Trap and Skeet

So yesterday I had a rare day off and Teri and I planned to meet up with some friends of hers at the Tacoma Sportsmen's Club off Canyon Road. Last Tuesday evening, Teri met them to "Shoot Shotgun" and had a good time. We were invited to join them again yesterday to again "Shoot Shotgun". I've never really fired guns. Only occasionally here and there. Once in Search and Rescue at someone's house, we had fired off quite a few guns. Growing up, I had a BB gun or two, but other than that, not too much.

So yesterday we met at TSC. We met up with Lowell and his wife Andrea and Teri's co-worker, Darren. It never ceases to amaze me when people have more than one gun. I think Lowell showed up with three or four shotguns and Darren showed up with at least three. Anyway, we started out shooting "Trap". Yesterday I learned that "Trap" is where the pigeon comes shooting straight out of the ground . . . almost as if you were sneaking up behind a duck and it went to fly away. Out of 25 rounds, I hit two . . . completely by accident I'm sure! Teri and I tied that round.

Next we shot "Skeet". Now skeet would be like if the ducks were flying across your field of view. There is a "Low House" and a "High house" so as you call "Pull" one shoots out of one, then when you call again, another shoots out of the other. If you're REALLY good, like Darren was, you can have one come out of each house at the same time and pick them both off. Out of 25 rounds, I hit ONE . . . again, completely by accident I'm sure. After that I was done. I'm not sure how many Teri hit that time, but I KNOW it was way more than I did.

Then I watched Teri go back to Trap . . . in that round I think she must have hit 12 or 13 . . . she was definitely on it! After our shooting experience, a trip to Cabelas was in order . . . Man, some of those shotguns cost $6,000!!! . . . The ones we were looking at were in the $600 - $800 range. This could be a fun . . . albeit expensive hobby . . . I need me some shootin' lessons I think!

Go 2nd Ammendment go . . .

Am I a Triathlete?

So yesterday, as has been much hyped in this blog, my Boyz and I did our indoor triathlon yesterday. I'm really proud of how far we all came in acheiving this goal! Scott went from "I hope I can finish" to "I think I can do it in about 4.5 hours" to doing it in under 2 hours yesterday! Nice work!

So next up is our official Triathlon debut in Ocean Shores for the Ocean Shores sprint triathlon. I really have confidence now that by July for sure, I can complete a real triathlon. Our Tri yesterday was the same distance in cycling, a shorter run, and a much longer swim. I'm going to focus heavily on running over the next 12 weeks as I think that is probably my weakest sport at the moment.

So I wonder, can I really call myself a triathlete now? I did do all three sports in succession. However, they were all indoors on machines or in a pool. Not your typical tri. Anyway, I think I'm GOING to call myself a triathlete since you really are what you believe right? :-)

Here are the official results for yesterday's tri. Sorry I don't have split and transition times. Special thanks goes out to Phil Carter at the YMCA for opening the doors two hours early for us so we could have the place to ourselves. AWESOME!

Place	Name	Time
1.	John Hurlbut	1:29:22
2.	Steve Bargelt	1:36:19
3.	Erick Trial	1:39:37
4.	Scott Traynor	1:56:22
DNF	Brandon Lovell	DNF

I hesitated to even put Brandon down, but he did do the bike and the run (and was second off each) but un-beknownst to me he had never intended to do the swim.

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together!

So earlier this week I was in quite a quandry. (Anyone reading this, tell me how spoiled I am, I'm fine with that.) I had received a $50.00 Best Buy gift card for my ill timed purchase of an HD-DVD player, that combined with my $500.00 gift card that I had gotten last month, really had me in a tizzy about when I got to spend it. I've been waiting for a Blu-Ray player to become available on Bestbuy.com or available in the store. The particular model is the Panasonic DMP-BD30K. There were none at BB stores on the west coast OR online. Last weekend, they became available on-line. I kept checking stock every day and they were still not available in the stores. To add to my frustration, I got a coupon in the mail from BB stating between April 18 - 21 I could take 12% off any one regularly priced in stock item. As they didn't have any in stock, I pretty much figured I was hosed. Until Yesterday.

Yesterday, the BD30K showed up at the Tacoma store according to Bestbuy.com. So I called the Tacoma store to verify and sure enough they had one. I had them set it aside for me telling them I'd be in right before they closed to pick it up. Then checking inventory on-line again yesterday, I saw one show up in Lacey. I called them and asked them to do the same thing. Yes, I called both stores and had them hold their one and only BD30 for me. I figured one of them would sell it anyway, so I'd have a backup. Since my coupon was not good until today, I knew at the end of the night, both would be placed back on the shelves. So the plan was to call right at 10AM this morning and have the Tacoma store set it aside for me again. I was enroute to BB at 10AM, they set it aside and I had it in my grubby little hands at 10:15!

I also picked up "Spiderman 3" and "I am Legend" on Blu-Ray while I was there. With my coupons, and my giftcards, I got out of there for no money out of pocket and about 8 bucks left on my gift card! NICE! I love it when a plan comes together! Now to bust out the Video Essentials DVD, calibrate my TV and commence to a watchin' some 1080p action!

The Calf of the Cow . . .

So a couple weeks ago I was running on the treadmill and my left calf was really tight. I thought to myself "I'll just run through it, it'll be fine" Well it never loosened up and was pretty painful for a couple of days. Last Saturday (as in 11 days ago) I tried running again and it was still sore, so I didn't do much. Last night I tried running again and it's STILL sore. I made it about a mile before I said "This is stupid, you've got a Triathlon on Sunday, no need to damage it any more" and got off the treadmill. I ended up on the stair machine from hell (SMFH) and set the time to 30 minutes at level 5. Normally I do level 4, so I wanted to see how I'd do on level 5. I actually made it the whole way at level 5, all 30 minutes. I ended up doing 99 floors and 2.06 miles . . . I felt REALLY good about that, but the calf of the cow (me) is still awfully damn sore. Not planning on doing much between now and Sunday. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Also, for the first time in over 10 years last night I got to cook my wife a Steak! Teri has decided to eat a moderate amount of red meat again, so last night I cooked us each an 8 oz Rib Eye that I had been marinating for two days. I think it turned out terrific. Very juicy and tender. She ate the whole thing and said it was good, so I may be able cook her another one in the future!

1st Orting Trail Ride of '08

So this morning, I met Brandon and Steve at the Puyallup trail head at 7AM and we headed out on the Orting trail for a ride out to South Prairie and back. It's a typical training ride for us, but this being the first of the year, I didn't have very many high expectations. Just a nice casual 30 mile ride. (HA!) The ride out felt good, at about 10 miles there is a little hill . . . last year on our first ride out that way, it was all I could do to maintain about 13 - 14 MPH up that hill. Today, I attacked it and when I looked at my speedometer, it said 19.6 on the way up. Yes, I was pretty winded after it, but it felt really good to be able to just destroy the hill like that. Bear in mind that our pace out was about 15 MPH on average, so cranking it up to nearly 20 uphill is a good accomplishment for me. Brandon did give me a nice compliment saying that he could tell that I'd lost a lot of weight compared to last year. I think last year I was in the 330's when I started riding and lost about 10 of that during the summer. This year I'm starting out just above 300. My jersey that I bought to wear in the DAM2DAM last year fit a lot better too. Even if it is a 3X, hopefully by the DAM2DAM this year, I'll be considering a 2X! I'd like to lose 15 - 20 pounds this summer before the DAM2DAM and ride that at about 280 or so. That would be 45 - 50 pounds less than I weighed last year for it. ANYWAY . . . we made it out to South Prairie in just over an hour. About 1:04 I think. We sat at the little outdoor coffee shop and had some food and drink for about 30 minutes and headed back. We got a little paceline going on the way back for about 5 miles . . . I saw our speed hit 22 a couple of times during that. We got back to the Puyallup trailhead in 1:55:56 according to my GPS. Now after downloading it to Motionbased, I can compare it to our rides from last year. We were discussing when we got back that last year we did it a couple times in under two hours. Comparing it, this was the fastest I've ridden that route. Our average speed was 15.2 MPH and the fastest last year according to my MB account was 15.0. We beat our time by about a minute. I feel REALLY good about that time as it's really the first time I've been on my bike all year! I guess the working out over the winter did keep me in moderately good shape. We're scheduled to do the 50 mile Tour De Pierce on June 29th. I think I should be OK for that, but I'm going to have to get a LOT of riding in before then to be sure. Then of course there's the Ocean Shores Tri on July 12th. Lots of fun stuff coming up this summer with the DAM2DAM to cap it all off. Anyway, here are the results from today's ride, click on the map for the full detailed report:

Fascinating . . .

So I'm sitting out here at my little condo project, CitiLife, and another agent comes in with a client who is blind and deaf. He can see shapes and changes in light, but is legally blind. I was absolutely fascinated watching him explore the condominium to get a sense of space and figure out where things were located. I would be willing to bet he has a better understanding of the condo than anyone else who has ever visited or bought one. I'm sure the whole time I was standing there with my mouth wide open just watching him explore and communicate with his agent in ASL. He had to hold his agent's hand and have it really close to his face to understand what was being said, but just by watching the expression on his face I could tell when he was surprised about something, when he didn't understand, or when he thought something was weird. So the agent would ask me a question, then he would commuicate it in ASL and I'd watch his client's expression change based on the answer.

Then we went to see one of the vacant units. Now I want you to visualize this in your head. Picture a square that's divided into four quarters. The square represents one floor of condominiums and each quarter represents an individual unit on that floor. Now the model would be in the upper left quarter. I took them to see a unit in the upper right quarter. Now for you and I that wouldn't be an issue, but for him, everything was flip flopped and he had to re-learn the floor plan. I didn't even think about it until we walked through the door and I could see by the expression on his face that it seemed somehow different to him. I wanted to shoot myself. But he quickly adapted and in no time had covered the perimeter of the condo and opened nearly every drawer and door. It was fascinating. Amazing what we're capable if we put our minds to it.