Guns and bikes

I spent the last weekend at the Nor/RWVA shoot. All in all, it was a pretty good time. I managed to work on my riflery skills a bit, and got to spend some time with some folks. I owe a huge debt to Woody from Bayou Rifles. He loaned me an AR to fire with. He also had the high score for the day on saturday at our range (the group was large enough that we were spread out on three ranges). He also pointed me to the 6.5 Grendel round. I looked it up on the net, and was pleasantly impressed with the capabilities of the round. Unfortunately, it would appear that it is going the way of the .460 Rowland, and has failed to catch on. I am disappointed in that. The fact of the matter is that it would be an excellent round, and it is very depressing to see yet another excellent round fall into obscurity. Blast! It's a round only marginally larger than the .223, but it can carry a real stopping power out to 800 yards! Grrrrrr!

Unfortunately, I could not locate the digital camera, so there will be no pictures from me, but I am going to link any pics that others took, so stay posted. One thing I could have really used is a shooting jacket and shooting glove. Unfortunately, D6 is currently against any sort of ballistically related purchases right now, and so I will have to wait a bit. However, I still shot fairly well, and that was very reassuring to me.

Some of the best parts of the shoot was the comradery. I got to meet a number of folks that I had only known from the forums, and they were all pretty good guys without exception. I also got to drop the hammer once on the Gun Guy's "new" 1885 high wall. It was a peach. The recoil was actually fairly tame, it felt good in the hands, and the trigger was all oil, it was so smooth.

In other news, I got very upset today when I found out that they were going to start ticketing and towing motorcycles. You see, in the medical center there had been a long-stnading tradition whereby motorcycles could park for free. After all, motorbikes ended up taking up spots that could not be used for cars, so nobody cared. Well, the parking within walking distance is all pretty much under the control of the TMC heirarchy, which makes it into a monopoly. So, what you have is an outrageous price for parking. 2 hours cost $11! Think about that. You could almost save money by hiring somebody to sit in your car and wait for you to come out. So, now, they are offering motorcycles parking contracts where they charge you $50 a month to let you park in the garage. Unfortunately, you can only park in certain areas of the garage, or you would have to buy the full $90 a month contract. The only reason that I can think for them to suddenly impose this is to try to make money. You see, what had happened was that a lot of people saw the rising price of gas, and decided to get a motorcycle since between gas and parking, they would probably save a significant amount of money each year, and I know of some people who found a relatively cheap second hand bike, and actually spent less on the note on the bike than they would have for parking. This trend accelerated as gas prices rose. Now, some high up muckety muck saw this increase in the number of motorcycles, and thought 'hey, we need to make money off of them!' and decided to hatch this particular plot. It would not be so bad if there was some sort of competition, but the TMC people have managed to get their mitts on every piece of parking that is within a reasonable distance. A lot of people have also parked a couple of miles away, and taken a bus the rest of the distance for this very reason. Unfortunately for a lot of us, we w0ork some wierd hours, and so, we do not always have the option of taking the bus into or out of work because of the hours we work. It all adds up to a communist plot, IMHO.

So, right now, I am trying to devise a way to get around paying for parking. D6 has ruled out getting a cheap $150 bike, and using that, so I may have to use a bus. I hate riding the bus. I hate it because my movements are at someone else's schedule. I hate it because they are slow. I hate it because if they are late, then I am held responsible. I am also responsible if they came a little early, and I missed the bus. There have been times when D6 has come out to the bus stop 5 minutes before it was suppossed to arrive, and as she is walking to the stop, she sees the bus roar right by without stopping. If it were like Europe, where trams come every 10 minutes, it might be less of a problem, but if the bus only comes once an hour or two, then you have problems. That's another thing; you are often forced to alot extra time for travel, and when you are working 100 hours a week, it really sucks.

I do not want to use the bus. I may have to. I may just suffer D6's wrath, and get a mountain bike after the student loans come in. After all, Target has one for $140, which would pay for itself in about 3 months of use as compared to the price of the bus. It might also be handy for riding to the gym in order to augment my workout. So, I could give a big middle finger to 'the powers that be' in the TMC, lose a few pounds, and save on gas.

Respectfully Submitted,
-doc Russia