R2, 2 on R3, two on R2, 2 on R1, they call it a double-tap Nevada sweep. This is fine until they get to really weird ones and use local names. But someone always translates it ot the posse.
Finished at 2 pm. Didn't stay for lunch. Too tired. Too much to do.
When do I get to the boring part of retirement?
Feruary 13-15, 2008
Wednesday-Friday
Practiced every day, ran errands, and cleaned guns. Nothing in particular worth writing about here. Stage times and interval times got longer each day. Is that how practice is supposed to work?
Winchester Featherlites are $8.99/box at Sportsman's Warehouse (10% off sale making it $8.09) and $7.57 at WalMart. Bought a case at the former and 9 boxes, all they had, at the latter anyway.
February 12, 2008
Tuesday
Went to the office. We were told we parked in the wrong space and would have to move, and move again on February 28, and would have to move out March 3 as "all the cowboy shooters are coming in." This was after much discussion. Some of these RV Resort office people speak an unique language. I'm just learning a few bits.
"You can't stay in a pull-through for a month. They're for overnighters." Translation: "You have to pay the weekly rate instead of the monthly rate."
Anyway, given the above choice or staying a month in a back-in, we chose a back-in. It looked long and wide enough, but an elevated concrete patio left 11 ft. between it and the electrical pylon. We enlisted the aid of Ron, a retired trucker we met in the dog park. He helped me back in the first time.
Then we ran errands, like groceries, and back flushed the water softener. Margaritas were late, and we're exhausted.
February 11, 2008
Monday
Drove to Pioneer RV Resort, one exit north of Ben Avery Shooting Center on I17, Got there after closing. We had called to ask what space. We were told to pick one from the board at the office. We did. Tired.
February 10, 2008
Sunday
High Noon at the Tombstone Livery
Final Day
Four more stages. None particularly good. This event had something I've never encountered, a "Mulligan." If you had a mechanical malfunction, you could use your Mulligan chip and get a do-over. I had a case compress and lock up the rifle. Split case--under recoil the bulled retracted into the case just enough to lock the rifle up. BP should minimize this, as it fills the case, but not enough. I'm not using compressed loads. So I used the chip and had a better stage. No other mechanical problems, just bad shooting. No wind and sun glare were no help. That's life with black powder, though.
Last stage had 4 shotgun knockdowns to be knocked down with the rifle. I used full-charge Cowboy with 125 gr. bullets. No problem, but lots of smoke. Hell's Comin' commented, "lotta smoke there!"
The awards presentation took a long time because they drew tickets for every little door prize they'd been given. If those had been given out at registration, we'd have finished an hour sooner. No problem for me, but the Dooley Gang had to sneak out early to head back to Texas. The Dooley Gang won most of the awards, no surprise. In Frontiersman it was White Lightning, Cowtown Scout, yrs truly, Omaha John, forget the next one. 7 entrants I'm told.
Got a Great Western II Custom from Buffalo Sam Peed, of EMF, for testing for The Cowboy Chronicle. VERY impressive gun. Doug Turnbull case hardening, good fit/finish, light trigger and hammer. I asked who the gunsmith was. "We just put in a spring kit." That means Pietta really did their part. I'll start shooting it this week.
Margaritas with Omaha John and Patti, then dinner at The Depot with a party of 14 SASS people. The Depot should be happy the event was here. Sunday night, almost deserted until we showed up.
February 9, 2008
Saturday
High Noon at the Tombstone Livery
Main Match Day One
Beautiful day. Cold in the morning, clear, warmed up. No breeze in the morning, but it came up later. On a BIG posse with the likes of Spur Roberts, Longhunter, and Hell's Comin'.
Started off well with 2 good stages. Third a little slower. Then pulled pistol one on fourth stage, and got pop-pop-pop, no powder or bullets. The marshals conferred and said no round went downrange. Reshoot. Put powder in all 5 chambers, got distracted (not a little rattled by now) and put the cylinder in the gun without balls. Ppp-pop-pop-pop-pop again. Third time's a charm. All bangs. Next stage the bangs were very loud, and the second pistol locked up with two to go. 2 misses and 65 second stage! This match has "mulligans", poker chips with your name on them, good for a reshoot after mechanical failure. Didn't think of it until it was too late. Got another miss on last stage, slow due to sun getting low an in our faces. Spur Roberts shot ahead of me. From the unloading table, he yelled, "Captain Baylor! Go back! The sun makes those rifle targets disappear." Yep.
The Dammit Gang had arranged for a night black powder shoot. You can't join the Dammit Gang without shooting BP at night while a DG member observes. I was exhausted, and Omaha John went into Tombstone for dinner and dancing. #@!%!
We night shooters had dinner at 4 pm.
First came a memorial shoot for all the cowboys and cowgirls who've died in the last year, then a team shoot, then finally the individual shoot. I had the good sense to bring the .38s. Shot well, but I don't know how well. They didn't have a timer. At almost 8 they said they'd have another stage. I had my DG badge by then and came up the hill and showered.
7 Frontiersmen.
February 8, 2008
Friday
High Noon at the Tombstone Livery
Side Match Day
Shot all of the side matches that use main match weapons. Everything worked. Swiss 3f in the ROAs, lubed wads from Thunder Ridge. Worked very well. None of the problems I'd had in Indian Springs.
Went to the Longhorn for dinner. Took an hour before the salads arrived. The search continues.
February 7, 2008
Thursday
Made it to Tombstone, but not without drama. The right rear tire on the trailer started losing air on I-10. Hard to find a place to pull over to check it. At 23 lb. I just gave up and put on the flashers and stopped on a lightly traveled street. The Pressure Pro monitor had unscrewed itself (again). Used the compressor to pump it up. A cop stopped and stayed there with flashers going until we finished.
Omaha John organized us a 30 amp hookup at the range. Semi-flat for the coach. The trailer is going downhill, though.
Went to dinner with John, Patty, and another couple. I suggested Nellie Cashman's because of the great breakfast we'd gotten there. Memo to self: Nellie Cashman's is great for breakfast, not dinner. The great hunt for someplace to eat at Tombstone continues. When we spent most of a week here beginning Sept. 12, 2001, we discovered Big Ed Douglas was right when we asked him, "Where do the locals eat?"
"Benson." There wasn't a good place then. We're still looking.
February 6, 2008
Wednesday
Drove to Pioneer RV Park in Phoenix for the night, en route to Tombstone for the big Dammit Gang/Dooley Gang duel at High Noon at the Tombstone Livery. Parked next to a 5th wheel with a Volvo semi for a tow vehicle. The 5th wheel weighs 21,000 lb, and the Volvo has a 500 hp. Cat. Does the word "overkill" mean anything to them?
February 2-5, 2008
The 2008 SHOT Show
Since I was at the show all day each day and therefore too tired to do the blog when I was done, sometimes pretty late at night, I'll do the show as a whole.
The SHOIT Sow had nearly 2,000 exhibitions and 40,000+ attendees. It used up the entire Las Vegas Convention Center and three temporary buildings--715,000 square feet, or 16-1/2 acres.
I helped out at the SASS Booth and covered the convention for The Cowboy Chronicle. To do that I went to every booth that I could find that had anything to do with CAS or cowboy guns and asked, "What do you have that's new and different for Cowboy Action Shooters?"
I got some interesting answers.
When I asked the man at Chiappa "What do you have that's new and different for Cowboy Action Shooters?" he pulled this out of hiding, a beautiful prototype 1887 shotgun replica, with 2-shot loading and removable choke tube. It's being made on CNC machinery to high tolerances. Several are out with top CAS shooters who understand '87s for debugging. I hope to be able to keep you up on this project.
USFA is working on 1858 Remingtons and 1875 Remingtons FOR REMINGTON. They will be marked Remington, just as the originals. Mark Roberts, VP Marketing for USFA is shown with a prototype.
USFA's magnificent display board, a copy of Colt's in the 1870s.
With the upcoming Wild Bunch matches at Buffalo Stampede and End of Trail, interest in GI spec 1911s is growing. Coyote Calhoun is considering breaking it into 2 categories, Traditional with GI Spec guns, and Modern with the sort of 5" 1911 you probably have, beavertail grip safety, checkering, adjustable sights. He's thinking of having Traditional shoot duelist, appropriate for the time. So I looked for GI Spec 1911s. Hi Standard had a good one, $349 dealer, 5 or more at $319 until March 15 from LIPSEY'S 1-800-666-1333. This one had a good trigger and was match ready.
I found other 1911s. Springfield, of course, has one that's GI spec inside and out. The trigger would need serious work to be match ready. Iver Johnson, however, had one that was match ready for $369, dealer. I liked it best.
Colt, of course, had a beautiful one, at Colt prices.
For a while Sunday I tried to keep up with Tequila. He was doing interviews for Downrange TV at a dead run. It was like trying to keep up with T-Bone Dooley on a stage. Someone at a booth said something to me, and when I turned around, Tequila was 2 rows over, and 6 booths down.
STI is noted for its high quality match grade 1911s. For a while they've been working on an SAA clone, the Texican. This one's .45 Colt and absolutely gorgeous. The rep mentioned that they don't do hand polishing. The machinery makes the pieces fit. The loading gate, for example, fit perfectly. The finish was high polish, though, royal blue and real case hardening. The hammer and trigger pull were match-grade out of the box. The front sight is wide, as is the rear notch. It's AMERICAN Made. $1250. Those who complain about the prices of Colt, USFA, and STI, expecting their American workers to work for the wages of Italians, Poles, and Chinese, please don't bother emailing me. I was promised a .38 special to test when they come out in June.
Leatherwood had the rifle that was used in 3:10 to Yuma, a 1855 Colt Revolving rifle converted to shoot .45-70 blanks. On top is the only scope approved for SASS Long range
The Goex booth. They were talking up Goex Express, but they're not sending me any for testing
The EMF Booth. General US Grant was there, also Nate Kiowa Jones. Very busy.
EMF had gunspinners James Leone and Leslie Garden. They were constantly violating the 170, but those are non-guns they're spinning, EMF's dry fire pistols. The hammers are super-glued shut. They have to perform in places that don't allow guns. By the way, every gun in the SHOT Show had its firing pin removed.
World Champion Gunspinner Leslie Garden
Marshal Halloway interviewed me for Cowboy Action Radio and for Downrange TV. When he found me for the TV interview, I had just put my hand on the Man With No Name pistol at Cimarron. It had been locked away all weekend, and Mike Harvey took it out so I could photograph it. It's an Open Top frame with 1851 barrel, complete with rammer. The Open Top had the rear sight on the back of the barrel. The 1851 conversions had the rear sight on the ring behind the conversion cylinder. Uberti didn't put a front sight on early Man With No Name pistols. The one Clint Eastwood used didn't have one. This one has one on the back of the barrel.
I held this one for the entire interview, so Mike got more than he expected by taking it out of the display case. Some grips!
Marshal Halloway also interviewed The Judge in front of the big SASS display, That's Spur Roberts shooting there.
Someone was displaying a nice 1876 Winchester replica, a Theodore Roosevelt commemorative. The Judge is holding it. Memo to self: in the future, make sure the subject of the photo is photographed in front of the booth selling it.
Tammy of Taylor's & Co., Inc. is shown holding a Smoke Wagon. Each one is smithed by Cody Conagher himself. He carefully and thoroughly explained the differences between it an Cimarron's Evil Roy, which, when I get one for testing, I'll check out. Looking forward to it.
Terri Clark performed at the Outdoor Channel awards party at the Hard Rock casino. Ted Nugent performed later. Neat party
The Henry Rifle Co. donated a Henry Golden Boy 22, engraved, to the Wounded Warrior Project, a very worthy cause
Speaking of worthy causes, Armor 4 Troops gives high quality shooting glasses to troops in the sandbox. A retired Marine Lt. Col was in charge at the booth. Like all the Marine charities I know about, this one is quite efficient. 98%+ of the donations go directly to the troops. The booth was comped by the show. The above glasses have been shot by a .22. Photos of a GI who's vision was saved by such glasses were shown. Much blood on the troop's face, but nothing permanent, and no vision damage. He'd been too close to an IED.
Did I mention the Hooters girls were very friendly?
Things I didn't get pictures of:
Lisa Keller, of VTI Gun Parts, mentioned Uberti has changed the design of the bolt of the 66 and 73. If you need a new bolt, you'll need several more parts that don't interchange otherwise. It's a safety mod. They won't be supplying any of the old design parts.
VTI had some interesting sets on their display, blister packs of, say, all the screws for an Uberti SAA, blued, fire blued, or hardened. Open the blister pack, and there's a nice plastic bag ready to go into your gun cart or parts box. They had them for most clones.
Next year, unfortunately, the SHOT Show goes to Orlando. The Las Vegas convention center, because of its location, is perfect. It's at a monorail stop and within walking distance of the Hilton. The shuttle bus service worked perfectly. I got 2 new SASS members on one of the buses and met a lady in charge of a police department in Munich. I haven't even mentioned the gambling, the topless reviews, the bad Elvis impersonators, and $9.95 prime rib.
February 1, 2008
Friday
Went to the SHOT Show. The Redhead dropped me off, then went grocery shopping. She had a lot of trouble finding a store with a parking lot she felt safe to leave the car and walk in. It took over an hour. I know how she felt after Wednesday's search for fuel.
I helped a little in setting up the SASS Booth and looked around a bit. This place is BIG. I predict (a) I'll get lost a lot (b) finding the cowboy related companies is going to be difficult.
Hipshot, Judge Roy Bean, Coyote Calhoun, and Cimarron Lou are here from SASS. Yes, Lou is doing all the work. Duh.
Got back to the bus. The Redhead was in a funk from working all day on things she didn't want to do. I made her get off the couch and go with me to the Paris, where we had a drink at Napoleon's bar, where a 6 ft. tall blonde with 7 ft. legs and a lot of cleavage waited on us. We had dinner at one of the restaurants, don't remember the name. The Redhead was in a MUCH better mood.