12/5/11

I really dig my 7.62x39 rifle! But I'll get to that in a minute. First off, Friday evening I'm sitting around thinking about what I'm supposed to do Saturday. Of course the first thing is to come in to the office before 0730 h to make sure the War Room is functional. After that, Gregg was going to meet me at the shop to borrow my trailer and move the BMW to his house. “Oh crap!” I thought, “The ramps aren’t at the shop!” No, they were sitting on the back patio at the house where I dumped them when that guy from the church borrowed Fifi a few weeks ago. I put on some shoes and drove Fifi around back. I loaded the ramps and straps in the back and parked. I hadn’t planned on driving Fifi but was stuck now. Saturday morning I went in to the office and sure enough, everything worked fine. While waiting for them to start their meeting, Gregg called to say he was on his way to the shop. I headed down there myself. When I arrived, I took the 7.62x39 out from behind the seat and chucked it up in the vice. There I leveled the scope to the gun. Then I set about making the cap of the cleaning kit fit with the scope’s Allen Wrench in it. I had to file a notch into the lid so it would fit with the wrench poking out the side. It works perfectly. Unfortunately it now doesn’t fit in the grip like it did without the cap. Oh well, what are you going to do? With all my “gunsmithing” done, I put it away and began tinkering with Lil' Wiggly. I installed the high-beam switch in the dash and wired it up. I connected the battery and tried it out. It worked. About that time, I hear Gregg pull up. I grab the keys to John's B-210 and head out to pow-wow with Gregg. Of course he has to come in and see Lil' Wiggly so we fire it up right quick before continuing with the move. It starts and sounds good. With that done, we go out and move John's car and Nadine out of the way. He huffs up the tires on the BMW and we shove it out. He has a Pearl Harbor winch which we attach to the trailer and pull the car up. It is very nice. I need to go get one of them. With the car on the trailer, we begin to look for a way to tie it off. Yeah, that car a) has nothing upon which to tie off and 2) is just a shade too long for my trailer. Oh, the wheelbase fit entirely, but it overhung on both ends. We hooked to the shocks on the rear and the sway bar up front. I wasn’t supremely confident, but it apparently held. We discussed lunch and it was decided that they would drop the car and call it a day while I went my way from the shop. They took off and I went to the gun range in Whiskey Flats. I took the 7.62x39 in and got in line for the rifle range. There were two other guys going in as well. We all went in and the range master set us up. I took my first three shots at the target. They were about three inches low and three inches to the left. But they made a nice line with the outer shots centered on the edge of the middle hole; say less than a half inch spread. I turned to the guy and said, “I’m happy with the spread, just not the location. He adjusted the crosshairs and had me fire three more rounds. The first shot went about right height wise but was still to the right a bit. The next was similar. Then I had a flyer low right. It was all me. He told me to take another shot. This time either I flinched or the gun went a bit wonky because it did a double-tap. Buh-Bang! I turned around and asked, “Did that just fire twice?” The range master confirmed that it had but the first was on the other two so he made one final adjustment to the scope and asked for another three rounds. I lined up and squeezed the trigger. I hear, “Bull’s-eye!” from behind me. I take another and hear another “Bull’s-eye!” On the third shot he says, “Your weapon is sighted in. You can keep shooting if you want but there’s nothing more I can do for you.” I emptied another couple magazines for a total of thirty rounds down range, 22 of which were in a ragged hole right where they were supposed to hit. A half dollar would cover them all, I do believe. That, my friends, is accurate enough for me. Of course I was using really good Hornady hunting ammo. The Russian stuff might not be as accurate. But I don’t think I'd hesitate to take a shot on a deer, or a wild hog more likely, if I'm ever called upon to do so. Zombies, look out! I'm ready for y'all. Back at the house I cleaned the gun and tried to use the laser bore sight thingy but couldn’t finger out how without a bench rest. I gave up on bench-zeroing the other optic and iron sights. I put everything away and goofed off the rest of the day. Sunday I met mom at church and took her and another couple to lunch at Applebee’s. They don’t have the Peppercorn Asiago Steak anymore so I ordered a different steak. It was not nearly as good, both flavor-wise and quality-wise. After lunch mom bought me a tank of gas and I dropped her at her car then went for an extended hoon. I had Heldey LaMarr with me and was thinking about going for a shoot. I wound up taking Silver Creek Road out and around Lake Worth then headed out White Settlement Road to Lake Weatherford. I did a couple laps of Lake Weatherford then headed down to FM 5. I turned off at Airport Road and went even further west almost to Weatherford proper. I headed back down 171 towards Cresson but turned at Bear Creek to hit FM 5 again. As I was rolling back on 1187, I decided to let the Suburban in front of me decide where I was going next. He turned right to continue on 1187 so I went left onto Aledo/Iona road and back to the house. I checked the odometer this morning and it was about a ninety mile loop. About 1730 h I sent John a text to see if he was going to the Japanese Car thingy. I told him I was NOT going to drive The Seven if I did go and he said he probably was going to skip it. With that information, I decided to skip as well. I watched the abomination “Indiana Jones and the Kingdumb of the Cristal Skull” instead. Holy crap! Even by Lucasian/Spielbergian standards, that was a mighty big pill to swallow. I'm willing to suspend disbelief… but… HOLY CRAP! And it isn’t even the premise I’m having trouble with, I'll go along with the aliens and stuff, it’s the HUGE logic and physics gaps that are troubling me. I might go into it tomorrow but I've gassed on long enough for today. Yeah, I just dropped onto a third page so…