I’m up past my elbows in crockigators right now….(At this point, I may never take a few days off ever again…it ain’t worth the trouble when I come back) and can barely find time to do anything, much less blog.

But it occurs to me that this last weekend, there were a great  number of visitors to the Circle City (and the NRA Convention)…tens of thousands of visitors, carrying firearms (the actual number of CCW folks? Who knows? ) all packed into a fairly small place…

Yet there were no reported shootings, no mass murders, no faceoffs in the aisles of the convention…No one slapped leather in the parking garages….The restaurant and bars and taverns didn’t have anyone jerk a smokewagon and let fly with hot lead….

Odd, that.

The Anti-Gun folks claimed that the prevalence of firearms would lead to all sorts of mayhem. And there were  fairly large number of carriers of firearms that weekend. More than on most nights, what with all the visitors. According to them, red blood should have run ankle deep in the streets of downtown Indianapolis…. Maybe deeper.

Yet it didn’t.

Wonder why not?

Cultural? Demographics?

One wonders.

That if Cliven Bundy were all that smart…

He’d just shut the hell up and let people think he is a dumb cattle farmer.

Instead, he keeps opening his mouth and helping the left to remove all doubt as to his intelligence.

I don’t think he is stupid, but why give your opponents ammunition?

One of the bloggers I met this weekend was relaxing a bit in the media room with his daughter, whom he had brought to enjoy the show with him.

He said “I’ll remember, when I am old, the time like this that we spent together”.

And I replied “but more importantly, SHE will remember” ….

Not like she’s gonna say “I remember all the times I didn’t spend with my dad ’cause he was too busy”. SHe’ll remember the times you spent together, not the times you spent apart.

BTW, You are doing a GREAT job with yer kid there.

WWII soldiers remains repatriated after explorers find dog tags.

So I got to not only meet the Great and Mighty Ambulance Driver , but was able to go to his class and (hopefully) learn something from him.

Now, being as he is, after all, and ambulance driver, he is somewhat blase’ about the whole blood guts and dismemberment thing. But he did keep the class entertained with stories and anecdotes along with his very competent and pointed instruction on what TO do what NOT TO do and what to look for.

I hadn’t taken a class for about 5 years, and was surprised about how much had changed….I remember about 25 years ago bringing a guy into the emergency room with an improvised  tourniquet on his leg because of persistent spurting from the wound that Direct Pressure just wasn’t gonna stop (I tried) and being lectured by a doctor that he was likely going to lose his leg because of the tourniquet.(Hey, Doc, I got him here ALIVE and not all bled out, what would you rather I had done? Let him bleed for 25 minutes??)…and here I got a tourniquet in class!?! and discovered that in today’s world of EMS, it is, if not the first choice, certainly not the last choice of first aid options.

We did the standard resuscitation with compression only CPR (had that class 4 years ago) and then we were presented with a trauma first aid kit…and taught HOW to use the items in the kit.

BTW, I’d like to thank the folks who donated materials and such to make this class possible…..Bound Tree Medical, who provided the kits at cost, and who will certainly get my business when I build another kit or 4….and a special thanks to Larry Weeks from Brownells, who basically gave Kelly anything he asked for for the class….Now, I am already a customer of Brownells, but their sponsorship and support has made me decide to make them my first choice for my shooting supplies rather than just one of many when I am buying…..

The class was fun, informative and entertaining. Yeah, some of the slides and videos were not pretty, but WE ARE TALKING ABOUT TRAUMA HERE. It ain’t cupcakes.

If you get a chance, next time you have one, to take an updated course, it ain’t a bad idea to refresh your training.

Remember, under stress we don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training. Make sure that training isn’t 20 years old.

For each of my people to see, and hopefully learn from.

It says:

“Business goes where it is invited, and stays where it is cared for”.

Is it any wonder why Toyota is moving?

In Today’s world, information infrastructure and connectivity means that there is no real barrier to placing your headquarters anywhere you wish to.

You can run a business from nearly anywhere…

So why not choose a place that welcomes businesses and that keeps your cost low? Why NOT move away from a place where you are taxed and overregulated? Where you are made to feel unwelcomed and undervalued…

Why not take your approximately 5000 employees (and their spending) to a place where you feel welcomed and where you aren’t hindered at every turn?

Expect more of this soon. Especially from NY, NJ, Conn, Illinois, the rest of CA and, if they don’t wake up, Wisconsin….and other bluer states

THe choice is bad (vote GOP and they’ll keep on doing what they have been, which is driving for the cliff at 40 MPH instead of 75 MPH….In other words DNC Lite…

Of don’t vote at all, which gives the DNC free reign…Which lead to the cliff at a speed of 125MPH…..

Borepatch has it right.

Me? I sometimes wonder if staving ff the inevitable as long as possible is that good of an idea…maybe we SHOULD make the crash happen sooner rather than watching it like a slow motion train wreck…

The only thing I am sure of is that voting for the GOP won’t fix things.

So there is nothing like leaving the fun of the NRA/Blogger rendezvous only to have to fill in for an injured employee…

16 out of the last 24, with more tonight and tomorrow.

I’m gettin to old to do this.

The change was….dramatic.

Which, BTW, is why yer not getting pictures from the show. I have the camera, I have the memory card. What I cannot do it get the pictures off of the memory card with the equipment I have ere at work. Apparently I forgot the proper incantation or whatever.

SO no pics of the shiny new boomsticks and accessories that I got to fingerfondle at the show.

Hell. I’m just trying to keep my eyes open here.

It was nice meeting with everyone. I have a ton of stuff to go over and a boatload of pictures to rassle out of the camera.

It was wonderful reconnecting with my Indy blog friends, and meeting new ones.

A BIG thank you to Old NFO for his shindig. Sorry you left before I could say goodbye last night, and that we missed you on Sunday before we had to hit the road…(we went to Room 120 several times, but you weren’t there when we were).

In talking a with a bunch of the staff at the convention, it was clear that they were impressed by the crowd. The cops said that they were bored, as NOTHING happened…The folks serving drinks and food said that they weren’t used to people being polite and saying “Please” and “Thank You” and the people responsible for policing wayward trash hadn’t done much policing all weekend because “one of y’all will likely pick up stuff and put it in the can before we get to it”.

I was kinda proud of my tribe there….

More later, I gotta work…

SO Friday was the day I had planned to spend at the NRA show, and that is what we did.

Saturday was the famous “All you can eat and carry”… “get ’em while they last”… “One day only” shooters blowout class by Ambulance Driver hisself. I had my training refreshed, and learned a bit and was entertained. My thanks to Kelly Grayson and to TOTWTYTR for their class

Then,  lunch with friends and then a walk around Broadripple with Karl Ushanka and the lovely Mrs. Ushanka while I was accompanied by Midwest Chick.

Then Old NFO‘s blogmeet extraordinaire.Not sure what it cost him, but the beer and drinks flowed and the food was awesome.

If you weren’t there for all of these then you really really missed out.

I’ll try to do an AAR  for each later.

Outa time