Friday Night Music
Now That’s Cool
Sitting at at traffic light yesterday, I noticed the pickup truck in front of me had a trailer hitch cover in the shape of an IPSC target. I was tickled. I tried to take a photo of it with my cell phone, but apparently there’s a reason my phone is called a “phone” and not a “camera.”
So you get this one instead, from the SQRL WRX site:
Gotta love it.
That’s What Friends Are For
As the saying goes, a friend bails you out of jail, while a really good friend is sitting on the bench in the misdemeanor holding tank right alongside you. A really good friend, as it turns out, also brings you swag from the SHOT Show when they get to go and you don’t.
Not only did Terri and her husband bring me back a LaRue Tactical Beverage Entry Tool, they also got a couple of my favorite TV shooting guys to sign photos for me – Tom Knapp (aka “The Shooting Star”), who’s only the most impressive shotgunner I’ve ever seen, and Jim Shockey, Outdoor Channel host extraordinaire.
Not a bottle opener. A Beverage Entry Tool.
The Beverage Entry Tool is cool, because you can use the armadillo’s tail as a traditional bottle opener, or use the big hole in his body to get stubborn twist-offs loose. They make ‘em in the shape of the great state of Texas, also.
Perspective
You know how some days you find yourself dealing with nothing but stupid people? Well, here in the Land of Mike, that’s called “Today.”
Seemed like almost everybody I dealt with at work was just plain stupid. Friendly, even likeable – but stupid. Before succumbing to the overwhelming temptation to gouge out my eyes with a grapefruit spoon, I thought of a passage I recently read in the Thoughts (aka Meditations) of Marcus Aurelius, and it gave me a much-needed dose of proper perspective:
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him.
Nothing sets you back on track quite like a good talking-to from a statesman (and Stoic philosopher) who’s been dead for over 2000 years.
A Day Spent Fishing
The Chinese say that any day spent fishing does not count against a man’s allotted life span. Since I had this past Monday off from work (thanks, Rev. King!), I decided to go over to Floyd Lamb Park and get a line wet in one of the ponds there. One of the nice things about living in the burning desert is that I can fish all year round if I choose to – in winter, when it’s too cold to go to my favorite “real” trout waters and fish, I can always take advantage of the urban ponds in Las Vegas, which are stocked regularly with trout during the cooler months.
So it was that shortly after nine in the morning, I arrived at the park to try my luck. The liars on the TV weather report had called for wind, but a quick look out my front window as I got ready to leave revealed a bunch of suspiciously still trees and bushes, so I figured I would have a pretty good day. I considered taking a coat but decided against it. On arrival at the park entrance, though, I couldn’t help noticing that without a lot of convenient houses to serve as a windbreak, the flags were looking pretty lively – standing straight out from their staff, in fact, as the surrounding trees rocked and swayed. “Well,” thought I, “I guess I’m in for it.” On the premise that the worst day angling is still better than…well, just about anything else I could be doing, I pressed on. The young lady at the park entrance station was optimistic when I asked her about the fishing. “They’ve been stocking 1500 to 2000 trout a week,” she told me. “I don’t think the birds could have gotten them all.”
Once at the pond, I had the place all to myself with the exception of one kindred soul fishing on the far side. I set up my folding chair, tossed in a ball of Power Bait, and waited. Despite a rather thin sweatshirt, no coat, and a brisk breeze, I was comfortable enough sitting in the sun. After about 20 minutes with no action I checked my bait. Still there. Another cast. Sit and wait.
Plenty of coots. No fish.
Floyd Lamb Park is a haven for water birds, including geese, ducks, and hundreds of coots. That morning they were out in force, doing whatever it is that water birds do when the park isn’t full of children bearing bags of day-old bread to serve as bird food. The geese alternated between stalking up and down the shoreline, and paddling with stately grace back and forth across the pond. Coots flew in with a sudden whir of wings followed by a rushing sibilance of feathers on the water, then took turns paddling in circles and diving for food with a sudden splash. Still no fish. I didn’t care.
I thought about tying on a lure and working the pond with it, trying to stimulate a bite, but decided that would be a little bit too much like real work, so I just let the bait sit while I did the same.
Once, many years ago, I recall reading a column in an issue of Field and Stream magazine in which the author talked passionately about his love for simply being outdoors. He said he would routinely take to the woods with an unloaded rifle on his shoulder, because the pretext of hunting gave him a plausible reason for walking afield and enjoying his surroundings. At the time (I think I was about 13) I looked somewhat dubiously on his reasoning. After all, what’s the point of going hunting if you’re not going to hunt? Why fish if the fish aren’t biting? I was goal oriented then.
Over the intervening years I’ve realized that the best thing about fishing isn’t necessarily catching a fish. On more than one occasion I’ve found myself seated on a convenient rock in the middle of a trout stream, fishing pole in hand, captivated by the music of the water and the rugged majesty of my surroundings. On those occasions, more often than not, I’ll simply stop fishing for a while and relax. Life is far too short to pass up a gift of beauty.
Not, of course, that I would have complained bitterly had I caught fish Monday. But sure I didn’t feel cheated just because I caught nothing.
The wind lasted about half an hour, then died. When it came up again with a vengeance a couple hours later I was happy to leave, empty-handed, because by then the joggers, and the dog walkers, and the parents with their kids and their bags of day-old bread had started to arrive and populate the edge of the pond. Anyway, by that time the resurgent wind had blown my folding chair into the water, and it was too wet and cold to sit on…but that’s another story in itself, and best told another time.
Friday Night Music
I’m Jealous
One of my co-workers has this week off from work, and she and her husband have spent the last two days at the SHOT Show. For all the non-cognoscenti out there, the SHOT Show (short for Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show) is the biggest shooting industry exposition in the known world, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation puts it on every year in Las Vegas. This is where manufacturers showcase their newest, coolest, most high-speed products for everyone to see.
To add insult to injury, Terri called me this morning at work to remind me that she and hubby were on their way over to the Sands Expo for day two, and to brag to me about who and what they saw there yesterday. She’ll be giving me a full and detailed report when she comes back next week, I’m sure.
I told her it’s probably better I’m not there with them, since I would almost certainly find several thousand dollars’ worth of guns and gear that I just couldn’t live without, and Cindy would kill me.
Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee
A happy 70th birthday to Muhammad Ali. Not only could the man fight, he was the undisputed master of the trash talk.
And one of Austin’s favorite Ali speeches:
Rooseveltian Ramblings
In addition to being the 26th U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt was a prolific writer. When, in 1909 and 1910, Roosevelt went on a hunting safari in Africa with his son Kermit, one result was the excellent two-volume book African Game Trails. In it, T.R. relates his African adventures in great detail, painting a vivid picture not only of the native landscape and wildlife but also of the safari experience of that era. (Kermit and his older brother Theodore later went on to become quite the adventurers and writers themselves.)
Being voracious readers, the Roosevelts took with them to Africa, among other essentials, what they referred to as the “Pigskin Library” – a selection of books with which to while away the otherwise idle hours spent in camp. Roosevelt had the books bound in durable pigskin leather so they wouldn’t fall apart, hence the name. The library inclined heavily toward classics such as the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and assorted volumes of poetry, to name only a few, and took up one entire trunk that was carried with the safari as part of their baggage train.
In an idle moment of my own the other day, I got to reflecting: I probably have more books stored on my Kindle right now than T.R. and Kermit took to Africa with them, and it doesn’t take up an entire steamer trunk. In fact, it fits in my jacket pocket. Wouldn’t it have been cool, I thought, if they could have just taken Kindles with them on their trip?
Of course, it took all of maybe 10 seconds for me to remember that after about a week and a half, the Kindle’s battery would have died, and without reading material they would have been reduced to napping, playing cards, and lying to each other ad nauseum when not actively hunting. So I guess the Pigskin Library isn’t in any danger from the “PigsKindle” Library after all.
If you like hunting (or are interested in African wildlife), African Game Trails is well worth a read. Although Roosevelt the amateur naturalist sometimes goes into laborious detail about the habits of the different critters he encountered, it is overall a fascinating look at a time and place that no longer exists the way he knew it.
Worth a Read
Over at A Girl and Her Gun, an “Open Letter To The Anti-Gun Folks” which pretty well sums up all that is good about this shooting and pro-gun community I so love.
Go and read it, because as Linoge said, I just can’t add anything to this.
