Big Ugly and I

When you first attend a Cowboy Fast Draw match, it is somewhat confusing. Normally, there will be two or more six-lane ranges in use and it is hard to sort out exactly what is happening.  In essence, what you are watching is a number of individual matches.

In the large matches, the individual contests are  arranged by computer.  It matches individuals up against each other, randomly.  The match officials post the matches on the board, and we read the printout and go to our assigned range. After the shots are fired and the winner of the match is decided, the winner gets nothing and the loser gets an X on his score card.  Normally a state level match is a 4X match, which means that you have to lose four times before you are out of the competition. It looks confusing the first time you see it, but after a while, it starts to make sense.

So, on Sunday morning, I had three (3) Xs.  I was bleeding bad and dragging a leg, but I was still in it.    On the board, first thing Sunday, I saw that I had drawn Big Ugly Malone, a shooter out of Virginia.    Big Ugly is a fine fellow, soft spoken, a gentleman of the old tradition.  But, he's also fast.

A shooter's "lean" is an individual thing.  Some folks lean, some stand straight.  Big Ugly, as tall as he is, has a distinctive lean.    He's the guy in the photo below.

Big Ugly, center, in the maroon shirt.  Major D in the black vest.

So, I had drawn Big Ugly, a top competitor, fast as lightning, and I knew that the only chance I had was to hit the plate.  Repeatedly.

First shot, my light blinked, which told me I had won the shot.  Second shot, my light blinked, so I had Big Ugly 0-2.   That was in interesting development.  I tried not to get excited.  Stay calm, keep putting them o the plate.

Third shot, we both hit the plate.  Big Ugly's bullet got there four-tenths of a second faster than mine, so the score was 1-2.  Keep calm, keep shooting.  Fourth shot, Big Ugly's light blinked, but he put his hand in the air.   I had missed that shot, and I admit I was baffled.

Cowboy Fast Draw is about fairness, and Big Ugly questioned whether his shot was a valid hit.  If Big Ugly had kept quiet, we'd be tied, 2-2, but he didn't want anything he didn't earn, so he questioned the shot.  The judges went down and  inspected the target.  The hit was not valid, so we were back to 1-2.

By this time, Big Ugly had found the target.  The next two shots were his.  I hit the plate, but not fast enough.  Big Ugly won that match, fair and square.  Major D shook his hand, congratulated him, and went over to the shade canopy to take off my gun.  It was over, and I had bled out.

Major D, blowing smoke.

We hung around for a while.  I helped hand-judge the ninth round, and even hand-judged for Big Ugly, when he gave someone else an X.  He was on fire Sunday morning and put on a memorable performance.  Eventually winning the whole shebang.  Big Ugly Malone is now the current Kentucky State Champion of Cowboy Fast Draw.

Some matches are memorable.  That was a fun match.  Thanks, Big Ugly, I hope we can do it again, soon.

The Blame Game

It seems that the failed politician, Hillary Clinton just can't get her head around the idea that the majority of people in 33 states didn't want her as President.  She, the veteran of numerous political races, lost to a newcomer, someone who had never before held elective office.

It couldn't have been her fault, right?  It had to be someone else's fault.    Now, it's Bernie Sanders fault, because he drew-out the nomination process.

“I didn’t get anything like that respect from Sanders and his supporters,” Clinton said. “And it hurt. You know, to have basically captured the nomination, ending up with more than 4 million votes than he had. And he dragged it out.”

It hurt, did it?  Cry me a river.

No, darlin', what happened is you lost.  The American people rejected you completely.  Once touted as "the most qualified candidate in history", by a man who also trounced you in a Presidential election (a man, I might add, that was also a political newcomer).

Hillary, you have no moral character.  The simple fact that you're still married to Slick Willie testifies to that fact.  Your character flaws are deep and well documented, especially apparent that you are unfit for leadership.

We rejected you, Hillary, and the fact that you're still whining about it shows how unfit, how un-electable you are.  You are a pathetic shell of a woman, driven by greed and avarice.

Do the nation a final service Hillary, and just shut up.

Karl Gustaf, You Say?

The Firearm Blog is reporting that the US Army has approved the new M3E1 Karl Gustaf recoilless rifle for acquisition.

Good things come in lightweight, 84mm packages: Following its fielding of the M3 MAAWS last year, the US Army has announced its decision to sole-source 1,111 improved lightweight M3E1 MAAWS recoilless rifles from Saab Dynamics, in a listing at FBO.gov. The new weapon is based on the Saab Dynamics M4 variant of the venerable Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle, which improves over the previous M3 by reducing weight by 30% (22 pounds down to 15.4 pounds) and length by 14% (1,100mm down to 950mm). The M3E1 is expected to be type classified as the M3A1 Multi-Role Anti-Armor/Anti-Personnel Weapon System (MAAWS).

Back in the day, when I was in the walking-around Army ('73-75) we had recoilless rifles in the inventory.  I actually got to fire an M20, 75 mm recoilless rifle at Fort Riley during pre-commissioning  training.  It was a cool rifle, deadly and noisy as hell, and after that I never saw one in use.

The Army at that time was smitten with rocketry and the old M72A1 LAW rocket was ubiquitous during my early days as a platoon leader.   The infantry also had the  M47 Dragon system in several variants.   Of course, the most iconic rocket grenade in use worldwide is the old Russian RPG-7, the anti-armor weapon of peasants worldwide.

I had thought that the recoilless rifle had gone the way of bolt-action rifles and steel-pot helmets, a fond memory of an old warrior, but it seems that what is old is new again.

That should give the light infantry a good anti-armor punch.  It should be useful for vehicles, bunkers, buildings, anything that needs several pounds of high explosive remodeling.  In the anti-personnel, I bet that a buckshot or flechette round would be devastating.

Yet Another Cluster in Mississippi.

Mississippi cops have to b some of the most incompetent in the US.

After the abysmal performance last night in Grenada, where they shut down an entire interstate for four hour because some loser was throwing a tantrum, Belle and I checked into a hotel  You can read all about it here.  But, we sent four hours in traffic and on back roads to go maybe 20 miles, throwing everyone behind schedule and costing thousands of people, collectively,  millions o dollars.

But, we spent the night in a hotel, and got up this morning, ready for a relaxing drive home.  Never again will I be so naive.  Just about the time we got on I-55, we got a traffic alert about an accident near milepost 119, which was 90 miles (or so) from us.  I commented that any barely competent cop, fresh out of the academy, should be able to clear a wreck inside of 90 minutes.  Boy, was I wrong.

About ten miles from the crash site, the travel shuts down.  We're on a standard four-lane interstate,  with two travel lanes in each direction.  We start creeping, about one miler per hour, and traffic piles up quickly.  As we approach the crash site, after about 40 minutes, I see that the highway is expanding as we get into Jackson, MS, and when we get to the crash site,  I  observe two motorcycle units and about five patrol units.    One of the crashed vehicles is on a tilt-bed wrecker  There is nothing in any of those five travel lanes, but cops standing around, scratching their asses and picking their noses.  One fat cop is standing in the lane near the fast lane, directing us through the crash site.

If he had taken three steps back, he would have had two travel lanes to move traffic, but that was obviously too apparent for him to notice.     I started to run the sonsofbitch  over to remind him what his primary consideration should be.  But,  Belle insisted that they'd probably close the interstate for another hour before they dragged his sorry ass to the shoulder.

So, the cops in Mississippi have twice, in 24 hours, on the same piece of road, ailed to keep it open.

And really, traffic management is that simple.  Keep the road open.  Protect life and keep the travel lanes open.    There is no, I repeat NO reason to close a highway to clear a wreck.

Geez, the Governor of Mississippi needs to hire a whole  new police force.    Seriously, no a one I've seen has any idea how to do the job.  In the past 24 hours I have seen the police in Mississippi put the motoring public at risk on two separate occasions, simply because they don't know how to clear a traffic lane.

What A Cluster

So, Belle and I were driving home this afternoon, planning to make Vicksburg, but about 20 miles north of Grenada, MS, the traffic on I-55 just shut down.    This about 5:30 pm.  We figure it's a wreck and spend our time stuck in traffic, a cop and an RN, dreaming up scenarios thatmight explain the delay.

So, we're creeping along at 2 mph, and after an hour or so, two police cars shunt us off onto a little country road, a pig trail if you will.  It's long past dark by now and we're on this little pig-trail, barely paved, with all of the I-55 traffic.  We finally get into Grenada, and we find out t what the story is.

It seems lie this disaffected military critter decided to go apeshit, take a a hostage, and get into a standoff with the Mississippi constabulary on the interstate highway.

So, of course, they decide to close the interstate.  Public safety.  They called the SWAT team, which is always a bad idea.  I've been a cop for over 35 years, and if I've leaned one thing, it's that SWAT is great in concept, but terrible in execution.  They never get it right.

The critter decided to kill himself, which was a great idea.  I've linked one article here.  That ended the standoff, which is how these things normally end, by the way.  By the time it was over, Belle and I had been stuck in horrible traffic for over four hours, driving down pig-trails and possum-trots, and frankly I don't have any sympathy for the sonofabitch.

This critter screwed up the Sunday afternoon of Belle, which is an unforgivable sin.  He also screwed up the Sunday afternoon of thousands of innocent people, out for a Sunday drive, and the truck drivers who make a living carrying the freight that we all depend on.    He caused countless thousands of people inconvenience and economic loss.

Now, I don't want to hear anyone whining that he might have had PTSD.  We don't now anything about him, and even if he did have battlefield trauma, he should have handled it better.  I know lots of guys who were battlefield stressed, and they didn't ruin anyone's afternoon.

Screw him, and the horse he rode in on.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll have a stiff drink before I go off on a rant.

Kentucky State - Day 4

Not many pictures today.  The match was run very well, meaning that everyone stayed busy from start to finish.  PawPaw is still alive after seven (7) rounds, which means that I'm in it tomorrow.  With three (3) Xs, I'm bleeding bad and limping, but I'm still in it.

The only picture I took today was of my CFDA pastor, Stainless Steel, who ministers to us when we're on the road.  Stainless is a good pastor, worrying about all of us, and a pretty good shooter.  I haven't come up against him today, but I still owe him an X from a match last year.

Stainless Steel, the unofficial pastor of the Eastern and Southern Territories.

Belle and I are in the room now, cooing off and cleaning up.  The banquet is tonight and we'll meet at a nearby hall to spoof each other and they'll hand out the trophies won already.

Tomorrow, we'll finish the main match.  Then we'll hug necks, shake hands and head toward the house.  I'll try to post some pictures after the banquet tonight.

Kentucky State - Day 3

I didn't fill myself with glory today, but we had a good time  PawPaw had trouble finding the target and was out about the fifth round, but that's okay, we had a ball.

Shooter's Meeting, Safety Briefing.  77 shooters today.

Belle, hand-judging, prior to shooting.

Wildfire, out assistant Match Director

L-R: Pixie Quick, Blue Eyed Belle, and Fancy Pants.

A whiskey barrel lid, engraved with the CFDA logo.  It would look good in my shop.

Tomorrow starts the main match.  Belle and I are back at the hotel, enjoying Happy Hour.   I may be wrong, but I do believe that Belle locked down a minor trophy today.

Kentucky State - Day 1

We showed up at the range this morning and registered, then shot a practice match that will benefit the local Veteran's Honor Guard, who provides military honor guards for veterans funerals.  It's a worthy group and we support such organizations.

Belle and I before the match

Lots there to salute.

Pixie Quick, out of north Texas (DFW club)

Slowpoke, out of Virginia.  A top gun in this game.

Gabe and Skagway jawing.

Of course, none of the names used here are their given names.  It's all aliases in this organization.

Thursday Already?

Awoke in Kentucky this morning, turned on the Weather Channel, and booted up the computer.

The track on Irma is firming up, and it looks like this.

As bad as Harvey was (and the recovery will go on or years), the body count was fairly light.  If Irma comes across the densely packed Miami-Dade area with hurricane force winds, the toll will likely be much worse.

The track will start becoming more clear today and tonight.  Pray for the folks in the cross-hairs.  This one is going to be bad.

Arrive'!

We have arrived in the thriving metropolis of Beaver Dam, KY.  The trip up was uneventful, if you call being dead-stopped in the middle of I-40 a non-event.  And, of course, when we came trough Nashville at 5:00 it was gridlocked for about 30 miles.

We're currently ensconced in the Beaver Dam Inn, the only hotel in the  metroplex.  There is both a Denny's and a Wendy's in the parking lot, so we're good for restaurants.  We stayed here last year for Kentucky State, and it's a nice little roadside inn.  Nothing fancy; clean sheets and a friendly staff.

More later.  I'm going to have a sip of bourbon, and surf the intertubes for a bit.  The shoot starts tomorrow, and we'll take pictures.

Devestation Bleg

Like many of you, I've been following the devastation that is following Hurricane Harvey.  For many of us, it's something we see on the internet, but for the folks in the cross-hairs, it's something they live with every day.

I know, personally, families that are being affected today.  Some of these folks are hurting, and we try to do what we can to help.  If you want to donate, Miss Betty, of the West Texas Rangers, a CFDA club in Odessa, TX, has started a Go Fund Me page targeting the club in Silsbee, TX  I've kicked in, as have others, and if you want to drop some cash in the bucket, it would be specifically sent to folks I know, rather than to a nameless, faceless charity.

The Go Fund Me is here.  Anything is appreciated.  Paw Paw kicked in, because I know that these folks are hurting and that the money will go to folks I call friends, and family.

Thanks, in advance.

Busy Day

It's been a busy day, what with regular duty and taking care of the public, and working a detail, but it worked out all right.

Tomorrow morning, as soon as we can get moving, Belle and I will be enroute to Hartford KY, of the Kentucky State Championship of Cowboy Fast Draw.

 Belle is packing right now, and I will be as soon as I take care of a few administrative details.    I'll try to update y'all as time permits, but Belle and I have a six-day extended weekend.  I promised the boss that I'd be back for duty on Tuesday.

Irma Answers

Hurricane Irma is a huge, deadly storm, but we just don't have many answers right now.  All of the meteorologists will tell you that it's too early to nail down a track, but it is a storm that keeps us paying attention.

Here's an embed from a station in southern Florida with the current information tonight.

 
Everyone seems to be in agreement that it is going to make a northerly turn, but the question is when and where will it make impact.

This is a bad one, folks,  The hurricane season is heating up.

Irma

There's a new track out for hurricane Irma, and it looks threatening.

It's still too early to really know anything, but this storm bears watching.  It could go anywhere, but we don't need it coming to coastal Louisiana or Texas.

But, God sends storms in His time and in His will.  If it comes here, we'll just have to weather it.

Spider Lilly

Several years ago I came into possession of some white Spider Lilly bulbs.    Red are very common, but the white is something kind of rare, so I planted them along the fence on the side yard.  And, occasionally, one of them blooms.

I always think that it's cooler-than-hell when spider lillys bloom.    You never see them come up, you just notice one day that they have bloomed.  I planted a half-dozen bulbs against that fence line, and spider lillys are noted for multiplying themselves.  I never know how many are going to come up, but occasionally I get a dozen or more blooms.  We'll just have to wait and see.

The Field

Wirecutter talks about being in the field, in the Army.  That's what the Army is for; going out in the field and training to defeat our nation's enemies.  We don't go to the Super 8 to sleep, although I spent a portion of my career as a REMF. But, I started in the field, and I ended my career in the field.  A garrison posting was gravy, but the simple fact is that an Army learns its job in the field.

When I was a young'un, I was a Boy Scout.  We were a fairly hardcore troop of kids, spent a lot of time hiking, camping, getting familiar with the woods, creeks, and forests around central Louisiana.  By the time I went into the Army, I was comfortable in the woods.  I learned all kinds of neat stuff in the Boy Scouts, things that kept me in good stead in the Army, but the first thing I learned in the Army is that camping with the Boy Scots was fun while camping with the Army sucked.    It was work, and there were very few creature comforts.

Wirecutter talks about sleeping in a GP Medium tent, and if you go to the link, you'll see a picture of this thing.

US Army, GP Medium

It's a nice tent, but in Armor or Cav units, we never saw one.  It was too permanent, meaning that when you get ordered to move, packing up takes valuable time.  We learned to sleep wherever we could find space to get horizontal.  I spent a few nights sleeping on the back deck of the tank, still in my CVC helmet with a long spaghetti cord, so I could listen to the radio.  In the Cav, we'd often sleep in the back of an M113,, or in whatever vehicle we were assigned.  I even knew a Chaplain who slept on the roof of his HMMWV, but I never understood how that was even marginally comfortable.

When I got promoted to Major, I was in charge of the battalion TOC, an assemblage of staff M577 vehicles where we coordinated the activities of the battalion.  It came with a shelter, and looked something like this.

Random Photo, slurped from the internet

There was always room in the TOC to set up a cot, and I spent a lot of nights on a cot in the TOC.  It was a decided "step up" from sleeping on the back of a tank, or crashed in the back of a 5-ton.  I remember one night in the TOC, a cold, wintry night and sometime during the witching hour, a truck pulled up outside on a logistics run..  They were bringing mid-rats (midnight rations) t the companies, and dropped off a mermite container and a platter of ham sandwiches   The mermite was filled with fresh chicken soup.  Big chunks of chicken, noodles, carrots, it was a god-send and my TOC watch crew went through that soup like the ravenous horde that field soldiers are.

I don't know how the Army goes to the field today.  It's been twenty years since I was a field soldier.  I'm sure that they do it differently today with the focus on the desert, rather tan the woodlands that we trained in.  It was a different time, and a different Army.

Hallelujan

Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah is an iconic composition, almost an earworm.  It gets stuck in your head and revolves constantly.

A Navy veteran has re-written it as an anthem for veterans.  I like it.



I like it.

Sunday - Grill Day

After nearly two solid weeks of rain ad hateful weather, the sun is out, everything is drying up, and PawPaw is hungry for a hamburger.  The grill is clean, the cook table is back in place, and when the kids get here in an hour or so, I'll light the charcoal.

We'll do hamburgers, and some sausage that made its way home form the grocers.

I noticed, in passing, that Belle's hydrangea is blooming.  We were hoping for blue, but it appears that we got "a hint of rose".

Tomorrow, of course, is Labor Day, and I plan to labor.  Belle is working and I'm going to try and get caught up on the lawn.  It's in serious need of trimming.  We need to get packed up and ready to roll Wednesday morning.  We're going to Hartford, KY, for the Showdown In The Bluegrrass, the Kentucky State Championship of Cowboy Fast Draw.

She and I haven't taken a road trip since May, and it's time to go look at something else.

How Floods Work

A great piece here on how floods work.    It's about upstream, downstream and development.    Go read the whole thing for a full explanation, but I'll excerpt some of it.

Texas can be divided into roughly three major drainage areas. Those places that eventually flow into the Rio Grande, those that feed into the Brazos and Trinity, and those that supply the Red. Many of those streams drain south and east into the plains around what is now Houston – Port Arthur.

This is a huge file.  Click for larger.

Major cities are normally built near ports.  Houston is no exception.

So Houston was developed on wetlands, or specifically on higher areas within wetlands and streams called bayous. Buffalo Bayou is one of the best known, but there are scads of them, or were. Houston also sits on sediment that is slowly sliding down into the Gulf of Mexico and has been since the end of the last ice age. To compound the problem, in the ’50s and ’60s, groundwater pumping was tried to augment Houston and some of the surrounding towns’ water supplies, and that lowered a few areas almost below sea level before pumping stopped.

We all know that grass, trees and open spaces absorb rain.  Conversely, buildings, parking lots and  roads to not absorb rain.  That rain has to go somewhere and that's what we call "drainage".

Buildings, parking lots, and streets do not absorb rain. So the water must be directed somewhere, through storm sewers usually, and sent away. To make a long story really short and simple, a lot of urban areas have so much pavement (impermeable surface) as compared to absorbent ground that hard, fast rainfall causes street flooding. Denver, Amarillo, Garden City in KS, LA, anywhere you get a lot of rain in a short period of time can have minor flooding.

Major cities tend to grow, and developers like to build on flat areas.  Houses, roads, shopping malls, all contribute to moving water.  When all the bayous, creeks, and sloughs fill up, the water quits moving.  And, the folks upstream start seeing their water quit moving.    Which contributes to flooding in places that don't normally see flooding.    When you have a catastrophic storm like Harvey, or Katrina, or Sandy, we see flooding in areas that didn't flood 50 years ago.

The problem with Houston and the surrounding area is that over the past 150 years or so, more and more has been built on the bayous and wetlands along the Texas Gulf Coast, and upstream. So not only has there been far too much rainfall for the ground to absorb (30″ in 36 hours is too much even on absorbent ground), but it is falling upstream and filling the rivers that drain into the lower areas. And the development in that part of the state has covered over the soil and streams, reducing the amount of vegetation, and so it flooded

Go read the whole thing, It's worth the time,  

The Tubman Twenty

I see that there is a movement afoot by the liberals to take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman.  Jackson, or course, was a slave holder, and he was rude to the Native Americans

Jackson was also, if I remember my history correctly, one of the founders of the Democratic Party.  So, if we want to replace Jackson with someone a little more politically correct, I suppose that Tubman is as good as any.  She was a strong woman with deeply held beliefs and acted on those beliefs at great personal risk.

Here is a design I can get behind.

President Trump should just order it.