On The Fence about Attending GBR VIII?

If you haven't made up your mind about attending this year's Gun Blogger Rendezvous coming up in September in Reno, perhaps this video will help you make up your mind........

Gun Blogger Rendezvous Sponsors - Last Year

True Blue Sam put together a video showing some of the raffle items and door prizes from last year's Gun blogger Rendezvous. This year we are planning on having even MORE cool stuff for our raffle and door prizes.

Have a look, and if you are considering products like these sponsors produce but can't decide which to buy, keep in mind that they have generously been helping our fund raising for Soldier's Angels, and part of what you spend with these great folks finds it's way back to an outstanding charity helping our wounded troops!

Jerry Miculek - Way Past Fast.......

Gun Blogger Rendezvous Update

To make the Gun Blogger Rendezvous be a success, there are a number of tasks that must be completed. the hotel must be contacted, contract negotiated, publicity sent out, bloggers contacted, basic schedule of events determined, sponsors contacted, and a whole lot more.

To individually contact each one of the sponsors takes several days, and sometimes several emails and/or phone calls. new sponsors need to be filled in on all the details about the rendezvous, and how their donations contribute to the fund-raising for soldiers Angels and Project Valour-IT.

so far, I have contacted everyone of the sponsors listed below, and they are all going to sponsor the Gun Blogger Rendezvous again this year. there is a second list of the sponsors from last year whom I have contacted, but have not yet received confirmation. Most, if not all, of those sponsors will also be sponsoring again this year.

We have several new sponsors this year, including Burris optics, Allchin Gun Parts, and Tactical Solutions. another new sponsor this year is GunAuction.com. they will be bringing their bowling ball mortar, black powder, and a bunch of bowling balls. Sunday morning at the rendezvous we will be launching bowling balls out into the desert with great enthusiasm, not to mention a lot of smoke and noise! Although nothing is definite so far, we are looking into the possibility of Joe Huffman bringing a number of his Boomershoot targets, so we can experience a mini-Boomershoot at the range in Reno. Obviously, we need to clear that with the Western Nevada pistol league club. GunAuction.com will also be bringing a film crew and they will be doing a video about the Rendezvous. I guess I better bring plenty of clean shirts!

Gun Blogger Rendezvous 2013 (GBR-VIII)

Confirmed Sponsors

Allchin Gun Parts
Brownells
Cabelas
COMP-TAC
Crimson Trace
Dillon Precision
Front Sight Academy
Gunbroker.com
Hi-Point / MKS Supply
Lucky Gunner
NRA
NSSF
Second Amendment foundation
Tactical Solutions
Burris Optics
Gun Auction . Com

Most of the schedule for this year's Rendezvous will follow fairly closely to last year's schedule. There will be some small changes and some new things added, but for the most part the majority of the event will remain the same. Friday will be fixed targets out to 977 yards on the public range. Saturday will be steel shooting on the adjoining range run by the Western Nevada pistol league. Sunday morning will again be at the Western Nevada pistol league range, but this time with the bowling ball mortar and may be Joe Huffman's chemistry set. Breakfast Friday and Saturday morning will be provided by sponsors, and Saturday night the NSSF will be buying us all the pizza that we can eat! So far, we do not have a sponsor for Friday night dinner, but that may still happen.

I got an email from Molly Smith, and she and her family are planning on attending the Rendezvous. It is always fun when Molly and her family come to the Rendezvous.There may also be some other "celebrities" showing up this year, one never knows! 

It looks like this year's rendezvous is going to be significantly bigger than any previous year. A lot of the credit for this goes to Ray from the second amendment foundation, Kevin, of the smallest minority, and true blue Sam. These three have been a tremendous amount of help in publicizing the event. Thanks, guys! 

If you do not have your registration sent in yet for the Rendezvous, you should do that right away. Otherwise, we have no idea how many we need to plan for, in terms of breakfasts, dinners and space needed in the hospitality room. The sponsors need to have a fairly accurate idea of how many will be attending, so they can accurately predict just how much money they are going to spend on a meal for example.

You should be sure to make your room reservations at the Silver Legacy, and do it ASAP. To get the discounted group rate at the Silver Legacy, you must make your reservations by telephone, and use the group code GBLOG13. Part of the negotiations with the Silver Legacy is for all attendees to have free Internet access in their hotel rooms, and the use of the hospitality room at no charge for the Rendezvous. 

Another good reason for staying in the Silver Legacy, other than convenience to the rendezvous, is that if you should choose to partake of adult beverages in the evening, you can walk to your room without leaving the building. Since the breakfasts for attendees are served in the hospitality room, it is also very convenient for those of us staying in the Silver Legacy.

See You In Reno in September!!

A Simple Fishin' Trip.....

This last weekend was the weekend when our local fishing club has its annual trip to banks Lake. Banks Lake is a 27 mile long lake in Eastern Washington, very close to grand Coulee dam. In fact, banks Lake is the equalizing reservoir for grand Coulee dam. Banks Lake is 600 feet higher in elevation than the lake behind grand Coulee dam. At times when electrical demand is low, grand Coulee dam pumps immense amounts of water into banks Lake. When additional electricity is needed, water is taken back out from banks Lake and dropped through the turbines to produce additional electricity. Banks Lake is also the irrigation water source for much of eastern Washington and the Coulee basin irrigation project. Banks Lake has a large population of many species of fish, including rainbow trout, walleye, large mouth bass, small mouth bass, yellow perch, crappies, Burbot, and probably a few other species of fish that I don't even know about.

Since it is a seven and one Half Hour Drive  to banks Lake, we decided to go over one day early, and have a bit more of a vacation. Keewee had to work on Wednesday morning and afternoon, but we figured we should be able to hit the road on Wednesday afternoon or early evening, and drive most of the way to Banks Lake. We planned to stop a couple of hours short of Banks Lake, get some sleep, and drive the rest of the way to the lake on Thursday morning.

On Tuesday I checked over the RV, and got everything packed and ready to go. All that I had left to do on Wednesday was to put tabs on the boat and trailer, grease the trailer wheels, and hook up the trailer lights to make sure they still all worked. That of course, shouldn't take very long.  I had checked all of the lights on the RV the previous weekend, and everything was working perfectly.You do know what they say about the best laid plans.

I plugged the trailer lights cable into the back of the RV, and turned on the lights. The turn signals worked on both sides, but the entire left side of the trailer and the trailer lights were totally dead. A bit of further investigation showed that the entire rear lights on the RV did not work either. My first suspicion, and usually the easiest to locate and fix, was a bad ground somewhere on the left side rear wiring of the RV. Unfortunately, a little time spent with the ohmmeter revealed that the ground was just fine. I was going to have to back the RV into the barn where there was a concrete floor, so that I could get under the RV and trace the individual wiring and wires.

I pulled the boat trailer out of the way and opened the overhead garage door so that I could back the RV into the barn. Unfortunately I miscalculated the height of the RV by approximately 3/4 of an inch. As I backed the RV into the barn I heard the sound of crunching plastic. Wonderful! I had just shattered the overhead vent against the garage door.

A few hours later, I had manufactured and painted a replacement hatch cover out of half inch plywood that I bolted over the ceiling vent where the hatch cover used to be. on one of the many trips in and out of the RV, I mis-judged the step, my foot slipped off the edge, hitting the ground on its side, followed by me falling out of the RV into the driveway. the next thing that I knew, I was lying flat on my back in the driveway and KeeWee was asking me why I was laying down in the driveway. I explained to her that I was waiting for the pain to stop in my ankle before I tried to stand up. Fortunately, it was only a light sprain, and it did not swell up too much. Now, it was 10 PM, and time to get back to the wiring!

I opened the garage door to give me more overhead clearance, and back the RV into the barn. This time, without any crunching noises. sliding under the RV, I could see that a number of wiring taps had been used to splice the taillight wiring into the main wiring harness. The type of tap that was used was the kind where you slip it over one wire, slip the second wire into it, and squeeze it closed with a pair of pliers. That type of connection is notoriously unreliable. By wiggling the wires, I could get the tail lights to come on and go off randomly. The only solution was to replace all of the connectors in that section of the wiring harness. A few hours later, after having replaced all of the cheesy connectors, all of the lights worked just like they were supposed to. By now, it was almost 3 AM . What fun!

The next morning, I slept in a bit. Then it was time to hook up the trailer, and load everything into the RV so we could get on the road. When Keewee got home from work we loaded the outboard motor the fishing tackle and a few other things and we were ready to hit the road. If all went according to plan, we should be able to reach Pateros, where we planned to spend the night, well before midnight. Unfortunately, a deer decided to commit suicide by jumping in front of us in the middle of the night. The deer was hiding behind a guardrail, and jumped over the guardrail just as we approached, so there was no way that we could have avoided the deer. Fortunately we were traveling fast enough and the deer misjudged our speed slightly, so that it missed our headlights and grille, and ran into the side of the RV. Just behind the cab of our RV the fiberglass portion of the body is perhaps 6 inches wider than the cab, and that slightly wider part hit the deer in the side of the head, probably killing it instantly. There were two loud thumps when the deer and the RV came together, one when the deer's head hit the side of the RV, and the second loud thump when the deer spun around and its hindquarters hit the side of the RV near the rear wheel. That second impact probably bounced the deer into the ditch rather than being run over by the boat and trailer. We were in a very remote area where this impact happened, and sense the RV seemed to be running and driving normally I decided to continue on another 10 miles to Winthrop where I could inspect the RV under streetlights rather than in total darkness. When we got to Winthrop, to my amazement, there was virtually no damage. There was a small crack in the fiberglass, and the side door into the RV was binding a little bit, but that was all. WHEW!

We drove the rest of the way from Winthrop to Pateros without incident, and parked on a side street for a few hours sleep. The next morning we had breakfast in a local restaurant, and then continued on to Coulee Playland resort on the north and of Banks Lake.

Once we got to Banks Lake  I launched the boat, and ran it over to our camp site. after we had settled into the campsite and we had everything set organized, it was time to sit down, have a cool drink, and unwind a bit. The weather was beautiful and there was no wind, which is unusual for banks Lake. I sorted out the fishing tackle, and loaded all of the fishing gear into the boat. It was time for a few hours of late afternoon and evening bass fishing. Since the weather was wind free, I decided to run the boat fairly far down the lake to fish. Even though I did not get in too many hours of fishing, and a couple of the places that I first tried produced no fish, the last place I stopped had fish to be caught. Before it got dark, I ran the boat back up the lake to our campsite.

The next day (Friday) the wind came up and the lake was covered with whitecaps. It was way too rough to fish all day. Saturday morning Keewee and I took the boat back down the lake for some walleye fishing. We went to an area that I had fished many times before in previous years, and had caught a few walleye there. This year, walleye fishing was quite good, and the walleye were of good size. I caught three walleye ranging from 19 to 21 inches long and the three fish combined weighed nearly 9 pounds.

After a morning of walleye fishing, we headed back to the campsite. I filleted the fish, so we could fry the fillets for our potluck dinner that afternoon. They were delicious! Later in the day the wind came up again, and it blew all night, and Sunday morning too. Sunday morning it was still blowing, so we were unable to do any more fishing. We loaded the boat back onto the trailer, and headed home. The drive home was long, and tiring, but uneventful, thank goodness.

It had been a long weekend, many miles traveled, good fishing, good eating, fellowship, and a nice break from our sometimes hectic pace of life.

KeeWee took a number of pictures on this trip, and she has them posted on her blog KeeWees Corner. Go have a look.

Note: this blog post was dictated entirely using Dragon naturally speaking software, hence the possibility of phonetically correct words that are actually misspelled. I tried to catch those but I am sure that I miss some.

A Veteran Died today

He was getting old and paunchy
And his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion,
Telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he once fought in
And the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies;
They were heroes, every one.

And 'tho sometimes to his neighbors
His tales became a joke,
All his buddies listened quietly
For they knew where of he spoke.

But we'll hear his tales no longer,
For ol' Joe has passed away,
And the world's a little poorer
For a Veteran died today.

He won't be mourned by many,
Just his children and his wife.
For he lived an ordinary,
Very quiet sort of life.

He held a job and raised a family,
Going quietly on his way;
And the world won't note his passing,
'Tho a Veteran died today.

When politicians leave this earth,
Their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing,
And proclaim that they were great.

Papers tell of their life stories
From the time that they were young
But the passing of a Veteran
Goes unnoticed, and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution
To the welfare of our land,
Some jerk who breaks his promise
And cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow
Who in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his country
And offers up his life?

The politician's stipend
And the style in which he lives,
Are often disproportionate,
To the service that he gives.

While the ordinary Veteran,
Who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal
And perhaps a pension, small.

It is not the politicians
With their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom
That our country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger,
With your enemies at hand,
Would you really want some cop-out,
With his ever waffling stand?

Or would you want a Veteran
His home, his country, his kin,
Just a common Veteran,
Who would fight until the end

 He was just a common Veteran,
And his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us
We may need his likes again.

For when countries are in conflict,
We find the Veteran's part
Is to clean up all the troubles
That the politicians start.

 If we cannot do him honor
While he's here to hear the praise,
Then at least let's give him homage
At the ending of his days.

Perhaps just a simple headline
In the paper that might say:
 "OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING,
A VETERAN DIED TODAY."

I don't know the author of this, so if anyone knows, please leave a comment so credit can be given. Thanks.

Molly Smith Video

There's a great new video on Molly Smith.




Don't know if Molly and family will be at this year's Gun Blogger Rendezvous, but she's been to most of them. Sure hope she can be there again this year.