How can I miss when I've got dead aim?
Aug. 21st, 2004 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberSpent the past 24 hours doing far more stuff than is my wont... Started Thursday. See, I'd been dreading Friday at work, and mentioned my expectation of horror to one of my splendidly friendly coworkers, and also my desire to drink something. He suggested that after work Friday, we get another coworker or two and go out. (Fortunately, the horror did not [and might not] materialize. Yet why get rid of drinking plans just for that?)
I was in the mood for sake. Sake may be my favorite form of alcohol. It's straight ethanol, but it's smooth, and has a sort of subtle flavor to it, maybe some sweetness... So I introduced them to my favorite Japanese place in the world, off the Berkeley campus near the dorm where I lived for two years. Rice paper and wood, tiny room, low ceiling, tiny booths all built of the wood; the Japanese postdoc said they'd gotten the atmosphere right, which was my suspicion, and she later passed very positive judgement on the food. Splendid!
Then, I scooted home, because we were due to hang out with friends that evening. Ended up we went over to Sam's place to play poker, which is something I haven't had a chance to do in a long time, and I love cards.
The first step, though, was to collect Rezaul from his house, as I found out when I stepped into Sam's place. Rezaul, the poor bastard, got a degree at Berkeley, and a part-time job babysitting a retired professor's computers. Now he gets paid in gobs of cash, plays Everquest for hours at work, and lives rent-free in one of the outbuildings of the professor's mansion stuck on the side of an insanely steep hill. It's a kinda empty existence, and his housing is even moreso...
I mean, it's 10 minutes from any other humanity, always swathed in fog, in the midst of a pitch black wood, surrounded by about 19 peacocks. Which scream, lurk in the fog (in which you can't see more that 100 feet); and at 3 in the morning they walk on his roof like people.
So, I find my way there (there was the stopsign... There can't be more than one stopsign up here, but this road is going on longer than I remember... Damn, I wish I could see where I was driving... It's like driving inside a ghost), and I bang on his door in the dark, since there are no outside lights. It's cold. I can hear a movie playing inside. "Open the door, Rezaul!" I cry. Nothing.
Screw this, I think, and I go back to the car to get the flashlight, so I can see my way around the building. I shine it in the windows and start banging. "Aaa! Who's there?!"
Turns out Rezaul was planning on staying home and avoiding calls from his parents who want him to come back to LA now that his brother's moved away. I march him into his car, which was perfectly functional and holds 4 people, dammit, and we return to Sam's, and play poker.
It wrapped up a bit early because I had to get up this morning at the ungodly hour of 7:50 to go to the San Leandro Optimists's Rifle Range, because I'd signed up for the NRA-approved Beginning and Intermediate Handgun Training Course.
Which was a lot of fun. There were four other students, two women and two men, and one of the women was a very friendly, outgoing person planning on trying for police academy again... Having one chatty person in the group brought the rest of us out of our shells [hee!], which made the whole experience fun.
The instructor also ran the range; he was an ex-Marine guy who'd been a sniper in Korea... And as he mentioned that part of his gun history, it was clear it still haunted him. I liked him. Latest in a long line of instructors I've had who were old guys who kinda didn't quite grasp the whole breakdown-of-sex-roles thing, but were willing to the best of their ability to teach women anyway. He told us that any gun a man could shoot, a woman could shoot just as well or better, which matches what I've read on the internet.
I was the only one there who'd never shot a gun (though I'm not sure if I should've counted shooting BB rifles a few times when I was in the single-digit age range...). First part of the day was talking; my gaming background, I feel, both helped me quite a bit and gained flesh from all the stuff I was soaking up. We went through the motions on a semiautomatic and a revolver with fake bullets; then lunch (which involved stories from the outgoing lady about BART police stuff, since she was currently a BART adjunct officer. Fascinating one about a blind lady who fell between two trains thinking she was walking into a door on a train, and tucked herself to the side so the trains didn't squash her as they pulled out, and then was pulled back up onto the platform by two other BART patrons who were about 3 seconds from being squashed by a train themselves...) Then we went into the firing range.
I'd been a bit concerned, because when I went by the place on Tuesday to pay for the class, a gunshot would boom! and I would jump. Didn't turn out to be a problem once I got ear protection. (Paid for the class to another old guy of the sort who calls you darlin'... Hee.)
We started with .22s, semiautomatic and then a revolver. I'll tell you now, though most of you probably know, no gun I fired from .22 to .45 had a scary recoil, which was another worry of mine. Nor an earth-shattering kaboom, for that matter, though there were some of those in the other lanes at the range; I think maybe it's a factor of barrel length in addition to caliber size.
The semi was much easier to fire, since pulling the trigger on the revolver both cocked the hammer and let it drop, and the "cocking the hammer" mechanism was stiff as hell. I liked the shots better where I pulled back the hammer with my left hand and then shot. This is what you have to do for a single-action gun, such as the guns of the old West... I finally learned today that a double-action gun is one that both cocks the gun and fires it with a pull of the trigger, and a single-action gun is one where you have to cock it yourself before firing.
Oh, and another thing you all probably know but just in case: a revolver is a gun where the ammunition (5 or 6 shots) lives in a revolving cylinder above the trigger; a semiautomatic is flatter, and the ammunition (10-12 shots?) lives in a magazine in the hilt. The semiautomatic is cocked by pulling the entire top part (the "slide") back; in a double-action semi, the backwash from a bullet being shot kicks the slide back, where it ejects the shell of the ammo, and then is pulled forward again by a spring, scooping up the next bullet en route. The future-BART-police lady was saying that criminals were taking to using revolvers again, because a revolver keeps the used shells in the cylinder, and thus you carry your evidence away with you.
I was astonished by how easy it was to pretty much shoot the bullseye. I mean, I'd line up the sights with the bullseye sortof where I was pointing, and then pull the trigger, and the gun would be all over the place after it shot (well, I mean, up and away) but the bullet would have gone though the center of the paper... Now, this was all at about 15-20 feet, mind you, but still. What with the way the gun was after I'd shoot, I was amazed the bullet was in the center. But I didn't get dinged by the instuctors, so I guess it's ok for the gun to be all wiggly after shot so long as it's pointed the right direction. Though I was kinda worried when hearing about it in the morning, there was, as I was assured, no chance that the gun was going to hop out of my hand, even though I held it properly loose while shooting.
Anyway, we also got to shoot a .38 revolver, a 9mm P9 semiautomatic, and .40 and .45 semiautomatics. I was really happy with the P9; it was the instructor's own gun, since the range 9mm was broken, and he'd set it to a very light trigger, which suited me down to the ground.
After the shooting, we took the California Handgun Safety Certificate Test, and we all got cards saying that for the next 5 years we could buy one handgun a month in California. Then we got to watch the instructor clean the P9 (and kvetch about the boringness of cleaning guns); then we went home.
The gun range smelled neat, BTW. For me, the best part about shooting the .45 was that I could smell the gunpowder and smoke from each shot. (The .45, when shot, was a bit surprising... All the guns bounced, but the .45 bounced my arms up higher than my head. What the heck, I figured, I've got no need for speed shooting here, why should my arm muscles soak that kinetic energy? Let it play out. [Also, the .45 leaves some big damn holes in the paper. {Also, I got to keep all my shot-up papers. Yay!}])
I was in the mood for sake. Sake may be my favorite form of alcohol. It's straight ethanol, but it's smooth, and has a sort of subtle flavor to it, maybe some sweetness... So I introduced them to my favorite Japanese place in the world, off the Berkeley campus near the dorm where I lived for two years. Rice paper and wood, tiny room, low ceiling, tiny booths all built of the wood; the Japanese postdoc said they'd gotten the atmosphere right, which was my suspicion, and she later passed very positive judgement on the food. Splendid!
Then, I scooted home, because we were due to hang out with friends that evening. Ended up we went over to Sam's place to play poker, which is something I haven't had a chance to do in a long time, and I love cards.
The first step, though, was to collect Rezaul from his house, as I found out when I stepped into Sam's place. Rezaul, the poor bastard, got a degree at Berkeley, and a part-time job babysitting a retired professor's computers. Now he gets paid in gobs of cash, plays Everquest for hours at work, and lives rent-free in one of the outbuildings of the professor's mansion stuck on the side of an insanely steep hill. It's a kinda empty existence, and his housing is even moreso...
I mean, it's 10 minutes from any other humanity, always swathed in fog, in the midst of a pitch black wood, surrounded by about 19 peacocks. Which scream, lurk in the fog (in which you can't see more that 100 feet); and at 3 in the morning they walk on his roof like people.
So, I find my way there (there was the stopsign... There can't be more than one stopsign up here, but this road is going on longer than I remember... Damn, I wish I could see where I was driving... It's like driving inside a ghost), and I bang on his door in the dark, since there are no outside lights. It's cold. I can hear a movie playing inside. "Open the door, Rezaul!" I cry. Nothing.
Screw this, I think, and I go back to the car to get the flashlight, so I can see my way around the building. I shine it in the windows and start banging. "Aaa! Who's there?!"
Turns out Rezaul was planning on staying home and avoiding calls from his parents who want him to come back to LA now that his brother's moved away. I march him into his car, which was perfectly functional and holds 4 people, dammit, and we return to Sam's, and play poker.
It wrapped up a bit early because I had to get up this morning at the ungodly hour of 7:50 to go to the San Leandro Optimists's Rifle Range, because I'd signed up for the NRA-approved Beginning and Intermediate Handgun Training Course.
Which was a lot of fun. There were four other students, two women and two men, and one of the women was a very friendly, outgoing person planning on trying for police academy again... Having one chatty person in the group brought the rest of us out of our shells [hee!], which made the whole experience fun.
The instructor also ran the range; he was an ex-Marine guy who'd been a sniper in Korea... And as he mentioned that part of his gun history, it was clear it still haunted him. I liked him. Latest in a long line of instructors I've had who were old guys who kinda didn't quite grasp the whole breakdown-of-sex-roles thing, but were willing to the best of their ability to teach women anyway. He told us that any gun a man could shoot, a woman could shoot just as well or better, which matches what I've read on the internet.
I was the only one there who'd never shot a gun (though I'm not sure if I should've counted shooting BB rifles a few times when I was in the single-digit age range...). First part of the day was talking; my gaming background, I feel, both helped me quite a bit and gained flesh from all the stuff I was soaking up. We went through the motions on a semiautomatic and a revolver with fake bullets; then lunch (which involved stories from the outgoing lady about BART police stuff, since she was currently a BART adjunct officer. Fascinating one about a blind lady who fell between two trains thinking she was walking into a door on a train, and tucked herself to the side so the trains didn't squash her as they pulled out, and then was pulled back up onto the platform by two other BART patrons who were about 3 seconds from being squashed by a train themselves...) Then we went into the firing range.
I'd been a bit concerned, because when I went by the place on Tuesday to pay for the class, a gunshot would boom! and I would jump. Didn't turn out to be a problem once I got ear protection. (Paid for the class to another old guy of the sort who calls you darlin'... Hee.)
We started with .22s, semiautomatic and then a revolver. I'll tell you now, though most of you probably know, no gun I fired from .22 to .45 had a scary recoil, which was another worry of mine. Nor an earth-shattering kaboom, for that matter, though there were some of those in the other lanes at the range; I think maybe it's a factor of barrel length in addition to caliber size.
The semi was much easier to fire, since pulling the trigger on the revolver both cocked the hammer and let it drop, and the "cocking the hammer" mechanism was stiff as hell. I liked the shots better where I pulled back the hammer with my left hand and then shot. This is what you have to do for a single-action gun, such as the guns of the old West... I finally learned today that a double-action gun is one that both cocks the gun and fires it with a pull of the trigger, and a single-action gun is one where you have to cock it yourself before firing.
Oh, and another thing you all probably know but just in case: a revolver is a gun where the ammunition (5 or 6 shots) lives in a revolving cylinder above the trigger; a semiautomatic is flatter, and the ammunition (10-12 shots?) lives in a magazine in the hilt. The semiautomatic is cocked by pulling the entire top part (the "slide") back; in a double-action semi, the backwash from a bullet being shot kicks the slide back, where it ejects the shell of the ammo, and then is pulled forward again by a spring, scooping up the next bullet en route. The future-BART-police lady was saying that criminals were taking to using revolvers again, because a revolver keeps the used shells in the cylinder, and thus you carry your evidence away with you.
I was astonished by how easy it was to pretty much shoot the bullseye. I mean, I'd line up the sights with the bullseye sortof where I was pointing, and then pull the trigger, and the gun would be all over the place after it shot (well, I mean, up and away) but the bullet would have gone though the center of the paper... Now, this was all at about 15-20 feet, mind you, but still. What with the way the gun was after I'd shoot, I was amazed the bullet was in the center. But I didn't get dinged by the instuctors, so I guess it's ok for the gun to be all wiggly after shot so long as it's pointed the right direction. Though I was kinda worried when hearing about it in the morning, there was, as I was assured, no chance that the gun was going to hop out of my hand, even though I held it properly loose while shooting.
Anyway, we also got to shoot a .38 revolver, a 9mm P9 semiautomatic, and .40 and .45 semiautomatics. I was really happy with the P9; it was the instructor's own gun, since the range 9mm was broken, and he'd set it to a very light trigger, which suited me down to the ground.
After the shooting, we took the California Handgun Safety Certificate Test, and we all got cards saying that for the next 5 years we could buy one handgun a month in California. Then we got to watch the instructor clean the P9 (and kvetch about the boringness of cleaning guns); then we went home.
The gun range smelled neat, BTW. For me, the best part about shooting the .45 was that I could smell the gunpowder and smoke from each shot. (The .45, when shot, was a bit surprising... All the guns bounced, but the .45 bounced my arms up higher than my head. What the heck, I figured, I've got no need for speed shooting here, why should my arm muscles soak that kinetic energy? Let it play out. [Also, the .45 leaves some big damn holes in the paper. {Also, I got to keep all my shot-up papers. Yay!}])