Changing Weather

The heat is coming up and the green spinach of springtime is already fading to the hot and dizzy blond of summer, the mirage was fierce at Practice.
I was shooting a new-to-me load of Privi Partizan 75-grain Match and I had a hard time seeing the holes through the morning haze and where it was printing. It was printing low. I shot somewhere in the high 300's.

I'm going to take a Blogcation for a couple weeks, a Blogiatus as it were or a Blogattical.
It's only going to be dryer and hotter when I get back.
Enjoy!

Heroic Action

I've got nuthin' so I borrowed this, and because he's a Brit and we like the Brits.

This Weeks Hero Was Suggested By Mary Ann
Wednesday Hero was started to put a face to the men and women of the American Armed Forces and what they do for us. Vary rarely has there been a member of a foreign military profiled. In fact, in the two years Wednesday Hero's been going on it's only been done once before. Here's the second.
Lance Corporal Matt Croucher
24 years old from Birmingham, England
40 Commando Royal Marines

L/Cpl Matt Croucher is not only one of the bravest men alive, he's also one of the luckiest men alive. On the morning of February 9, 2008 L/Cpl. and his unit were searching a compound near Sangin in Afghanistan that was suspected of being used to make bombs to be used in attacks on British and Afghan troops. Walking in the darkness among a group of four men, Croucher stepped into a tripwire that pulled the pin from a boobytrap grenade. His patrol commander, Corporal Adam Lesley, remembered Croucher shouting "Grenade!"

As others dived for cover, Croucher did something nobody expected. He lay down on the grenade to smother the blast. Lesley got on the ground, another man got behind a wall, but the last member of the patrol was still standing in the open when the grenade went off.

"My reaction was, 'My God this can't be real'," said Lesley. "Croucher had simply lain back and used his day sack to blunt the force of the explosion. You would expect nine out of 10 people to die in that situation." L/Cpl. Croucher was that 1/10. Not only did he survive, amazingly he only suffered shock from the blast and a bloody nose. He was saved by the special plating inside his Osprey body armor. The backpack he was wearing was thrown more than 30ft by the blast.

"I felt one of the lads giving me a top to toe check. My head was ringing. Blood was streaming from my nose. It took 30 seconds before I realized I was definitely not dead," said L/Cpl. Croucher.

For his actions that day, L/Cpl. Croucher was in line for the Victoria Cross, the highest award for a British Serviceman, but it has yet to be awarded.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.

We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Pistol Match Target Update

We shot at 50yards and then placed a new center on the target and shot again in "timed" - and did that again from 25yards in "rapid", so there's three sets of holes one on top of the other. It was fun.

Awesome-Beautiful

Firehand , who is an occasional reader and commenter here, and here and there among the other blogs I frequent, received the most MARVELOUS letter from a friend in Denmark regarding our election:

"We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?"

God Bless Denmark and the Danes! A beautiful country which I have had the good fortune to visit a couple times, generously bestowed by God with gorgeous women, yet nowadays cruelly beset by foul flag-burning Islamists in their midst. God perserve them.

Rangeday Springtime

Nice day Saturday...

I think I shot a 405-2X - they havn't posted the scores yet.
Afterwards we held a pistol match and I had brought along Old Betsy, the Colt 1909 New Service. She acquitted herself pretty well too although again I don't know the score, other people shot better and I don't know how low I finished in the standings.
We shot from 50 yards and then 25, and from each distance I got an X which surprised hell out of me.

Memetag

Got myself over to Linoge's barricade at Walls of the City and saw a meme floating around on the pool of words filling his moat, and decided to give it a go...when I notice I had been tagged! Zounds!
I should have noticed that by the reflection in the water, or like Gideon at the stream paid attention while drinking it from my hands.

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!

Yeh, right...but ok.

I looked up and pulled out the nearest 123-pager in the case above the 'puter...

2. Find page 123.

Hmm...here we are.

3. Find the first five sentences.

Da duh, da dum, herr-um, ta duh, mpfh. Here.

4. Post the next three sentences.

...He just asked me whether I was happy. When I told him, he said I had to go away for a time, at once, otherwise he wouldn't be responsible for my life.'
A memory crossed my mind.

WTF?? It's from John Masters', The Road Past Mandalay, a book about his service with the Chindits in the China-Burma-India theater, under their creator the eccentric genius-sonuvabitch-bastard General Orde Wingate -- also known for creating another guerrilla force called the The Gideon Force... Hmm...coincidence, but Gideon again...?

The CBI is probably best known to Americans as the fighting-venue of General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, Merrill’s Marauders, and the Curtiss P-40 Warhawks of another group of semi-guerrilla fighter/independent contractors, Chennault's famous Flying Tigers...

Master's had a lover, a lady who's marriage to another soldier was falling apart like his own marriage, and she was pregnant - and this was part of their conversation while away from it all, camping up in the foothills of Nepal...

5. Tag five people.

Awww...let me think about that.

B.A.G. Day!

Dammit today is Buy A Gun Day, and I nearly forgot! What did the Gun Fairy bring you?
I'd have to say that gunwise it's the Noveske, especially now that I got it sorted out (pretty much) ... or it could be the actual BAG for the not-guns, the club-bag.

And oh yeh I'm not bitter - I took a Pepcid AC, but I’m really tired of all the narrow-minded, rigidly ideological pseudo intellectuals surrounding Bay Area University campuses trenchantly clinging to their mordant Atheism and Ivory tower elitism when they don’t get tenure or even venture capital - they need a paradigm shift away from their outdated and disproven Socialist values. Hell the Communists didn't even win a seat in Italy of all the goddamn places. They're totally OUT.
And the Greens got canned too. Yay! So even the Italians told 'em to stick it where the eco-friendly lightbulbs and pasta don't shine - and they've had how many different governments since WWII - 61? Sheesh, by now they oughtta know a thing or two about Communists and Greens... Greens belong in a salad anyhow.

Barry and the Farmers

Barak Hussein Heavenlymoonlight Obama went to private school in Hawaii - must have been sheer torture, at least it wasn't Public School... A friend of ours went to public school there, was teased terribly and called "Haole" and had his lunch-money stolen because he was a little blond kid - wait, that's not true, it was his brother who was blond - nobody bothered our dark-haired friend whatsoever. He looked like a native and had good luck with the wahinis.
After a visit to The City by Barack Lion of Egypt Obama last week, he raised some funds from the fabulously heavy pockets of the local wealthy trust-funders, inheritors, and general Bay-Aryan elites - the San Francisco Democrats. People who's Great-Grandfathers used to work for a living. Some of his off-the-cuff whimsy and remarks caused a ruckus among the Leetel Peeoples who were spying at the keyhole.
Barak Messiah Obama sure knows how to pick 'em (really-rich), but the typical Center-of-the-Universe Bay-Aryan who went to Stanford or Berkeley really does tend to think and believe that way about the rest of benighted and unenlightened America. They are the distant relatives - family but never really visited or even understood. Milk a cow? To a Bay-Aryan the Midwest and flyover country begins as soon as the jet hits altitude somewhere over Modesto. Tahoe is a cold Oasis.
Visiting some sort of distant family in Nebraska (2nd cousins?) was always simply strange. After all, people escaped from the horrible drudgery and grinding poverty of Farm-Life in the 30's just to hit a Dorthea Lange photo-op and come to Stanford to solve ALL the PROBLEMS of "those people" - the farmer-types and CURE the DISEASE of Rurality. Besides, it smelled there.
Why anybody stayed behind was an anthropological mystery for the Tenured to Solve. So far the Tenured havn't, but one day, after more Tenuriffic ideas (and some Grants and Contracts) they might. Pleae send money to thne Starving Tenured of Stanford.
You know, they call Stanford "The Farm" - but affectionately only, and it never, ever, really was one. It's always been a vacation estate for the Uber-wealthy insular San Franciscans - with a few horses and a camera by Muybridge thrown in - pet eccentrics (and monkeys) are always invited. Steinbeck of course got a "C" because he was from Salinas for Goddsake, which is just outside Oklahoma, or might as well be. Viva La Raza and all that, cheerio and pass the dutchie!
Updated: with Haikupictograms!