MEH continues to tear it up!
How's Illinois treating you? Better'n Kalyfornia?
MEH continues to tear it up!
How's Illinois treating you? Better'n Kalyfornia?
Oh, I agree completely. Perhaps it will even help him achieve some better focus than I could help him sustain through an entire session. He was (is) a good kid with some self admitted tendencies to ADHD. Which he manifested 2-3 times each instance on the mat.
Hey, just wait until I get rolling on the highland games. To quote Col. Slade, US Army (RET):
DB and I love it here. Illinois has a meaningful CCW law and I am going to take the qualification course this weekend. Once we got here I got into a scotch and cigar gathering by some circuitous route and I got connected up with one of my old sergeants in the group. He went on to become a lawyer and is retired now, but he teaches the course and convinced me to take it. Oddly, as relatively remote as this area is, there have been a lot of shootings here in the last few years.
I've been pretty much a lone wolf my entire life. Very few friends I palled around with and even then infrequently. Now I have 5+ buddies that I meet with once a week and am getting around to other social gatherings. One new member of our group, The He-Man Wimmen Hater's Club* offered up a membership in his duck hunting club. I dunno, I never have been a hunter and it seems a little late to start that just now. Good times nonetheless.
We live on 2 1/2 acres with a 25 acre lake in our back yard and a pool in on our patio. We see wild turkey and deer and Canada geese all the time since we live in Murphysboro Township and not in the city itself. I spent yesterday exploring back and side roads in the Shawnee National Forest. Which is about the best show of wilderness the Midwest can produce. No mountains, but lots of rocky bluffs and canyons with all manner of trees around them.
We don't miss California at all. Although I may take a trip back there in a year or so to get some of my techniques tuned up at the home dojo.
*Our oath:
Last edited by Mark E. Hurling; 03-23-2017 at 10:33 AM.
Weight: 264.
Push Press: Sets of 3, 100-105-105-110-115.
High Pulls: Sets of 3, 160-165-170-175-175.
Cable Rotations: 3 sets of 8 with 70 lbs.
External Rotations: 3 sets of 8 with 40 lbs.
I watched a geezer knock out what looked like classic SS squat form and asked him if that was what he was doing. Yep. Heartwarming.
Session was 55 minutes burning 445 calories. Average HR was 119 bpm with a peak of 208. The latter was probably a glitch from cross-talk from another device. I refrained from cardio yesterday because my right thumb and wrist were feeling tweaked. From who knows what? Since I will need my right hand and wrist in good working order for the CCW qualification course I figgered discretion was the better part of valor.
I am progressing slowly on getting my highland game together. I got the rest of what I think I can DIY for a hammer this afternoon. My buddies in the scotch and cigar outfit are helping with some other implements. One guy lives next to Little Grand Canyon and says he has a bunch of rock I can look through for a good putting stone. My old sergeant told me he has some medium trees that cut up might make a good caber. I'll get a look at the trees tomorrow in the class he's teaching.
Last edited by Mark E. Hurling; 03-24-2017 at 01:59 PM.
Excellent! I love a good He-Man-Woman-Hater's club!
It's never to late to start hunting. We had a fellow come up to our camp who hunted for the first time at the ripe age of 73. He used his granddaddy's old .32-40 Marlin. It was pretty cool.
Sounds like as close to a feller can be Heaven back east!We live on 2 1/2 acres with a 25 acre lake in our back yard and a pool in on our patio. We see wild turkey and deer and Canada geese all the time since we live in Murphysboro Township and not in the city itself. I spent yesterday exploring back and side roads in the Shawnee National Forest. Which is about the best show of wilderness the Midwest can produce. No mountains, but lots of rocky bluffs and canyons with all manner of trees around them.
Oh yeah.....*Our oath:
Not specifically about lifting, but then when has that ever stopped me? It did, however, impinge on having limited my lifting today, so I'll continue.
I took the IL-CCW training and qualification course over the weekend. It was 16 hours of classroom and range work with some really good training being purveyed. I am self taught with a little bit of training instructor input where handguns are concerned, so this was a real tour de force for me. We followed the NRA handgun curriculum where I learned I got trained into a modified Weaver stance and hold. I never liked the Weaver hold because the bent arms always struck me as wobbly as opposed to the locked out dominant elbow of the modified Weaver along with the dominant foot in a back stance. We were taught the Isosceles hold and stance although I was told I could stick to my old stance by since it was so ingrained. As it happened, after firing about 30 rounds, I unconsciously assumed the Isosceles stance but kept my modified Weaver hold. My shooting improved too.
Then there was the 6 step access, grip, draw, rotate, join, and fire sequence from the holster. I just grabbed and pointed. I had to wax on/wax off a bunch to get into that groove. Along with some observation of having failed to follow the sequence from the trainer and telling me about it. But I got it and my groups tightened up some more with better centering. This was 40 year old muscle memory at work that I had to overcome. Add to that, I had not shot a powder burning firearm in over 30 years. I HAD spent some time getting my sighting and pointing back with a CO2 pistol I bought for the purpose.
Sunday was grueling because we were supposed to spend some time shooting on Saturday but got rained out. So we ended up firing 200 rounds on Sunday afternoon under controlled conditions. We shot from bench support to get our sight picture and alignment dialed in. Then we shot stand from the low ready, from the holster, from both sides of a barricade, non dominant hand one and two handed, and timed fire for double and triple taps.
The new Shield .45 was a champ. No jams or other problems. Other than ejecting brass a loooong way away, which ended up smacking some other shooters and trainers. Recoil was not an issue, although my hand and wrist did get fatigued from something they had not done for decades. I woke up with a hand cramp this morning.
Qualification was both a breeze and a disappointment for me. It was 10 rounds from the low ready at 5 yards untimed, then the same at 7 and 10 yards. My lower back was feeling the strain about halfway through the drills, as was my right hand. Passing was a score of at least 210 out of 300. I shot a 284 with 12 X's, 9 10's, 4 9's, 3 8's, and 2 7's. The fatigue got to me.
Now, having passed the training and qualification, I STILL have to apply for the CCW license through the IL State Police. Patience.
So the back miseries sent me to Dr. Bonnie to get it squared away to lift tomorrow.
I use a Shield 9mm as my concealed carry. I've put probably close to 1000 rounds through it without any issues. I got my IL CCL in 2014 and unfortunately it has to be renewed every 5 years.
The .45 version is fractionally larger and also very concealable. I bought some Winchester JHP 230 grain big honkers. Shortly into my LE career I became convinced that Col. Hatcher solved the handgun caliber question back at the turn of the last century. Stats show that with that particular load that 90%+ of shootings were one shot stops. I like those odds, although I have no problem with double taps, as I discovered during the shooting drills last weekend.