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...

Exciting weekend...

Busy, but exciting. On Friday, Cheryl and I drove up to Kennewick for a "Lasik Consultation". My peepers were declared to be perfect candidates for the procedure, so June 25th I will be having Lasik surgery in Kennewick! We will drive up there that day, I'll have the procedure done, then we'll spend the night and drive home the next day after they look deep into my eyes another time, to make sure everything's skookum. I have to go back a week later, then a month later, then three months later; at that point, if everything's going well, it's "Don't go away mad, just go away". If there's any change, or a tweak is necessary along the way, that's covered in the fees...

Even more exciting than that, I finally got the book block and cover finished for my setup of my first book, Complications, under the Sisley Creek Press imprint! Saturday the weather was crap, so I stayed indoors and worked on finalizing it. I uploaded it to the printer's website this morning. I should have the proof in the relatively near future; then if it comes out the way it should, I'll order some and get back into the business of selling books! The learning curve on the formatting software has been pretty steep, but I think I've finally got it pretty well figured out. Next up: the rerelease of Book 2, Tyler's Law, under the Sisley Creek Press banner. Stay tuned, folks. Things are just getting going. I hope...

Saturday afternoon we went to the wedding of a kid I hauled to a lot of rodeos when he was in high school and the niece of a friend of ours. It was an outdoor wedding, and the weather looked like monsoon, but the sun actually came out during the ceremony, like the Good Lord was smiling on the whole thing. The reception was indoors, so it didn't matter if it rained then. The food was good, the beer was cold, and a lot of people were there, including a gal we hadn't seen in twenty-some years. Cheryl got to catch up on what Marcie and her family were doing...

Apparently I'm a lazy bugger...

As I haven't posted anything in over two weeks, not since church camp. I guess life gets in the way of leisure, sometimes, eh?

So anyway, there are a couple of blogs I sort of half-assed follow, both written by lady cyclists of my acquaintance. Lynne I can sometimes keep up with, if the hill isn't too steep. Cecil can pretty much blow my doors off any time she feels like it. Both of them posted links in their blogs to a bicycling blog called Bike Lemming, and a post about what we as cyclists need to do to improve our image. The writer makes some excellent points. Here's the link: Bike Lemming

So what have I done lately? Let me see. Oh yeah, I spent a whole bunch of bucks and time on rebuilding a sprayer that goes on the back of our tractor, so I can commit serious herbicide around the ranch. After a number of fits and starts, it's up and running, and the weeds are dying in droves...

I've taken up what is euphemistically called "DE (for double edge) wet shaving". I've been shaving with a Gillette Mach 3 cartridge razor for quite a while, ever since I decided that I was tired of the Norelco electric I bought "for convenience" pulling the hairs out of my tender little face instead of cutting them. I recently needed to buy some more shaving cream, and ran across an inexpensive "bowl, brush and soap" set at Wally World, so I started shaving with actual shaving soap and a brush, still using the Mach 3. Then I made the "mistake" of asking about shaving soaps, since I couldn't find any locally, on one of the cowboy websites I hang out on. I now have two double edge Gillette razors, both considerably older than I am, and a third headed my way. On top of that, my Dad said he has one I can have...

I've discovered that lathering my face with a brush, and shaving with a seriously dangerous instrument, is kind of my "me time" in the morning. I've got a blade sampler pack that I'm working through, testing to see what brand of blade I want to use for the long term, and I'm getting some of the best shaves I've ever had, although some of the blades I have are seriously not going to ever grace my medicine cabinet again in my lifetime. I shave every day anyway, and instead of hating shaving, I've grown to enjoy it. But a buddy of mine at work and I have been having some slightly weird conversations since I started doing this a few weeks ago...

I've even made my own brush! I bought what is called a "knot", made out of badger hair, and drilled a piece of deer horn out for the handle and epoxied the knot into it. Really, really luxurious brush, and I've got a grand total of somewhere in the vicinity of maybe, at the outside, $22.50 invested in a brush that would have cost me at the absolute least $50 to buy, if I could find one to buy anywhere. So now I've decided I need to build something smaller to use as a travel brush...

Church camp weekend...

Apparently, the March winds were running a little late, because instead of bringing April showers, we got May rain storms. At this juncture, rain storms are good, because we need something to make the grass grow so we can turn the cows out to eat it. Yesterday and today, we've had some good, warm soaking rains...

Friday and Saturday I went to a men's retreat at Camp Elkanah, sponsored by Calvary Baptist Church in Baker. Great camp! This is my second year going there, and this year was even better than last year. Camp Elkanah has cabins made of retreaded railroad cars, so we get to sleep indoors, and there's a big dining hall. The food was great again this year. Chapel is in a log building...

This year's music was performed by a local gospel quartet that calls themselves "Fisherman's Praise", and those guys can really sing. The wife of one of the tenors plays keyboard and she has written some of the songs that they do. She can sing very well herself, too...

The speaker was a guy named Luke Hendrix, who is a pastor, and fellow bicyclist, from Portland. He's a very engaging speaker, and talked a lot about our identity as Christians, and how the devil does his best to make us believe that our concept of ourselves has nothing to do with God. Au contraire! If we are to be the people that God wants us to be, we have to turn to God, and let Him be the guiding light in our lives! It's only through Him that we can truly weather the storms that life sends our way!

After Chapel on Saturday, I got to talking to a guy named Kurt, who lives in Pendleton. During the course of our conversation, I discovered that I'm not the lone ranger when it comes to my walk with God. Apparently other people stumble and fumble their way along, the same as me. Sometimes it's hard to believe that anybody else can feel the way you do. We both felt that Luke's words regarding our identity with God hit very close to home. I feel like I came away from the camp with a whole new outlook on life...

Luke said it sort of like this: "God will always love you; it's up to you to make sure that you are someone that God will like..."

Day to day...

Boring is our friend. Trust me. I was a control room operator at the plant for 5 years, and I can guarantee that boring is indeed our friend. So that's why I don't complain when there's not much exciting stuff going on in life...

That having been said, last evening was kind of exciting. There's been a brush pile out beyond our storage shed for a couple of years, consisting mainly of parts and pieces of the locust trees at the edge of the yard that have succumbed to the lure of gravity and subsequently been dismembered by my trusty chainsaw. I was sure it would burn; I just wasn't aware of how hot it would burn. Wowsers!

I lit a ball of newspaper under the edge of the pile, and went to get the garden hose so I could kind of keep things damped down. When I turned around, I had flames shooting about 30 feet in the air! It was at that point that I suddenly realized that the electric service line from the transformer out on the pole beside the county road to our house was relatively close to the flames, which were shooting up at least as high as the wire! As much as it pained me to do it, because a good hot fire leaves very little ash, I damped the fire down with the hose to the point that we could keep the utilities flowing to the house...

All the while this was going on, rumbles and mumbles of thunder were echoing about. When the fire had finally burned down to a size that I felt comfortable with leaving to its own devices, I went in the house for a minute, and before I could get back outside, it was raining! We need the moisture. I thought it might kill my bonfire, but after the showers quit a couple of hours later, smoke was still rising...

On an entirely unrelated note, my book formatting software finally made its way to our local post office. I'm hoping to get started on formatting the book block for my totally rewritten first book so I can get it set up and release it under the Sisley Creek Press imprint. I'm so excited...

Nice weather at last...

and I got outside on one of my bikes for the first time today. My original plan was to take my mountain bike down to the valley and try to get a bunch of highway miles, but stuff got in the way, so by the time I had time to do any biking, I decided to just ride it up the county road. Which is a workout in itself. I ended up with just over 6 1/2 miles...

I've decided that the trainer is doing me good. I've lost 11 pounds so far, and I didn't have to turn around where I normally do when I ride up the creek. I made it up to our gate and back. And I was actually feeling pretty good the whole trip...

The last couple of days have been absolutely gorgeous...