So here I am, selling raffle tickets for my Gun Club in order that we can keep the cost of our Gun Safety and Hunter Safety classes artificially low in order that we can provide them to more people.

And some dude walks up with a 6 week old golden retriever puppy in his hands. He listens to my spiel about the tickets, the odds, etc and says, “yes, I’ll take one, hold this”.

He then hands a very sleepy female puppy to me, who immediately tries to snuggle to be warm and safe.

Bastard.

“She’s for sale, you know” as he filled out his contact info on the raffle ticket.
Fuck.
I was tempted. Very tempted. Greatly so. I haven’t had a dog since August 13 2012. Haven’t wanted one, really.
But Puppy.  pretty little girl labrador puppy.   Damn.

I took his money, gave him his ticket and handed her back, not without reservations.

I’m not strong enough for that yet. I couldn’t yet face this or this…..at least not now. Maybe never.

Seems that the City of Chicago is under fire for billing a CHURCH for water used by the church.

Why?

Why are church’s Churches exempt from water bills? Why should they be exempt and other organizations (and individuals) are not?

I fail to see why they should get a break for services or water or other consumables they use that are provided by the City…They don’t get free electricity, not gas….why is water free?
Water costs money to source, transport, and purify. The pipelines and pumping equipment needs maintenance and upgrades.

What makes the church special? They are, after all, simply an organization. Other Non-profits get the same treatment, but they use water, just as any business or organization with a building uses water and other services provided by the city.

The issue is not this particular church, but all churches in general.

I was unaware of this until the news team from CBS2Chicago chose to bring it to our attention.

++ Thanks to  SmileyFtW  for being a grammar/spelling nazi. 

The Dunes Rifle and Pistol club will be having their twice yearly gun show this Saturday and Sunday at the Porter County Expo center.

(Not my club, but a good gunshow).

I’ll be there Saturday selling raffle tickets for my club.

Stop in and say hi if you are there.

(Of course, “if it is time to bury ’em it is usually time to use ’em” is another thought for this time as well).

I really wonder if the new government is trying to make things get “sporty” really fast or something.

RICHMOND, Va. — A highly-contested bill that would make it a crime to own an assault weapon in Virginia passed the House of Delegates on Tuesday by a slim margin.


I wonder what the compliance rate will be, if this bill passes

So CBS is “Interviewing” some folks about the New Hampsire Primary…..

2 dudes who are ice fishing.

They are sitting in lawn chairs. on the ice. Just a bag of fishing tackle.

No ice fishing shelter, just 2 dudes on a lake around a hole in the ice. Not wearing much in the way of protection besides brand new Columbia lightweight jackets and gimme hats or sweaters…. No stocking caps. No gloves. Not even heavy socks and warm boots.
Lawn chairs…out in the open. Drinking fresh coffee and talking about the primary.

Not that this is staged, or anything….

I’ve ice fished. It was NEVER out in the open. never with just coffee. Never without a shelter of some kind to block the wind.

Maybe they do it differently in NH.

But if you never go off the sidewalk, I guess you might buy it. If you think Central Park is wilderness…..

I don’t. 

Flew for 4 hours on Saturday….2.6, then 1.4. Windy, bumpy (not too bad), and lots of wind changes at different levels.

Holds, approaches, holds and more approaches.

No autopilot, all hand flying.

My arms are tired.

I am, however getting less bad at this.

Another couple of hundred hours and I will be ready for my checkride. 

Robert Conrad has passed .

I remember him first as James West, that ‘Special Agent” with all the cool gadgets, who always got the job done…

And later, as “Pappy” Boyington, that guy who took a bunch of Ner-Do Well pilots and forged them into a fighting force that, again, always got the job done. A Patriot who knew he (and his men) was expendable if it drove the Japs back and saved the lives of American Servicemen.

His legacy will live on in my memory.

So. Friday, we got a bit of snow….not normally a big deal, but this was snow that fell on surfaces that were like 44 degrees at the start of the snow, and the snow was “Lake Effect”…which means that it is feathery and becomes REALLY slippery.  Like snot on glass slippery.

Dude at the airport had found out the hard way that his Jeep’s four wheel drive only helps so much, and 4wd doesn’t help your braking or turning when the coefficient of friction is approaching zero. He slid off the road on a corner…

Not a big deal, he should have been able to back up, except that the ground was a bit soft and he got one wheel stuck in the mud and what with only two wheels on solid ground (the other one was in the air) and they being on different axles, he couldn’t put enough torque to the ground to back the vehicle out of the predicament he was in. (yeah, I know, proper application of brake would likely have solved that problem…I tried to explain but gave up…..)

I stopped (I really had to unless I wanted to go four wheeling) and asked if he had a tow strap. Which he did. Still in the shrink wrap from the factory. He wanted me to just stand on the bumper to tip the jeep instead of using the brand new tow strap for me to pull him out. (It was a high dollar bright green thing that he didn’t want to get dirty….Dude, it’s a TOW STRAP, fer chrissake)….and since he wasn’t willing to get his tow strap dirty I wasn’t gonna offer mine either.

Anyway, not knowing this dude, I didn’t trust him enough to stand on his bumper while he tried to drive out of a bit of mud (He might josle me off and run me over), so I suggested he might use the Hi-Lift jack he had mounted across the hood in some really nice custom looking mounts…That should tip the jeep up and he could simply back away from the jack which would fall away.
His reply? “I don’t know how to use it, it’s just something “Jeep People” have”….He had no idea how useful a Hi-Lift Jack can be. To him, it was  a fashion accessory, not a tool. I suggested he learn WHY “Jeep People” have them…..

Sad.

I then suggested that if he wanted me to pull him out he’s better get that high dollar tow strap dirty or else call a tow truck.

He got it unwrapped and 2 minutes later it was dirty… and I had hooked it to my front bumper with a clevis and 30 seconds later he was free of the slippery mud. I unhooked his strap and went on my way….

I just find it hard to believe that someone would have a $130 dollar jack with another $100 accessory kit with a couple of hundred dollars worth of mounts and have NO IDEA how to use it. Or, really, even what it was for.…

Some people have more money than sense, I guess. I really think that his excursion today was the farthest off road his Jeep had been….

HERE

I mean…wine IS grape juice, right????