The Pumpkin Cheesecake Diaries: 3-1-2020

ALL ABOARD FOR COURSE #22

A quarter to five comes pretty early for a snowbird. I fed the horses at 5:00 AM and prepared to hit the road by 6:30 AM. Normally I arrive at a shoot the day before. I like to get settled in and not feel rushed. ..sort of 'get all my balloons in a row' type thing. This would be my first shoot were I rolled in the morning of...shot, and rolled out. Wasn't nearly as stressful as I thought. You didn't have time to stew about things and work yourself into a ball of nerves. The downside being you didn't have as much time to visit with your shooting friends. Somewhere along this adventure I've become a social butterfly. Eh...maybe not a butterfly...more like a social caterpillar that will one day morph into a butterfly...it could happen? Right? No?

The Winter Range shoot started at 9:00 AM. A three stage, one day shoot paying fastest time per class per stage. No overall class payout. I entered main match and shotgun.

Cindy, Patty and I, along with horses, Cowboy and J'Lo (Patty didn't enter), pulled into Ben Avery shooting facility a little after 8:00 o'clock. We paid our fees at the office and prepared to shoot.

The Senior Lady's 1's go first in this part of the country, unlike the Pacific Northwest where we start with the upper class 6's and work down to the 1's. I prefer it when they start with the sixes. I like to watch them run so I can see the proper way to run a course. Starting with the 1's is a bit unnerving for the 1's. I am a SL3 -regardless of which end they start on, I'm going to be in the middle so I'm relatively unaffected either way. My friend Lynn is a SL1 and was first out of the gate today. I have to hand it to her, she handled it in stride and had three good runs.

My first course was acceptable. I shot clean. I didn't ask for a lot of speed. I tried to run it in a way that took up the least amount of real estate. I would run it different next time. I would run it taking wider barrel turns and less lead changes. Smoother will always be faster. Shoot and learn...

My second run was a train wreck. Well, more of a train ride, actually. A nice leisurely train ride through the countryside. I'm still not certain what happened other than I got completely and totally lost in the pattern....which totally sucks because it's one of the easiest patterns to run. It's called the “S”. By the time I crossed the finish line – I had run the entire alphabet. I 'think' what happened is we over-ran the first gate which shot us out toward the rundown barrel. Instead of cutting back across the arena to the second gate – I got lost – holstered and drew my second gun, turned the rundown barrel...realized too late what I did and ran toward home. I changed my mind just before crossing the timer. I paid my money, damn it...I was finishing the course. I circled J'Lo and made my second pass at the rundown barrel. I'm fairly certain I heard a collective “WTF” from the crowd. Now I'm totally confused on which gun to draw. I shoot AT the second gate (couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if I were standing in it at this point) and make a third pass at the rundown barrel? By this time I'm out of ammo on whichever gun I pulled. When it was all said and done, I made two if not three rundown barrel turns, two rundowns and still left four balloons standing. Some days your the ammo...some days you can't shoot yourself out of a wet paper bag.

I redeemed myself on the third run. I didn't know it until after I got home, but I won stage 3. I don't know if they will send me a check or if you forfeit by not being at the awards. I hope not...it could be like 6 bucks...that's two boxes of Pop-Tarts and a Twinkie!

If I had known shotgun was not open and limited – I would not have entered. I'm glad I didn't know. I love shooting shotgun whether I win or not. There were five of us in the shotgun class. Three young gals I normally couldn't outrun on their worst and my best day and Don Evans, SM5. Don won first. I placed second shooting against 4's and 5's non gender/non age split. I'll take it even without a check.

Cindy and Cowboy had three beautiful runs winning all three stages in their class and placing 10^th in the overall. Not too shabby!

We stopped at the Mesa for dinner and made it home around 5:30 PM. By the time we got unloaded the wind had picked up putting the kibosh on Patty's nightly fire. We caught up with Dave who had a good day roping on his faithful buckskin “Woodrow” by placing second. It wasn't until I started to type this blog and got on CMSA to see how Lynn and Cindy placed that I discovered I'd won my last stage. Shooting, like life...has lessons tucked within the folds of everyday moments. Today I learned to never give up. It ain't over until the fat lady sings, or...in my case: It ain't over until the SL3 takes a train ride through course #22.