Blogorado... 7? I think???

I went up to Colorado on Thursday, and came back on Monday. I had a great time.


My wife, who did not go, thinks that all we did was talk guns and shoot guns and be manly men, or something.


She doesn't realize that I participate in more hugs in that weekend than I do for the rest of the year.


I ate well. I communed with friends, old and new.


I enjoyed watching my friends' successes, and joked with them about their insubstantial failures.


Yeah, we shot at dynamite, and we shot a bowling ball mortar, and we blew up a car and a kitchen appliance. But mostly, it was about The Exchange.


Farewell, my tribe. Until next we meet.

Blogorado the ?th I've lost track. (6th, I think.)

I didn't have much time this trip, so I raced northwest, visited, and then raced back. There just wasn't enough time. But I was honored to be able to ferry a friend who otherwise wouldn't have been able to make it.
I roomed again with my great friend Ambulance Driver. There are a few people in this world that become one of your best friends the first time you meet them. One for me was my old patrol partner, P. Another is Ambulance Driver.
I didn't get enough time to shoot. And that what I shot wasn't great. I kept getting distracted from what I was going to do. I didn't spend anywhere nearly enough time with my good friend Gay Cynic.


I didn't spend anywhere NEARLY enough time with my gracious hosts, Farm Mom, Farm Dad, and Farm Girl. I got in some good breakfast time with Tam and the Nerds.


I didn't hang out much with my Dad and his wife, because we see each other all the time. PhlegmFatale I got to chat with a fair bit. AEPilot bought me a lovely hat. And he provided a LOT of food. Thanks, man!


Old NFO took Spear and Gunsmith Jason to shoot on Sunday morning, but didn't invite me. He sends me good coffee, but he doesn't invite me for the early morning rifle frivolity. Hm. I made coffee at the range again. Because dammit, I like a little coffee at the range.


DanielS arrived with his lovely wife, who was a maven of the open range, cooking burgers.


And others. We had a good time. We'll do it again, I hope.


Then, there was ChristinaLMT and SciFi and SciFi Wife and... I'm missing people.

Damned good fun

My brother and I went to see Godzilla on Saturday night.


If 8 year-old-Matt had his way, we're looking at a complete sweep for the 2014 Oscars.


Director Gareth Edwards apparently had taken some notes on what works in ominous movies starring scary creatures. You literally don't catch sight of the title creature for the first half of the movie. Then, when he's on the rampage, or fighting, you get partially-obscured shots, cut off just when you think you're going to see more. It works. It works GREAT.


When Godzilla finally climbs out of the sea, and challenges his adversary, he gives a blasting scream that had my brother and I pumping our fists and cheering in a manner that in retrospect HAD to have been annoying to other people in the theatre. We got there a little late, and sat in the fourth row from the front, and I remarked that watching the credits at the beginning (which, by the way, are well-rendered in a novel way) felt like watching a tennis match. But it gave us the bigger-than-life feeling. The movie was shot in high-definition, and I never noticed any pixilation. We didn't see it in 3D (my brother says that it gives him a headache), but the CGI has that appropriate quality of not being noticeable. I know that we said that we were there 10 years ago, but it's only these last couple of years that I have really believed it.


The movie has several homages to the classic movies of the '50s and '60s, with a mug for the camera, and a tail-swing, and the great scream (one of which goes on for about 20 seconds) that make him the monster you remember.


Are there some silly plot devices? Of COURSE there are. Just don't worry about that. By the way-- there actually is a plot.


The casting was spot on. Brian Cranston was very well-used, but not over-used.



Ken Watanabe acted his butt off as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, the world expert on the radiation-consuming monsters' ilk.



Elizabeth Olsen was nice eye candy and the raison d'etre for the rather silly Naval lieutenant played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson who becomes the Forrest Gump of the movie, wandering through every aspect of a world crisis and basically just giving us a personal view of the entire event.


I don't even care that the masked Filipino guards at the initial discovery site have Mexican style looped bandoliers on while carrying AK's. I just don't care. It was a great movie. I loved it. I think that I'm going back to see it again, because fun.


Go see it in the theaters. Because fun.

Lines Of Departure

So, my friend Marko Kloos today celebrates the release of the second book in his science fiction trilogy. In his first big release, Terms Of Enlistment, Marko introduced us to the not-too-distant future world in which Earth is colonizing as fast as it can, and needs extra-terrestrial Terran military to assist in this (and to quell the riots back home on a rapidly-deteriorating Earth.).


Now, his protagonist is a veteran, who has relationships in the military, and takes the next step in his career as an off-world soldier.


I've read a couple of chapters today, and it's smart writing that reads easily.


I hear that one might should keep an eye out for certain characters that we may know, too.


One of the joys of having a Kindle and an Amazon account is being able to instantly download Lines Of Departure for $4.99.


Marko is a good writer, who can do that magical thing, wherein he conjures up characters out of whole cloth, and keeps them true to their nature. When one questions whether a book is plot-driven or character-driven, the answer ideally should be "both," because the nature of the characters develop the plot. Marko Kloos writes plots, with characters whom you know, after awhile.


In this one, his spacefaring soldiers address 80-foot-tall alien invaders who are taking over planets that Terrain colonists have been terraforming. For starters.


Go read.

Late October weekend recap.

--Lou Reed died last night. Well, now it would be the night before last. I'm surprised at how many of my friends really liked him. I thought most people just know "Walk On The Wild Side". When I was a freshman, my roommate had a copy of Lou Reed's New York, which I played to death. It's excellent. The first song that came to mind after I got married was "Beginning Of A Great Adventure." (Not the best song on the album, though. The best is "The Dirty Boulevard." )

One of the most moving album reviews that I ever read was of Lou Reed's "Set The Twilight Reeling", in which the reviewer noted that the album was not so well-received because it displayed the softer side of Reed; he was in love in love with Laurie Anderson, and proclaimed it openly. To paraphrase the review, the writer said that we should all buy it and listen to it, because if two jaded New York social critics like these two could find love and lose themselves in it, then there is hope for all of us. And hope is worth a $12 risk on a CD.

--This weekend we traveled to Denton, and watched the Dia De Los Muertos Coffin Races down the hill on East Hickory, off the Courthouse Square. It was a lot of fun, and was more about style than speed:

 

--I worked a 24 hour shift this week this weekend at the fire department. I listened to a firefighter, whom I firmly believe would walk into a wall of flame to rescue a victim, express real terror at the thought of sleeping alone in the upstairs sleeping quarters. Because they're haunted. I did everything that I could not to roll my eyes, but I don't know how successful I was.

 

--We went to Six Flags Over Texas for "Fright Night" on Saturday night, and got season's passes. I dropped by the security office to sign in because of the metal detectors. When I got out my pistol to check the serial number, the security sergeant there, who has seen a lot of such procedures over his years there, expressed interest in my pistol, having never seen one like that before. It was just a S&W 637 with a bobbed hammer spur. Now I was confused. Since when has a Chief's Special been an unusual off-duty cop's gun?

 

--We rode on the "Superman Tower Of Power" ride (apparently Metropolis and Gotham are now considered to be two of the flags that Texas has had flown over it.).  A storm raged in the near distance as we shot 330 feet into the air. I pointed out at the apogee that we might die due to lightning. My elder daughter was not reassured by that. She thought it quite amusing how I whooped and hollered on that ride. Damned exhilarating being accelerated up at about 2 g's, and DOWN at well over the acceleration due to gravity. I've sky dived, and it was only a little cooler. Shortly after, they shut down the rides. I hustled the family out of the park, and we just beat the storm out.

 

--I went to visit some of the firefighters at a campout at a nearby lake. One of the guys there had made "chili." He was born in Ohio, and was raised by Yankees, so he has an excuse for what he served us. It was actually quite tasty, bless his heart. But it wasn't Texas red.

 

--At the FD, I watched the Dallas/Detroit football game. Both teams played very well, and the score was decided in the last minute. Exciting, right? No. The two other firefighters watching were disgusted with the Cowboys for blowing it. The Dallas Cowboys had "effed it up."  I don't root for a team, but I thought that it was a good contest, and was surprised that they were so upset. They don't appreciate a good game? It's only fun to watch when their team wins?  I submit that they weren't being football fans, so much as winning fans. Yawn. 

--I watched this dash video of a street level supervisor responding to an officer-involved shooting in Warren, OH. I hope that the brass recognize what a superb supervisor that they've got in Sgt. Holmes (4690). He stays off the radio except when necessary while responding to the scene. He arrives, and takes control of the scene in a direct, but not panicked manner. He gives explicit instructions as to what he wants done, but doesn't hold forth. He took a tough situation, and did a good job. Warren P.D. comes out looking really good in this handling of what appears to be a good shoot.

---There is no report more boring to work than a fraud report. Period.

End to a great vacation.

"Are you sure that you don't want to come?" I asked my wife again, as she dropped me off at the Museum Of Flight in Seattle.

"Oh, no. The girls and I aren't that interested, and it's $18 a ticket, and we want to go to that Curiosity Shop before we go home," she assured me.

Good.

I know that's mean, but she's right; my daughters just never caught the bug for airplanes, and my wife never had it, either. It was afternoon on my last day of vacation, and I wanted one last cool thing to do before we left. I hopped out of the rental car and skipped up the walk past a B17 to the door of the museum, concerned about the fact that I only had two hours before it closed.

Two older gentlemen were standing on the front steps, wearing docent name tags and talking. They stopped talking and turned, along with everyone else, as a 747-8 started its take-off roll about 200 yards away. Honestly, I thought that it was only a hundred yards away, but Google Earth shows me different: Runway 31 Left is about 200 yards from the front steps of the museum. Supposedly, the new GEnx-2B67 engine is supposed to be quieter and more environmentally friendly, but one can't fault the pilot for unleashing every decibel available when pushing 900,000 lbs of one of the largest passenger jets in the world up to take-off speed.

 600 feet isn't very distant when four General Electric engines each put out 66,500 foot-pounds of thrust.

The two guys both clenched their jaws as they watched the airship gain speed down the runway.

"Come on, up! Up!" one of them said. The nose lifted, and a second later the great plane took off, a mile and a half away, with plenty of runway left.

"I always feel like they're never getting up in time, when I watch them," the elder gentleman said. I would have bet a fat paycheck that he'd pulled back on the yoke during a few take-offs, himself. Most museums, the patrons would get annoyed if you had put that kind of ruckus up right at the entryway. Not here. Every man, woman, and child in attendance was watching the takeoff. Because we all were here to look at airplanes.

I went inside, and gladly shoved my money at the cashier, and got the audio tour guide device, too. I looked at the map that they gave me of the place, and realized that there was NO WAY that I was going to see half of this place, at a dead run. Blocks and blocks of multiple levels of great displays of real airplanes. So I relaxed and decided to walk to see what I could.

I went into the TA Wilson Great Gallery, and found myself looking straight at a M-21 variant of the A-12, which was an early Blackbird. This one had a D-21 drone on its back. If you think modern drones are exotic, you should consider that we were launching these things at Mach 3 during the 1960s. Check out this video (narrated by Kelly Johnson) of a failed launch, taken from another Blackbird, an SR71:

I looked around, and found that they had an actual fuselage from a wrecked SR71, which cockpit you were permitted to sit in. Don't think for a second that ten-year-old Matt G was going to miss a chance to sit in the cockpit of an SR71. I hassled a dad who had just helped his son out of the cockpit to take my picture.

 

 

 

 

 

I think that the seat must have been lowered.  I'm sorry that I left my right leg cocked, but there was a line, and I knew that I must get out.

They had a simulator that would let you fly one of three different aircraft. .

 

 

I texted my Dad and Tam and Old NFO, asking which one they would go with.



Options are: P38F Lightning, F4U-1A Corsair, FM-2 Wildcat, F15 Eagle, EA-18 Growler, F22 Raptor.

I immediately knew which one I wanted to fly, and I got in the slow-moving line. Old NFO, predictably, immediately responded that he would fly the F4U Corsair. Well, duh; he's an old Navy pilot. Dad was still mulling it over, and Tam, rarely known for quick email responses (!) didn't get back to me. I didn't send one to my best friend Scott, because he knew exactly which one I would choose, we having had the discussion many times in junior high and high school. (Honestly, though, I don't know for sure which one he would have flown. I'm guessing that without his beloved P51, he would have flown the Corsair that his Grampa John used to fly.)

 

The line was moving slowly because one of the two simulators was down. The rules said that the machine needed a pilot and a co-pilot, because of the weight distribution issue. I was alone. The lady in front of me was waiting in line for her son. I subconsciously labeled him a brat, until she explained that he was a great kid, and she had volunteered to wait in line while he hit other exhibits, and that he was in his Vancouver civil air patrol group, and had piloted her around. The 15 year old kid showed up and thanked her for her help. I asked him suspiciously what plane he planned to fly. (Probably a jet.) He said that he wanted to fly the Wildcat. I explained that I was paying for him to be my copilot as soon as he was done with his own flight. He was tickled with it.

 

Basically, I suck at tracking around and getting my Zero. I focused on one Zeke, and just couldn't turn with him. I would overtake him (once I learned to deal with the backwards throttle. Pull back to go faster?!?), and struggle to keep my .50s on him, and then overshoot him. In the end, I should have focused on the Janes and Bettys that the Zeke was escorting.

 

I got out, and headed rapidly to the World War II aircraft wing.

 

Ah, there was my beloved P-38 Lightning. Twin tail, twin Allison engines, 4 .50s and a 20mm cannon all snugged up in a box of power in the nose in line with the gunsight. It was the second fastest prop plane in the war, after the Mustang. While it had its problems (at 20,000 and above, the engine under-performed and began to wear terribly, making it sadly not as useful as one would hope as a bomber escort), it was a great fighter and attack plane.

Oh, as for the Mustang? They had a very nice one:

Well, the PLANE was very nice, even if the picture wasn't. I had turned off my flash to save batteries, and was trotting through the darkened room, as this shows. I was shooting a bitty little Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot, with its standard-issue tiny lens. Surely this was no way to treat the Cadillac Of The Skies. 

 

As well as a lovely Spitfire:

And a nice Corsair:

 I was running, taking pictures as fast as I could, when the announcement came: it was time to leave. I've got more pictures that I'll post later.

 

I went outside to await my wife in the parking lot. It wasn't a boring wait; I had something to look at:

Like this WB-47E Stratojet.

Or this B-17F:



Wednesday evening this and that.

--Steampunk Lego sets? Why had this not happened before. Unless they are fools, this will be made of win.

--Nancy Grace has always irritated me, even before I happened to be stuck in a doctor's office or something, and saw her try to corner Elizabeth Smart in a bullying manner. (Note Smart's semi-eye roll at 1:21, to a rather stupid question put up by Grace.)
But she's especially irritating as a commentator, when she does a split-screen interview with a woman who is in the same parking lot as herself. On-scene stand-ups are over-used in the news. There is NO POINT in sending a reporter out to stand in front of City Hall at 07:00, to tell you about the agenda that they're going to talk about, later that day. So now CNN is using three tools that irritate me at the same time: unnecessary stand-up remote broadcasts, unnecessary split-screen interviews to attempt to show that they're ALL OVER on the coverage of this salacious story, and of course, Nancy Grace.

--On a side note, that Jodi Arias chick is so bat-feces crazy guilty (she took the stand, for 18 days!!!), she'll be extremely lucky if she doesn't get the needle.

--I like that now-defunct Nickel Creek band.

--From F. Scott Fitzgerald's entry in Wikipedia:

"Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral home was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured 'the poor son-of-a-bitch,' a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby."

I would have expected more out of Dorothy Parker. But I'm planning on collecting crude statements by Marko Kloos, Cranky Professor, PhlegmFatale, and Larry Correia, so that I'll look literary when I cuss. Larry says that he can write me up a good funeral scene. I look forward to reading that. I'm thinking along the lines of a Valhalla send-off, delivered in the style of John Cleese at Graham Chapman's funeral.

--Phillip, a fine historian of firearms was giving a presentation of a Teddy Roosevelt double rifle at the end of the NRA Convention in Houston this weekend. This is something that they will do for accredited news media, to educate about some of the noteworthy pieces in the amazing NRA firearms collection. I went to the one last year in St. Louis. This time, just like last time, a security flunky came up to these officers of the National Rifle Association (the group that just spent million$ to lease the space), and tried to give them and the media the bum's rush. Phil politely let her have it with, uh, both barrels. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)  He took a breath, and continued with the demonstration. Well done, sir. One of my colleague web correspondents caught the action on video, here. Hopefully next year in Indy, we'll have this issue worked out.

--I didn't get to go to the NRA Convention. I'm still kinda pouty about that. But Dad got to go, and I'm glad about that.

--Lots of graduation notices, this May. Pricey.

More evidence that I'm a grown-up, now.

Someone shared with me the link to a commercial put together by the folks at "Vooray," a youth clothing line. They made a pretty neat video by taking a Utah swimming hole, a pickup with a pulley attached to the receiver hitch, a bunch of rope and a four-wheeler, and accelerating some hard-scrubbed-but-clearly-fun-loving Utah youths down a greased hill-side Slip-'N'-Slide until they hit a ramp.

As much fun as the video looks, the whole time that I'm watching it, I'm thinking "those kids need sunblock! Were there any medically-trained responders on scene? That girl looks a little young to be out in that bikini with boys about."

I should just buy myself a walker and some Geritol, next time I'm at that pharmacy, I tell you.




_____________________
EDIT: The video is by the tremendously talented rising star video producer/photographer/videographer Devin Graham, who has his own blog.

Random Halloween Day Thoughts.

• --The Eighth Grader In The House carved up a jack-o'-lantern that was better than any that I've done in 40 years. My wife, a sculptor, was impressed. Not fancy; just well-executed. I don't have a picture because the effect is lost without darkness and a candle, and I forgot to take one last night.
• --I still need to finish cleaning guns from Blogorado. Next year we should put together a gun-cleaning table to sit and chat at while cleaning guns at the end.
• --While working the crosswalk during the city-sponsored Halloween event this weekend, my partner and I wondered how else girls would learn to dress up as sluts in public, if they didn't have their hot moms to show them how at Halloween.
• --Yard decorations for Halloween have gotten out of hand. I don't think Christmas-style strings of orange house lights were even seen before about two or three years ago. Now they're ubiquitous.  Front yard graveyards are thick on the ground. Stupid inflatable fabric lighted yard decorations? All over.
• --My daughters are terrified that I'm going to wear my kilt and pith helmet while accompanying them and their pack of friends trick-or-treating this evening. I've let them believe that I'm going to. Talk about the scariest thing that they can think of on Halloween! Heh.

• --While in the front yard spattering stage blood (left over from my graduate studies) onto the white lace garage sale dress that The Fourth Grader In The House was wearing, I thought to myself that the greater horror for me was seeing my kid in a bridal gown.
• --My younger daughter, while standing outside with the blood drying on her bridal gown, saw the cat playing with a mouse. She tried to save the mouse, and got bitten for her trouble. Didn't break the skin, and the mouse was healthy as could be. I told her that she was lucky that I got to see the rodent, or I would have her getting shots. Do they still do that? I also threatened her with a thrashing if she ever again tried to touch a wild animal of any stripe. I killed the mouse, which did have a broken back already. The cat looked at me disgustedly, and ate it.
• --My elder daughter dressed in black, painted her nails, eyes, and lips black, wore a giant silver cross and a chain belt, and made her face white, and went as a Goth Girl. She practiced sighing and rolling her eyes as she announced, "Trick or treat" in a voice dripping with irony.
• --My neighbor thought that it was AWESOME when I put Burglar Bob, the reactive shooting dummy, on the front porch. He liked it even better when I put the words "Free Candy" on my skeevy old van parked out front. I took some pictures, and then chickened out. I gotta work in this town.
• --At the last second I had to run get some candy. The door hasn't been knocked on yet.
• --I should probably fix that doorbell.

Project A Kon

And speaking of Larry Correia, that reminds me-- I ran into a guy dressed out as one of his characters out of his excellent series of Monster Hunters International books.

He was very nice, and let me take his picture. I mentioned that I'd been a moderator with Larry at The Firing Line and The High Road for some time, and he asked if I wanted a patch. I've never gotten an MHI patch, so I was excited to get this one. I think that I'm going to sew it onto my patrol bag. I may put velcro on the back, and put it on my department gas mask bag, or on my fast response bag.

I ran into the guy at A-Kon, an anime convention for serious nerds. What was I doing at A-Kon, you may ask? Well, I think that I was being a good daddy. See, my elder daughter and her best friends have gotten deep into reading all manner of Japanese cartoon books called Manga. They watch videos of Japanese anime. They copy hundreds of Japanese pop songs in MP3 format to trade among each other to play on their iPods and phones and convert to CD format to play on my dadgummed car stereo when we go places.

So when my 12 year old daughter, who had just been recognized by Duke TIP as a really bright kid for doing exceptionally well on the SAT in 7th grade, got all A's for the six weeks, the semester, and the school year, she was getting a big reward. And she wanted A-Kon. I took her and her two best friends.

Folks, I've been to a few county fairs, a goat ropin', and I've seen ducks copulate, but I've never seen anything like this.

We drove into downtown Dallas to the hotel. No parking for blocks. We finally drove into a parking garage that was almost full, for $18 to park. We walked into the hotel amidst hundreds-- nay-- thousands of people dressed in various costumes. My daughter was not in costume, but she had dyed her bangs aqua (hey, they grow out). She was so normal-looking, that she was almost invisible. I just wore khakis and comfortable shoes. I was invisible.

We walked in as the conga line of several hundred passed us. The leader was a belly dancer with 8 foot butterfly wings of gold. Following her were all manner of costumed nerds who were in their natural habitat, mostly between the ages of 14 and 30.

It was as if, repressed of their chance to be social during their daily lives, these youngsters had finally found Their People, and took the opportunity to crawl out of their shells. They were jubilant. When they found someone in a similar costume, depicting the same character that they had come dressed as, they didn't get upset. Indeed, they would happily embrace, as would long-lost friends who had finally reunited. I saw this over and over again. They minded not at all if you asked to take a picture of them (or better yet, with them). It was a high compliment, and the most popular had worked on their poses. My daughter was a little jealous of her friend who was repeatedly recognized for the character whose costume she wore.

I paid the registration fee for all four of us. But that was it. (Besides snacks, lunch, supper, and a little help with a pin when a girl came up short.)

We saw furries, cross-dressers, perverts, and robots, both real and imagined. We saw storm troopers. We saw girl storm troopers. We saw video game characters. We saw faux Florentine fencing demonstrations. We saw people dressed as stone angels. We saw browncoats. We saw steampunks. We saw movie heroines. We saw superheroes. We saw strange mixes of culture that defied explanation. It was a throng of nerd-dom, taking up three stories of the hotel.

And next year, if she gets all A's, I'll take her to do it again.

Occasionally, NPR comes through.

To toughen their image or something, the other day they interviewed the moderator of the blog "Badass Of The Week."

Very entertaining. Profane, but entertaining.

I LOL'd

By which I mean to say that I barked loudly in a short fit of laughter upon seeing this.*


_______________________
*Language warning.

What beer with crow?

I, uh, may need to eat some words, here.

Recall that I thought that it was really dumb to make a re-do of True Grit with The Big Lebowski Jeff Bridges? How I mentioned that the original movie was a stand-alone great? That it didn't need improving on?

Maybe so.

But when I went to see the flick on Christmas afternoon with my mother, we found that the Cohen brothers had done it.

And I know that the poster shows Jeff Bridges (Rooster Cogburn), Matt Damon (Ranger LeBoeuf), and Josh Brolin (Tom Chaney) as the leads, but don't you believe it for a second. Hailee Steinfeld steals the show, in her depiction of the sharp-tongued 14 year old Mattie Ross (from near Dardanell in Yell County).

It's worth seeing at the theatre. Go to one with a good sound system-- the sound is good. When Lucky Ned Pepper sees Rooster through a spy glass fire his pistol to signal that he's crossing a bald spot over a ridge, we see the shot, and second or two later hear the muffled report. When Rooster clambers down the pit to rescue Mattie, and fires off a couple of rounds at rattlesnakes, you hear the distinctive report of a black powder gun, echoing in a rocky, dirty pit. Before Mattie gets to the stream to get water to clean, you hear it as she approaches it. These little things make the movie better.

Damned Cohen brothers. Did it again.

Remember: The News Media Are Smarter Than You, And You Suck.

LabRat knocks one out of the park, on the amusing situation in which a media feeding frenzy on Sarah Palin causes shark-brained journalists to feed on each other... and themselves.

Unexpected sidetrip.

After we got the venison boned out and under dry ice, Vine took me to his favorite range in Grand Island, Nebraska. It was a bit of a drive, but the trip proved to be worth it.

First he took me by the Hornady plant. This was nothing short of a treat.

After we signed their guest book, a nice gentleman named Paul came out, and took us on a tour of the plant. We got to see how the lead came in in huge ingots, was cast into 180 lb cylinders of pure lead, 3% lead, and 5% lead, and then moved to the extruding machine. This extruding machine was amazing: it pressed the cylinders up into a forcing cone, pushing out lead wire of the proper diameter, which was then rolled onto large spools. I was most impressed to find out that this was done with cold lead! The force of the hydraulic press seemed incredible. We got to watch as tapes of brass (mostly copper) film were pulled off of spools that looked remarkably like movie reels, to have coins stamped out of them, and other machines took the coins and stamped them into brass cups. We saw other machines punch out those cups into longer cups, then shove the proper diameter of lead wire into them before sizing the bullet down to the wire, putting in the cannelure, sizing down the jacket to the proper ogive, inserting synthetic ballistic tips, crimping it, and kicking it out. Paul handed us each a .338 bullet and a 150g .308 bullet, literally hot off the press.

Then we got to go down to The Tunnel. I had seen pictures of this so many times, not the least of which in the front of my Hornady Rifle Handloading books. We saw testing done at 100 yards with test barrels, and looked at the target at 200 yards. The techs down there would load up some rounds, and test some of the bullets of each loading every 100,000 rounds, to test the accuracy. Doesn't sound like very often, until you realize that they're punching out 2 million bullets a day.

They have a very, VERY nice vault full of specimens of guns to test fire out of, too.

In the tunnel, I looked at the test rifles, and noticed that one of the test barrel had a piezo-electric pressure sensor wire leading out of the lab to the computer outside. But on the shelf above it, standing by as backup, was the Old Way: a copper crushing setup. This was the method used for over a hundred years to check pressure before pressure sensors were created; they literally allow the pressure to crush a cylinder of copper, and measure the length of the post-fired cylinder against the length of it pre-fired.

After the tour, we went back up to the front lobby, and talked with our guide. It seems that the Hornady family wants shooters among its staff. They guys running the presses, the gals packing the boxes, and the ladies at the front reception area all are shooters. Betty, the friendly mature lady who rang me up for some factory reject bullets* that I bought on my way out, is apparently quite the competitor in the shooting sports.

As we were about to leave, VP Jason Hornady saw us, and asked if we preferred red or green. I said red, and Vine said green. He presented us with some very nice hats with the Hornady logo on them, in those respective colors.

These people know a little something about building customer loyalty. Leaving the plant with my swag in hand, I kind of wished that I had shot my deer with the Hornady 250g .35 Whelen loads that I had for my Springfield, rather than the Noslers with my .243.

On to the range.
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*About those "Factory Rejects." I gather that they are basically just cosmetically-deficient, but they sold them. Paul assured me that I would like them. I got 100 of their all-copper GMX .308 150g bullets, and 200 of their 220g RNSP .308. The price reduction was so awesome, I can't really say it here. But now I have to figure out what in the hell I'm going to load all those 220g thirty bullets into. Suggestions? We have the normal thirties.

Remember, folks:

"Time Out!" only works for kids' games.

The perfect 'Rita.

Marko mentioned his intent to make an over sized margarita today.

While I haven't made one in an age, I have pretty strong feelings about this strong mixed drink, and would like to share them here:

1: Don't waste your money on premium tequila in a margarita; you're mixing it. Use midrange tequila. (That said, don't scrape the bottom of the barrel.)

2. Always squeeze your limes fresh. ALWAYS. Limes are too cheap, and squeezing them is too easy (if you have a squeezer. If you don't, get one. A nutcracker-type clamshell metal citrus squeezer is about $11, and lasts forever.), not to.

3. Don't use mixes, EVER. There should be three liquid ingredients in your 'rita: Tequila, Lime Juice, and Triple Sec. If you have to, you can sweeten it a bit with some sugar, but my preferred sweetener is to add more Triple Sec.

4. Use a shaker-type mixer. It's not ABSOLUTELY necessary, but that $4 shaker over a pint glass (or $7 plastic shaker mixer with graduated markings, which are handy) will allow you to mix the ingredients in the presence of ice, while not diluting the drink. Then strain it (to get the seeds out) over ice into a chilled glass.

5. Bruise the rind of a fresh lime, and firmly press it down on the rim of the glass, running it around the glass a couple of times before running some lime juice (usually from the face of a cut lime) over the rim before salting the rim. Even if you don't salt the rim, do this. It puts some of the aromatic oils into the glass, and makes it taste VERY fresh. It takes far less time to do it than to say this, I promise.

This sounds like a bit of trouble, but in practice, it doesn't even double the time spent to make a margarita, and the outcome is far better than any margarita that I've ever tasted in a bar.

Try it just once, and tell me what you think. Note: This method uses a bit more Triple Sec (or if you're feeling saucy, Blue Curaçao) than a lot of recipes call for, so plan accordingly.

And be careful. Those things are potent, tasty, and sneak up on you. Plan accordingly.

More amazing than we are capable of imagining.

Tamara said, in comments: "As the saying goes, 'The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it's stranger than we can imagine.'"

Proof of this, courtesy of The Onion, is Mitch:

"The identical processes that have given us the remarkable camouflage of the stick insect and the magnificent plumage of the bird-of-paradise have, it would seem, also given us a man who cannot scramble an egg," University of Pennsylvania biologist Ann Goldwyn-Ross said. "Despite evolution's emphasis on the inheritance and replication of advantageous traits, a man walks among us today who sweats profusely in any temperature and went to see Anger Management in theaters twice."

That's some good stuff, right there.

Not my first time... quite.

"Are we too late?" I asked the attendant at the gate to the South Rim.

"Oh, no. Though you're probably my last paying customer," said the gate attendant in olive green, with a gold arrowhead on the shirt. "Staying overnight?" she asked, looking at the assorted gear in the back of our '89 Ford Ranger.

"Nope. Just passing through. We couldn't pass the Grand Canyon without having seen it," I responded.

"Well, you better hurry to the rim," she chuckled, giving me my change. "The sun is setting, and you don't want to miss that."

Indeed I didn't. My wife and I had been in transit from Eugene, Oregon to my house in north Texas, where we were going to marry in two weeks. This driving trip had turned into a de facto honeymoon for us. When we saw the turn-off to the Park entrance from I-40 in Williams, we stopped, unhitched our little U-Haul trailer behind a convenience store, and hauled butt north for an hour to go see it, all the time wondering if we were going to be too late, and if this wasn't a fool's errand.

My fiancee and I were a little snippy with each other, not the least because we had argued about leaving that trailer with most of her worldly possessions in it back at the turn-off. I had reasoned that it was a huge drag on the 10 year-old little four-banger, and we might save some gas and wear and tear for our side-trip. She felt that it was an unnecessary risk. When I found that the the tongue of the little van trailer, which we had loaded after putting it on the truck, was too heavy to lift, it only created more stress when I had to get out the jack to raise it off the trailer ball hitch. I am nothing if not stubborn.

The time it had taken to get the trailer tongue off the hitch had eaten up whatever savings we were going to make up in speed, so of course I had the hammer down as we flew up Highway 64, obviously consuming excess fuel, and risking a speeding ticket to boot.

So, while I chatted with the park gate attendant, my beloved passenger was silent. Go. Let's just go, was the mental message that she was sending me. So we hurried up to the South Rim from the gate in silence, and not really the good kind.

We parked close to the look-out, where there were only a couple of vehicles. As we walked down the trail into a surprisingly brisk north wind, we gasped. The sun was very low in the southwestern sky, now, and we were in the late minutes of The Golden Hour. As we came to a stop at the edge of a chasm, the eye was slowly drawn down into the deep pools of shadow, to witness the passage of a the ever-changing Colorado River. But not for long did we stare at the river below, because the long shadows of the setting sun were moving, quickly. Literally, the movement of the rays of light across the structures of the canyon rim would snatch our attention. The contrasts in color were markedly gold against purple. The distant desert horizon was a purple that filled the shadows of the canyon.

One of us ran to fetch my bride's old Canon 35mm SLR camera, and we took a couple of rolls worth of pictures. We first took them just of the canyon, then, reasonably, we took pictures of each other before the backdrop of the Canyon. In our ensuing move, we lost those rolls of film, never to be developed. I would pay a pretty penny for them, now, you may be sure.

After our most proximal star disappeared from view, we marveled at the distant river, now the star attraction. The purples became deeper, and deeper still, as the stars began to come out in the thin, dry air. Twilight gives way to full night fast in the desert. We got in the truck to continue our journey. We were silent again, but for a different reason. Awed. In love. Whatever our previous stress, it was completely forgotten.

We had been in the park for a litle more than 45 minutes.

So it is that we return, 12 years later, to see that marvelous place again. We leave first thing on Saturday morning, and I'm a little excited. If we got that kind of pleasure out of less than an hour there, what will we experience in the better part of a week?

I'm trying not to over-sell it to the kids. Because really, it simply can't be as great as I'm remembering it.

Can it?

Great American Road Trip.

Somehow, my wife and I managed to get our collective stuff together, and are taking a bit over a week off together to go to the Grand Canyon*. We're going to load up our two girls and go do a bit of camping, and a LOT of sight-seeing.

You are here requested to provide suggestions of Things To Do and Places To See, there and in the vicinity. Tips and advice are solicited!

We do plan, BTW, on touring the observatory and we might as well go to Meteor Crater.

We've not really done anything like this. If I have my way, my kids won't be able to bear spending another second in my proximity for a month after this! It's going to be great.

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*Thanks to my house sitters! Wouldn't be possible without you.