My Quest for C Class

On By Tom LindsayIn My Quest for C Class1 Comment

Last fall, Caleb Giddings at Gun Nuts started a series of posts, which aired on Michael Bane’s Down Range TV, called The Quest for Master Class. I thought they were informative and a good insight into what it takes to work hard to be the best.

I’ve never been threat to make Master in any of the groups I shoot with. While I did win a couple of matches a few years ago, recently I have been content to place in the middle of the pack. In fact, in GSSF, I’ve come in at the top third the last match I shot, and I have steadily improved for a few years.

But I’ve never come in last in a match. Until now.

This past weekend, I came in dead last in the Production division at a USPSA match.

Let this be a lesson to you, dear reader. You cannot cruise in any sport.

I admit, I did not practice at all since my last USPSA match. Yes, I had a couple of visits to the range, and I even shot my USPSA pistol. But I didn’t practice. Practice is doing something inherent to the sport that will build muscle memory, or ingrain a concept. Just shooting is not practice. Shooting while paying attention to sight alignment, or trigger reset, or with my arms bent simulating a difficult stance is practice. I didn’t do any of that.

When I saw the scores, I was surprised. There have been times in my life when I didn’t practice much, and still did better. But I guess times have changed, and the competition is better. And let’s face it, I’m older.

One thing is for sure, though – I am embarrassed, so much so that I considered not even blogging about it. I thought, if anything, I could use the impetus of this failure, this feeling, to drive me to improve. Then, in a few months, after I work my ass off and finish in the top half of a match, I can blog about the time I came in dead last, and used it to drive me to improve.

But I also know myself. It would be so easy just to stay where I am, not say anything, and not improve, if I’m not accountable to anyone.

But if I share this, then I’m officially on the hook, as it were. I know there are people who read this, and I can rely on them for feedback, either for ideas and encouragement, or not to read any more, which is feedback in itself.

So, starting today, look for a post at least once a week about My Quest for C Class. Because, officially, I can’t get any worse.

Bacon and Boomsticks

On By Tom LindsayIn Uncategorized

Here’s an idea:

On September 11, 2011, mark the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by eating pork and shooting all your guns. Take pictures and video, then send them to the website Bacon and Boomsticks!

Personally, it will be bacon for breakfast while I smoke a Boston butt and some pork ribs.

Then I will shoot in the afternoon.

Give it a look.

Movies at My House

On By Tom LindsayIn Movie Rules

My followers on Twitter can attest that my movie watching habits can be strange, especially when it comes to movies like Tombstone or Blazing Saddles. All I can say is, if you think my Twitter feed gets strange, you should be at my house when the movie is on.

We were watching Saving Private Ryan last night, and my son (he prefers to be called the Dauphin) was in rare form.

I should explain that his career goal is to become a military historian. I think it all started when we visited a lot of the museums and memorials in the Washington DC area a couple of years ago. In any case, it fits his personality, because he has always been interested the history of battles and wars, not just the what happened, but the why. He just started high school, but he already knows where he’s going and what he plans to study.

He started going on about the M1 Carbine again, and how the ammunition for it was merely an illusion, an urban legend, meant to scare the Nazis. Like Patton’s inflated tanks in England before D-Day.

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More Dauphinisms:

The bazooka was devised as a way to let German tank crews know where the best American troops were located.

“Here, stand up. You be a Panzer tank. Now, I’ll be a bazooka team.” He tapped me lightly on the shoulder, then he said, quietly, “Hey, Panzer, we’re over here! Here we are!”

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When Jeremy Davies came on the screen as the translator Corporal Upham, he said, “You know why Faraday is so nervous? He’s worried that Benjamin Linus is going to show up.”

He once pointed out that John Locke was mayor of Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881, pointing at the screen and saying “Damn you, JJ Abrams.”

++++

His name for the Sherman tank: The Suckie.

It has nothing to do with his Southern heritage.

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He promises to develop his own translation of the Edith Piaf song playing on the Victrola. I can’t wait.

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His college plans – research the best American History professors in Georgia, and get his BA with them.

Masters at Oxford. Research in Moscow, Paris, and Tokyo.

PhD at Georgetown.

“If you’re going to get a PhD in American Military History, go where it’s all kept.”

He eventually wants to be Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. At least he doesn’t aim low.

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The current Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution is Dr. Wayne Clough. As a fellow graduate of Georgia Tech, I plan to write and ask for a short visit with him, when our family returns to DC next summer. It never hurts to ask.

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Since he will be 44 at the centennial of World War II, he is planning to be at the centennial events at Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad, Normandy, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. I would love to be there with him.

I hope they’ll let me take my Mosin Nagant to Stalingrad. That would make one hell of a rifle match. The Vasilly Zaitsev Prize.

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When he shot an AR-15 for the first time a couple of weeks ago, he fell in love. He’s as much the reason I want to build one as my own desire.

I pointed out that after high school, the US Government would give him one to shoot as much as he wanted. All he had to do was sign up for at least 2 years’ service. He wasn’t keen on that idea.

I have since broached the idea of ROTC in college. That way, he would come out as a Reserve Officer, and get first hand knowledge of military operations.

Plus, as an officer with a US History degree who wanted to be a military historian, he would probably be invited to speak with a lot of the real players in American military history.

He’s considering it.