I had a swell day today which included a gunsmoke luncheon and social. Today it was the core trio of Brian, Todd and me. An odd lot, three shooters on two lanes, but it worked out very nicely. I demonstrated a bit of what I'd learned in my CQB (close quarters battle) course last Jan (during a heart attack I didn't know about until an encore in May), then they tried it. Brian picked it up very quickly with just a bit of coaching re stance and recoil control, Todd simply by observation. Nobody's takin' anything seriously, just havin' fun and laughing some. Safety is always job 1 but that has long since been second nature for the likes of we. Havin' fun is job 1. I didn't realize that they'd not had a chance to try the Ruger .357 revolver Mary 'n I discovered and accquired about June or so. That was soon remedied, I had lots of ammo to share. One of them had a Beretta semiauto .22 I'd never tried. They loved watching me shoot that. I couldn't hit the inside of a closet with that wee popper, very clearly not the fault of the pistol. It was hilarious. I did stay on the paper, didn't shoot out any lights. Nevermind seeing the sights, I could barely see the pistol. CQB is about rapid fire so there were some BABABABABABABAM noises coming from our lanes. Not at all uncommon at the range and it was busy today. While certainly fun, rapid fire like that is usually assocated with a rather wide and random distribution of holes in the paper, what the heck. That is emphatically not the idea of CQB. CQB is about scoring multiple manstopping hits as rapidly as possible. When I was taking down the last of four paper silhouettes we'd shot up with .40 S&W and .45ACP, I noted some other guys who were leaving looking at that paper and then looking at us rather quizically. We look, sound and are about as serious and dangerous as the PTA or the Ladies' Literary Society ... but they obviously noticed the target as they were leaving with their manly AR-16 and M-4 assault rifles. It was the small Q silhouette, not the bigger ones used by FBI and most copshops. There were no hits outside lethal COM (center of mass) and the center where the Q used to be was shredded. Their faces clearly said, "holy shit, who are these old guys?" We're gentlemen, often accompanied by ladies, who enjoy shooting and then good conversation over some rather good Greek grub in a nearby hole-in-the-wall joint. I just love it when that happens at the range. It purely makes my day. I drive home grinnin' and lookin' forward to the next such event. It was a swell day. I never feel better than after a gunsmoke social and luncheon with good friends and former colleagues. It purely beats the hell out of being dead.
I'm still smoke-free and walkin' my 3.2 mph uphill mile every single day, yo.