I had planned to leave around 7:30, but for a variety of reasons I couldn't get out of town until 10am. That's not good, because the weatherman has forecast temperatures of 98 degrees today, and I won't get there until almost 11:30, which is when the sun really starts to bear down on the range.
Note that the range is in a 'hollow' (for our West Virginia readers: "Holler"); a flat-bottomed area surrounded by low hills. Very low hills, often nothing more than a high berm, but the effect is to act as a parabolic mirror reflecting heat from the thick gravel surface. Whatever the temperature, if the sun is shining the effect is that no matter what the weatherman says, it's hotter.
Being aware of the consequences of dehydration in the sun, I make a stop to fill my water cooler with ice, and buy PF50 sunblock and extra AAA batteries for my earmuffs and the dictaphone. I plan to shoot a lot of pictures, talk to a lot of people, see what's happing at The Big Match and maybe work up an article or two from it.
I was in such a hurry, I didn't even stop to grab breakfast. I know that there's a lunch break from noon to 1pm, and I want to watch some of the stages before I use the break to go talk to people.
I got to the range a little before the predicted time. I was scooting up the I5 corridor even though I had to stop for gas. (I paid $4.13/gallon at the ARCO station, it was $4.23 at the Chevron station a block away; there was a line at ARCO, the Chevron station was empty. Signs of the times.)
The parking was packed, but I found a backroad which allowed me to park with 50 yards of the last stage.
I rolled down the windows a bit to let whatever breeze to keep the interior from frying, and ran around the back of the car to grab my gear.
Iced water bottles from the cooler, tuck 'em in the camera bag after making sure the tops were screwed on tight. Last year I drowned an expensive digital camera because I dumped a bottle of water in the bag. Not going to make that mistake again!
Grabbed the earmuffs, and I even remembered to bring a belt hook to hang the earmuffs from when not shooting.
Went to the briefcase to get the trusty HP R967 digital camera, and came up with a handful of air.
The camera was still at home, 70+ miles away, sitting on my computer desk where I had laid it after downloading pictures from the TCGC Tactical 3-gun match last Sunday.
Understand, I never go anywhere without my briefcase, and my camera is always in the briefcase. That's why I never go anywhere without the briefcase.
Why didn't I check for the camera? See above. I just assumed it was there. Well, there's another mistake I'll never make again. (If you have never arrived at a match only to discover that you have forgotten to pack your gun, your ammunition, your magazines or your holster, then you haven't been to enough matches or you're more organized than I am. Okay, it's probably the 'being organized' thingie.)
For a moment, I considered the "The Hell With It!" option. It didn't take more than a couple of seconds to realize that there were a lot of people here that I haven't seen in a long time, and I wasn't about to pass up the chance to say hello again.
Besides, I could watch some of the best shooters in the world, in their natural element.
That's almost as good as participating myself, and after all I still have my pen and notepad, and the under-utilized 'dictaphone', so I packed what I had into the old green Dillon range-bag, and trudged through the sizzling gravel to Stage 12. (At least I think it was stage 12.)
The first guy I noticed was Guy Neil, who writes the Reloading column for the Front Sight magazine. Guy recently re-located from Idaho to Oregon because, well, he likes it better here.
We chatted a few moments, noted that I wasn't entered in the match and that I was just here to watch. Eventually the question arose as to exactly what I was doing here, if I wasn't shooting.
I briefly entertained the "The Dog Ate My Camera" excuse, but instead admitted to the embarrassing truth: "I planned to see what's going on, take a bunch of pictures, maybe write an article. But that's all gone south, because I forgot to pack my camera".
Guy was nothing if not sympathetic ... I think. "You forgot your camera? How are you going to take pictures without a camera?"
"It won't be easy", I admitted.
While we were talking, I saw Mikey Scribbles watching the stage. We said hi, I introduced him to Guy, we chatted long enough to learn that Mikey was suppose to be spending the day building a new deck at his house, but somehow had sneaked out to watch the match for a while. That's my kind of guy.
We parted, and I wandered into the Vendor Tent. The first person I stumbled against was Carl Schmidt, who exchanged almost the same "Hi, how are you?" dialogue as I had already suffered through with Guy. But when I came to the "I forgot my camera" part, Carl reached into his pocket and came out with a small digital camera. "Want to borrow my camera?" he offered.
Conscience and embarrassment warred within me for a significant number of nanoseconds until I snatched it out of his hand and said Sure, Thanks! He said he was leaving in the morning, so I had to get it back to him before the end of the day. I didn't even ask him how I was going to download the pictures before I disappeared into the crowd.
The details would work themselves out. I had a camera, and even though I had no idea how to work it, I got the how to turn it on and how to take a picture instructions from him before I bolted.
Then I started wandering through the match, taking a couple of means-nothing pictures along the way to make sure I knew how to work the camera.
Most of the stages I saw were familiar; either because I had shot them before (such as "50 Yard Standards", which alone made glad I wasn't competing today), or because they seemed the sort of stage one would expect to see at an ordinary Monthly club match.
I stopped in Bay 9, where a great deal of trouble had been taken to set up a maze with vision barriers. The entrance to the maze was a huge steel door -- it was a Barricade Door, and you had to break into the maze by striking a plate in the door using a huge steel 'door-knocker'. It was the most unusual stage of the day (in truth, it was unique!) I took a lot of pictures of this stage, while Clan Falkner was shooting it.
I'll talk more about the Barricade Technologies, Inc. Steel Door, and Clan Falkner, another time.
... Not All Bad
I spent the rest of the time until the lunch break watching that single stage, and when the 317 competitors broke for lunch I wandered around and said Howdy to a lot of people.
I saw Whitefish, who had one more stage to shoot before his day was ended. He had been so disappointed by his match so far, I caught him smoking a cigarette. He hasn't smoked for at least 5 years. I called him a bad boy, and waited until he was out of sight before I lit up my own smoke.
Evil Bill's Better Half, Nancy, was there with Bill. They were fixin' to shoot the Barricade Door stage. Nancy asked me about SWMBO. I explained that the Walking Pneumonia that SWMBO had been diagnosed with a couple of months ago was not responding to drugs. The doctor had her scheduled for a Bronchioscopy (sp?) and Biopsy, in which they stick a tube in your nose and down to your lungs, then take 'scrapings' to determine exactly what they have to fight since the increasingly heavy doses of antibiotic are not working. Nancy asked me to tell SWMBO that her thoughts and prayers were for her, and also for SWMBO's mailing address, which I promised to send her later because I didn't have it immediately at hand. [Note to self: send address to Nancy, c/o Evil Bill -- done!]
Later I saw Lisa "Smurfette" Munson, who greeted me with her usual big grin and even bigger hug. She also asked after SWMBO, and I gave her the same information. [Note: greetings to SWMBO from The Smurfette.]
Also, Rob and Caryn "MajorNyne": same greetings to SWMBO. There actually too many greetings to SWMBO to enumerate here, except ...
I saw Dale Hash, who asked after SWMBO and said (essentially):
"You know, when I first started shooting a few years ago, you and SWMBO were the first ones who greeted me, who made me feel really welcome. SWMBO was always friendly and helpful, and I really like squadding with you guys." (Note: SWMBO makes me look good; I get a lot of that, and I'm always grateful that she allows me to come to matches with her. )
I told Dale that it was just that he was a bad shot, he triggered SWMBO's maternal instincts. Also, she was afraid to do anything which would distract him from keeping the gun pointed downrange when she was his Range Officer. He laughed.
I saw Higbie, and his son Patrick.
Patrick says married life agrees with him and the cooking is fine. He now officially weighs more than his father, who has been on a stringent diet since his heart attack 3 years ago and looks great!
I also saw Bruce Gary, Area 1 Director and official statistician for this match. Bruce has also been on a diet (news to me) and has lost a lot of weight. I complimented him on his determination: "You look great! It makes you look younger, too. Still homely, of course, but other than that you look GOOD!"
Bruce chuckled and told me The Story:
You know, when I walked into the stats Shack the other day, someone said "Here comes half a Bruce". Someone else said "Yeah, now how do we get rid of the other half?"__________________________________________
I walked around for an hour, talking to people. Some I see every month at Club Matches, some I only see at the occasional Major Match.
Essentially, this was just another Club Match, writ large. I did the same things I do at a club match (except for the shooting part, of course), but I got to visit with a lot more of the Really Good People I've come to know in USPSA.
I like these people. To paraphrase Sally Fields: I like them. I really like them.
For example: two years ago, I DID shoot a Major Match at and when it came to the Awards Ceremony, one of our Ice Cream Squad members, Jim Blanchard, couldn't attend. He had to drive back home to California, so SWMBO volunteered to act as his proxy at the Prize Table. She found a nice 1911 slide for him, and gave it to me to send to him.
One thing and another interfered with that part of the plan. Either I lost the slide, or I lost his mailing address. Most often, I just forgot it. Jim never complained.
Last week I got an email from Jim, saying he was going to compete in the Area 1 match, and if I happened to show up maybe I could bring the slide?
Actually, this was the primary reason which I attended the A1 match today, because I knew where the slide was even though I had (once again) lost his address.
When I delivered the slide to him today, he was not perturbed that it took me two years and not a little bit of email exchanges for me to give him what was rightfully his. Instead, he was tickled that he got his prize. "There was no rush" he said. That's a good thing, because a two-year delivery date doesn't sound like a 'rush' to me. I was glad to end the embarrassment of inadvertently Bogarting his prize.
______________________________
The thing about the 2008 Area 1 match was that it was hot. I mean, really hot.
Weather reports predicted 98 degree weather. At 6pm, my thermometer read 92.8 degrees, in the shade. At TCGC there was very little shade; and what there was, was thickly populated with sweating bodies.
(On the drive home, my car thermometer registered 101 degrees at 1:30pm, on the I5 corridor.)
By the end of the lunch hour, I was wiped out. I could conceive of no reason to bother the competitors while they're trying to shoot a match.
I found Carl in Bay 5, waiting to shoot his scheduled stages. Mindful of his warning that he was leaving 'tomorrow morning', I returned his camera. I had taken several pictures, some of which I hoped to recover; but because I had decided not to bring my laptop to the match, I had no way to download the pictures I had taken.
Carl offered to email the pictures to me, and said he was glad that I had some pictures of the "Barricade Door" stage because he particularly wanted to film that stage, but had not been able to.
As we talked, I mentioned that I was astonished by the dramatic weight lost of Bruce G.
"Yeah", said Carl. "Did he tell you about 'The Story'?"
"You mean the 'Half-A-Bruce' story?" I asked.
"Yes", he said. "He has been telling that story for two days. I think he likes the story more than he likes having lost the weight."
_________________________________________
I've committed to going back to TCGC tomorrow, to get my own pictures and to get more stories.
I'll tell you more, then ... if you can stand it.
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