Building websites, part deux...

So last Friday I went to the library and used their high speed internet to upload a bunch of chap pictures. There are now something like seven pages of chinks and two pages of rodeo chaps, and a page of miscellaneous stuff that doesn't have much on it. I'm hoping to get some pics of the latest bible covers along with some other pics that I just found on my camera and get them loaded on the website. It's looking good so far, and he seems to be happy with it. It even loads relatively quickly on my dial-up connection, which is sloooooowwwww....

Once again, the new location for Empire Leather on the web is here...

Building websites...

Lately I've been working on a new website and blog for Brett. I'm planning on having pictures of a bunch of the chinks, chaps and other stuff he's made on the website, and a shopping cart on the blog page for purchases. So far it's coming together pretty well. His website is at www.empireleatherco.com and his blog is at empireleather.blogspot.com...

There's not much on either place yet, but it's slowly coming together...

...the goose is getting fat...

The Christmas goose, that is. Or was. Considering that this is now the second full week in January, and consequently Christmas was roughly three weeks ago, the goose, or turkey as it were, has long since been devoured and a new one will eventually be selected for Christmas 2010...

This was an interesting Christmas. The annual community Christmas program slash potluck was on the 19th, with our annual Christmas church service on the 20th. Cheryl and I went shopping, just the two of us (how weird is that?), instead of going to the program. Then Sunday night I did the Christmas service at the little church. Audience was actually pretty good sized, and Vicky finally got there to do the reading she's been wanting to do for the last two Christmases, but which she didn't get done because she kept getting snowed in. Then I started on two months of graveyard shift on the 21st...

A little note regarding graveyard shift: I worked off shifts for actually quite a few years, then I've been on days since I went in the lab, except for a month when I first came in from the yard. But this particular graveyard stint coincides with a combination shutdown and layoff (damn slow economy), so it's really quiet around here at night...

So anyway, we normally have Christmas dinner, with family, extended family, friends, whoever, on Christmas Eve, somewhere in the vicinity of 6 PMish. I start work at 7 PM. Consequently, I got to hear about how everything went after the fact rather than being in the thick of the festivities. Worked out okay, though. We opened presents the next day, and I got lots of goodies in addition to the gun safe I bought in November and which just got moved into the house and stocked from the existing non-fire safe cabinets last Friday. I even got a bunch of stuff I asked for, like a dandy pair of warm slippers, a new zip-up sweatshirt, and a DVD copy of El Dorado, starring John Wayne, James Caan and Robert Mitchum. What more could a boy ask for?

On the whole, in spite of having to miss the celebration in town, Christmas was pretty good...

PBR Finals

Hm, what have I done since Cycle Oregon? Oh yeah, the PBR (Professional Bull Riders) World Finals in Las Vegas in November. We took Brett to the NFR for his 21st birthday, which is in December, so Clint decided that we should take him to the PBR finals for his 21st. Being the understanding parents that we are, we did just exactly that. I got online early on and got us tickets for the second weekend, including the final final, made us reservations at the Jockey Club to use one of our timeshare weeks, and away we went...

The Jockey Club is an old property, but has been remodeled a bunch, so the rooms are pretty nice. The only problem with the Jockey Club is that it's being overbuilt by one of those megahotel/casino places. By that I mean that the new place is for all practical purposes engulfing the JC, which makes access somewhat interesting, and totally ruins the view on the south side of the building. Our apartment had a fantastic view of a concrete wall ten feet away. On the other hand, the Jockey Club is pretty much centrally located on the Las Vegas strip, between Bellagio and Monte Carlo and directly across the street from Planet Hollywood, so you can pretty much walk to most anywhere on the strip...

Brett and his buddy Cliff drove down on Monday, and we flew in on Wednesday. We got to the hotel about 10 PM and, being hungry, Cheryl, Mema and I went across the street to PH to get something to eat while Clint went to find Brett and Cliff. After we ate we took a walk up the Strip, spent some quality casino time and had a few "free" drinks then headed back toward our digs. We were almost back to JC when Cheryl's phone rang, and a voice said, "Where are you guys? It's after two, and we're home, and you're not! Where have you been?" We got quite a kick out of the kids calling to check on the old folks. After that we rarely saw them alive...

The bull riding was great. The weather was wonderful, we had good seats, and we had an all together fun time. We've had people tell us that "we've been to Vegas, we don't need to go back." But Cheryl and I both think we could go back a bunch of times, because you never get to see everything...

Busy, busy, busy...

I've been exceedingly remiss in posting to my blog. In fact, I've done lots of cool stuff since my last post, and haven't written about it. I don't know whether it's the feeling that maybe nobody gives a rip, so why bother, or what...

So September was Cycle Oregon, my fifth one. This year I had a new bike, lots of miles on the trainer, and very few actual asphalt miles. And we climbed the Siskiyou Mountains before lunch on the first day. Still, I survived that one, and went on to Yreka, California. I realize that Yreka, CA is not in Oregon, but we were, for the duration of the ride, suspending such trivialities as state lines and were traveling in the "Mythical State of Jefferson". What the heck is that? That is the state that was going to be formed by the secession of northern California and southwestern Oregon from their respective states to set up a state that would be more responsive to the wants, needs, fantasies, what have you, of the local populace. The provisional government was supposed to meet on December 7, 1941, but was interrupted by a small disturbance in Hawaii that took everyone's attention, so the State of Jefferson never came to be...

Day One of CO was also the occasion of Todd's 50th birthday. I discovered this way back in June, so I called Raley's Supermarket in Yreka and ordered a cake, complete with black icing balloons and black lettering. A nice CO staffer named Ingrid picked it up for me. When Todd got back to our table in the beer garden from a blue room break, and found the cake, he was totally stunned. That was the plan...

The rest of the week, the weather was great, except for the headwind we had on the super-rollers on the Rogue River Scenic Byway on the way to Happy Camp on Day Two. It really sucks when you have to pedal downhill...

Some kind of virus ran rampant through the camp at one point. Fortunately none of our crew caught it. It sounded like it was pretty nasty...

On Friday night, we were in Grant's Pass at the end of the layover day. James Taylor was in Central Point that night, so we all jumped in Betty's car (she was a volunteer, so she got powered wheels to travel in) and went to the concert. It was on the grass at the fair grounds, and was really super. Well worth stacking four of us in a seat meant for three to get there. Fortunately Mike doesn't weigh very much...

I'll try to get pictures posted here one day soon, although my pictures only last until the middle of the ride, at which point my camera decided to die a sudden death. Oh well, it relieved me of the responsibility of having to take pictures, I guess...

I'll also post about the PBR Finals and some other stuff as soon as I get my thoughts organized...

Idaho State SASS Championship

Once again, I seem to be having trouble keeping up on the goings-on, so to speak. Like it's been almost three weeks since the Idaho State SASS Championship, the Reckoning at Black's Creek. But here goes anyway...

Clint and I actually went over a day earlier this year than last year, because we wanted to take the RO I and RO II classes. RO stands for Range Officer, and in these classes you learn how to be a good range officer, and you also learn how to set stages up safely, that sort of thing. Very good classes, taught by Wogg and LTC Nathan. There were three of us for the RO I, and five or six for the RO II...

Thursday, warm-up match day, dawned dim and cloudy, and just got more fun from there. It started sprinkling before we even started shooting, which always makes life interesting. Add to that the fact that the extractor claw on the bottom of the bolt on my 66 broke off and went who knows where immediately after ejecting the first empty case of the day, and you have a just totally peachy outing starting up. I ended up shooting Clint's Marlin the rest of the day. The icing on the cake was when a guy who was shooting frontier cartridge duelist walked up to where I was loading a couple of stages later and said, "Your rifle rounds don't seem to be making much smoke."

Okay, brief interlude here: I shoot Frontier Cartridge category. What this means is that I shoot cartridges loaded with some sort of black powder (full-case .45 loads of APP, or American Pioneer Powder in my case), which makes a huge amount of smoke when you pull the trigger. This is especially evident during periods of high humidity (like when it's raining). Clint, on the other hand, shoots what used to be called Traditional, and is now Cowboy, and he was using .357 mag smokeless powder loads. Hence the lack of smoke from my rifle rounds after I started using his Marlin. So, instead of snidely congratulating the guy on making such an astute observation, I just very calmly explained to him that my 66 had broke first crack out of the bag and that I was using my son's rifle, knowing all the while that he was trying to catch me cheating on the SASS smoke standard. I was so proud of myself...

Clint's Marlin hung up on him on the next stage. Aside from that, and in spite of not being able to use my 66, the warm-up match was fun...

That afternoon I happened to run across my favorite one-armed gunsmith, and told him my tale of woe. The guy's a magician, because that evening he found and installed a bolt for my 66, the fore end screws we needed for Clint's 97, and he did enough tinkering on Clint's Marlin that it worked flawlessly the rest of the weekend...

I should mention one of the high points of the warm-up match: world 49er champ JT Wild was on our posse, and just as someone, I don't remember who, was about to shoot, JT suddenly calls a halt to the proceedings. Once it was safe to do so, he suddenly went running down range, and started heeyawing a rabbit that was sitting under one of the targets. Once the rabbit was safely gone from 0ur shooting bay, JT came strolling back, and away we went...

Day One of the main match was cloudy. And wet. The night before, we went to Wally World and got the biggest, heaviest garbage bags we could find, to put over the gun cart. Worked like a charm, and kept the guns relatively dry through a storm the likes of which hadn't been seen in Boise in August in over twenty years, and which lasted into the next day. Just our luck. Fortunately, GrubSlinger had loaned us a couple of slickers, so we could at least be somewhat dry between shooting sessions...

Aside from the incessant rain, Day One went well. I missed one pistol target. Disgustingly enough it was the last target of the only stage that was exposed enough to get enough breeze across the targets to blow the smoke away and let me see all of them. On the other five stages we shot that day, after the first shot I was pretty much just shooting where I thought the targets should be, as opposed to where they actually were. I even got away with it for five out of the six stages. That's one of things that makes shooting Frontier Cartridge so much fun. That and the choking and gagging of the timers and spotters...

Day Two was even wetter than Day One. It would rain for a while, then it would sprinkle for a while, then it would RAIN for a while. Interesting weather pattern. As an aside here, our posse, to the best of my knowledge, which could admittedly be slightly faulty, was the only posse on our side of the range with enough intestinal fortitude to keep going through "wind and rain". The rest wussed and headed for the covered benches behind the shooting bays for a while. We were tough. Or crazy. Or stupid. Take your pick...

Day Two was going well until stage 12, which just happened to coincide with some of the heaviest rain. Up to that point, I had a total of two misses, both with pistol, and both because I tried to go faster than I should have. I know better than that, but occasionally the brain goes into speed racer mode, and there you have it. So anyway, my Remingtons have imitation ivory grips, which to that point I'd actually done a pretty good job of keeping under control in spite of being on the slippery side. Not so on stage 12. For some reason, at pistol time on that stage the brain went "shoot fast, shoot fast", the trigger finger said okay, and the rest of the fingers tried to follow suit, all the while juggling the damn things and trying not to drop them, which would have been an extremely bad thing to do. Consequently, instead of backing off and regrouping, I ended up with five misses for stage 12. Gag me with a field mouse...

All of the stages on both days had a line the shooter had to say to let the timer dude know you were ready to start shooting; while everybody else on our posse did their best to be serious about their lines, I tend to mutilate them in some way if at all possible. All of the lines were from the movie "Rustler's Rhapsody". I should watch that some day. So anyway, one of the lines on Day Two was "Bruce, how do you feel about that?" When it came my turn to shoot that stage, I stepped up to the line while being heckled, in advance mind you, by my (to my mind at least) unfeeling fellow posse members about all the smoke I was about to produce. Willie Killem was the timer guy, and he was trying to reassure me that I had an immense amount of support from the fine folks on our posse when I looked back over my shoulder at him and said, in my best "lie down on the couch, I'm your shrink" voice, "And just how do you feel about that, Bruce?" I thought he was gonna drop the timer. It was great! He almost forgot to beep the timer!

Finally, between the fifth and sixth stages, the rain quit, the sun came out, and it turned into a glorious day. When we were done shooting we spent the next half hour shooting the guns full of BreakFree and wiping them down...

High points of the weekend: the RO classes, being away from work, the people we shot with, being away from work, getting my rifle fixed, being away from work, burger lunches provided as part of our match fees on Friday and Saturday, Cowboy Church on Sunday with Trask River Trapper, and being away from work. Oh yeah, and the fact that with all the rain, my pistols and rifle hummed along with very little expenditure of Murphy's Mix to keep them slicked up...

Low point mainly was the rain, but we dealt with it, and everybody's spirits stayed up in spite of it all. Except maybe for Lone Wolf Larry, whose slicker I inadvertently walked off with when we made the move from stage 12 all the way to the other end of the range to stage 7. I don't think he was too impressed with that part of the proceedings. I don't know what his problem was; he had an umbrella on his gun cart. Sorry, Larry...

Saturday night was the awards banquet at the Red Lion Downtowner. Before you ask how the banquet was, let me ask you this: have you ever eaten a Red Lion banquet dinner? I've eaten a number of them over the years, and I have yet to be impressed. Their drinks are always over-priced, and the food's usually pretty ho-hum. This year was no exception, but we weren't there for the food, we were there to congratulate the folks who did good, and there were lots of those. The food is just one of the those things that fall under the heading of doodoo occurs...

I didn't get any awards this year, but that's not why I shoot anyway. I shoot because I like to shoot and because I like to hear the rest of the posse squawk about the smoke. Clint got his first clean match pin ever this year, so that was the high point of the banquet for me. The closer we got to the last stage of the match, the slower and more carefully he shot, because he could see that pin within reach...

The good folks of the Oregon Trail Rough Riders are to be commended for the great job they did of putting on this shoot in spite of the weather. This is always one of the most fun shoots a cowboy shooter can go to...

Fun, fun, fun...

Man, it's hard to believe that it's been almost a month since I've written anything here; it's equally as hard to believe that August is half over, and that Cycle Oregon is less than a month away. Incredible. In the interest of not putting anybody to sleep, I'll probably do my catching up in installments. So, what's been happening...

Oh yeah, I got a new bike. For free, as amazing as that may seem. Shortly after the book signing, I called Kim and Janey to see if they wanted to do a bike ride. We set a date and time, and the night before I decided it might be a good thing to get my Roubaix off of the trainer and give it a bath. In the process of bathing it, I found a tiny little hairline crack down near the bottom bracket shell. I couldn't decide whether it was in the paint or the tubing, so the next day when I got to Baker I took it to the local bike shop where I bought it to see if Mark the Bike Shop Guy could tell any more about it than I could. Nope...

Specialized guarantees their frames for life. Whose life I'm not sure, but for life nonetheless. Mark called Specialized while I was there, but ended up on hold for a long time, and finally told me he'd call them the next day and let me know what he found out. He found out that they were going to replace my frame. Way cool. Now, instead of the price of a new bike, I'd only be out the price of the labor to swap all of my components onto the new frame...

The following Tuesday I called the bike shop. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "So have we heard anything from Specialized about my frame?"

Mark: "There's a box here with your name on it, but I've been so swamped I haven't had time to open it." Sounds of box being ripped open. "They didn't send you a new frame. They sent a whole new bike. It's a 2010 Roubaix triple!"

Me: "Cool! When can I pick it up?" Because my bike had a combination and aluminum frame, and the new Roubaix's don't have aluminum in the frame at all, only carbon, apparently they decided to just do away with the old, and in with the new. Sounds like pretty darn good customer service to me! Last Tuesday I rode it into town, managing to cut three minutes off of my all time best time riding from here to Baker. That is a sweet bike!

Successful book signings are made, not born...

Last Saturday was my book signing at Betty's Books in Baker City, featuring Tyler's Law, the new book. I also had a couple of boxes of the new version of the old book there, which was a good thing. We ended up selling 12 copies of Tyler's Law, plus I had two orders, and we sold 8 copies of the new Sisley Creek Press release of Complications. I was happy with how it went, and I think Carolyn was too...

Got some pretty good press off of this one. There was a very well-written review in the Record-Courier on Thursday, and a nice writeup about me and my books in the Baker City Herald and the La Grande Observer on Wednesday. Both were nice articles. In fact, a guy came in right after the signing started and had me sign both the page out of the Herald and the copy of the book that he bought. First time I've ever autographed a newspaper...

One of the highlights of the signing was a guy who came over from Cove just for the signing, and walked up to me and said, "I've never read a western novel before." Then he ended up buying a copy of both books before he left. I need more people like that to come in...

Overall, I consider this signing a success...

Summer

Once again, time has flown. I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post. Some pretty cool things have happened, and a lot of the usual same old stuff. We're haying feverishly, both ours and the neighbors, but one of the neighbors is about a month ahead of normal, so we may actually get kind of a break some time in August...

The biggest thing for me, I guess, is the Lasik surgery I had on June 25th. People keep asking me how my eyes are doing, and my most common comment is "It's HD TV!" Seriously, I had a one week check-up on July 2nd, and I was within a tiny bit of having 20/15 vision! The world is brand new to me now. Things are so crisp, and the colors are so amazing, compared to when I had glasses. Admittedly, I'm having a little trouble adjusting to having to keep reading glasses around all of the time, but the hassle is worth it! I'm lovin' it! It's great to be able to just put on a pair of sunglasses when it's bright out...

On the literary front, so to speak, I have a signing of my second book scheduled for July 25th at Betty's Books in Baker City. Carolyn has been extremely helpful since I started trying to be an author, and I haven't thanked her enough for all of her help, going out of her way to make sure she has my books on her shelves, and setting up signings and all. I hope this one goes as well as the signing we had for book 1...

I still haven't updated either my blog links or my website since Book 1 came out under my own imprint, but I plan to soon (yeah, right, when I get some spare time...) It seems like there's been something going on every weekend all summer. There's been everything from weddings to whatever. Last weekend was watching Brett rope in the Haines Rodeo and the Vale Rodeo (on separate days, of course). Next weekend is book sales at the Miner's Jubilee, and the annual family reunion on Cheryl's side of the family. Then comes the book signing and the annual cowboy night shoot in Baker...

Summer's flying by...

The baby is born!

So to speak. I've been working on setting up my own publishing company so I can do my own books, and eliminate the middle man, as the saying goes. Now it's finally a reality! Last Friday, the UPS man delivered the proof copy of Complications, the new (and so far only) book release from Sisley Creek Press...

Now I realize that I already have that one in print. But this is the "new and improved" version. This winter I did a complete and total rewrite of the book, based on suggestions from my recently-acquired editor, Beverly Coomer of Coomer Editorial Services. By combining bits and pieces and some other sleight-of-hand, I think I actually cut out about six or seven chapters, without diminishing the story in the least, and drastically improved the flow of the story. I also created a new cover for it...

Today I faxed the original publisher a termination notice, so from here on out Complications will be a wholly owned and produced product of Sisley Creek Press!

Now I just have to get a bunch of stuff rearranged on here and on my website...