"Blogarado" Part 1. It's good to go see good people.

So Dad and I left a wedding on Saturday night, and drove across the Texas Panhandle and the Oklahoma Panhandle to end up in Colorado, at a blogmeet first proposed by FarmGirl, and hosted by her whole family.

"Mountains!" you're thinking. Nope. We were in a part of Colorado where the terrain is less geographically interesting, though I liked it.

The people there are quiet, and fiercely independent. That's not to say, though, that they are distant or rude; they just don't need Nanny Government to help them live their lives. People carry guns, and generally do it in the open, without comment about it. Elderly man limping around his pickup at the Dollar General? That's a 4" revolver on his belt. Plump woman at the Loaf 'N' Jug? That's a small auto on her belt. They're not brandishing; they're just being compliant with the law, which requires them to obtain a concealed carry license if they want to cover their guns, or requires them to carry openly if they don't have a CHL.. Carrying a gun is not a stunt; it's just a simple aspect of living.

We showed up early in the sleepy little town, and decided to nap in the car outside the breakfast restaurant, waiting for our friends to arrive. FarmGirl and friends went in, past our snoozing selves, and texted me to come inside.

I met plenty of great folks that I had read, and a few that I had not.

After a leisurely breakfast wherein we all snickered at the effect of a large and amorphous group (that constantly changes number and tables) has on a well-meaning but scatter-brained young waitress (bless her heart), we retired to the range.

At the range, there was a pistol table and a rifle table, and we had reactive targets at the lines near both. The first firearm I shot was the most famous Bersa Thunder on the Internet.

I then fired the Atomic Nerds' Wedding Rings: A pair of Les Baer 1911s that Stingray and LabRat had given each other in lieu of literal rings, for their wedding. I'm not kidding when I say that I almost choked up.

I won't go into the litany of all the guns we fired, because, frankly, I'd bore you. I will say that people were more than eager to share their guns with each other, and more than happy to give each other ammo, to levels of generosity that were just silly. Old NFO handed me a Browning Citori in the keenest leather-and-canvas fitted case that I've ever seen, and told me to go have fun shooting clays, when I lamented that I had left my shotguns at home. The beautiful over/under looked unfired. When the dadgummed case for a shotgun costs more than most of the firearms that I brought, that's a sweet rig.

FarmGram fed us all like kings. To say that we ate heartily would be an understatement.
Nobody watched where their guns or worried about them. Everyone took the safety of the others on as their responsibility, especially the safety of little KB, AmboDriver's daughter.
Everyone took care to make sure the others got their stuff back.

We had a great time.

But then...