Yesterday

Bad News

The day started off ungood, in that I woke up at 3.30am (no reason) and couldn’t get back to sleep.  So I got up, made coffee and a piece of toast, and read the papers (which only pushed my mood of morning irritation to anger).

Then it was time to get out of the chair to make New Wife her morning cup of tea and prepare her sack lunch (all stuff I do every day of the work week), only I first managed to knock the breadcrumb-loaded plate off the side table, which meant calling on Mr. Dust Bug to come out to play.

Did all the Wife Spoilage things, but dropped my second piece of toast onto the kitchen floor — and proved the Jam Side Law yet again.  Mopped up, made a fresh cup of coffee without further incident.

Saw Wife off to her day at the salt mines  school, went back to the news, which just kept the bad mood simmering.  However, what stopped me from rage, RCOB etc. was the prospect of range time looming at 10am (their opening hour).

It was going to be SHTF Rifle (AK and M1 Carbine) Day, so off I went to Rifle Gear Indoors.

You know how some people say that the worst day at the range is better than the best day of the office?  Well, “some people” are fucking morons.  To whit:

  • For some reason, the Carbine liketh not the expensive Hornady hollowpoints — won’t chamber the round out of the mag, won’t close the chamber even when I slam the bolt.  So I give up on that.  Had a dozen or so rounds of Korean mil-surp, which works fine in all the mags (I was also testing the mags to make sure they were still fit for purpose).
  • So I pull out a couple boxes of Wolf Black Box — beeeeep!  — range master informs me that the Wolf ammo is persona non grata  at their precious range because bimetallic boolets can spark and set fire to the backstop.  Range policy (which I know about — I just didn’t know that the Wolf .30 ammo was The Wrong Stuff).  So:  no more M1 Carbine practice for Kimmy, then.  (Longterm problem:  I have a shitload of Wolf .30 ammo because of a good deal some time ago;  not much other .30 boolets because I have so much Wolf — you all know the situation — which means I have to find non-Wolf replacement ammo, in this, the Time Of The Great Ammo Drought Of 2020.  Aaaaargh.)
  • “Never mind,” says I, “I have the AK in the car.  Let me fetch it,” and I do.  You know what’s coming, right?  Five mags and 200 extra rounds of… Wolf 7.62×39.
  • End of range session.

That’s not the end of it.  I’m driving home, and I always try to avoid taking the 121 toll road because of road-widening construction — the day they opened the 121 tollway it was two lanes too narrow, a rant for another time — and I’m chugging along surface streets.  This is no great hardship;  it’s a lovely day, I have David Allan Coe playing at 11, I’m starting to forget all about the range fiasco, when… orange cones in the road because MOAR ROAD REPAIRS, and the normally-ample three-lane Headquarters Drive is down to a single lane.

Which is when a fucking MAMIL (middle-aged man in Lycra) cyclist gets in front of me, on the uphill, which means I’m screaming along at 5mph, if that.  But I bite my tongue, and follow this two-wheeled twat as he crawls up the hill.  (There’s pretty much only one hill in the whole of Plano, and this is it.)  Fortunately, he turns right just before Legacy West where, surprise surprise, the road is still only one lane wide because there’s construction of yet another block of overpriced apartments/stores at the 80% completed stage.  Still, the lights at both intersections are green, so with Bike Boy gone, I accelerate…

…whereupon an oncoming car makes a left turn right across my lane.  Too late, he sees me and slams on the brakes, stopping halfway across the street.  Fortunately, there’s nobody coming up behind me on the right, so I can make a little jink around the stopped car and carry on.

I should probably say at this point that this being Plano, the car I nearly hit was a black Rolls Royce, which figures.  Only later do I realize that I should just have run into the moron, so as to get a new car from his insurance.

I’m still shaking when I get home.

Only one thing to fix that:  gin.

As I’m sucking it down, I think that the day is a total fuck-up of a day, and the only thing I need to do now is embark on a totally fruitless search for inexpensive .30 Carbine ammo, just to round things off, so to speak.

And wouldn’t you know it?  Two thousand rounds of cheap, clean-burning  Korean FMJ mil-surp at J&G Sales, at a bulk discount price, even.  (I know, I should have waited until National Ammo Day, but who the hell’s going to risk that, in these times?)

All I had to do for the rest of the day was try not to burn the apartment building down, or similar.  So I watched a combination of Jay Leno’s Garage, Jeremy Clarkson and Ian McCallum’s Forgotten Weapons.

I finished the day in something approaching a decent mood, in that I might only have winged a passing BLM rioter instead of blowing his fucking head off with my 16ga.

Anyone up here in N. Texas know of a decent outdoor range where I can shoot off all that verboten  ammo?

22 comments

  3. You could try over at the Garland Public Shooting Range.
    Though they don’t allow FMJ if you’re shooting 7.62/.308.
    Membership was cheap, you can shoot all day long for, arghhh, I think last time I went it was $10.00.

    They have pistol, 100 yard rifle and shotgun ranges.

    Been a few months since I was over there, I bought land in East Texas where I can shoot what I want, where I want, when I want, as fast as I want as long as I’m willing to take 4 hours out of my day to drive back and forth.

    Regarding your drive, you should live in Carrollton. Over here we believe you shouldn’t know a lane is closed until you’re actually at the point of closure. Then you’ll see the “(x) Lane Closed” signs that should have been posted 50 yards back on the road.

  4. Thank you for the public service of posting that. Reading it means pretty much nothing could happen to ruin my mood, which is good because SWMBO just informed me she’s been in contact with someone with COVID and we need to quarantine. I read this just in time to boost my mood before I started on the gin myself. At 7:30am. Not Good. 😀

    Save your boxes and trays for legal ammo … they’re handy sometimes. Just sayin’.

  5. I got rid of all my Wolf ammo years ago–dirty, stinky and underpowered. The .30 carbine stuff wouldn’t run well in the M1 carbine, and the cases stuck something awful in the Blackhawk.

    1. Several years ago I was able to bring some Wolf hollowpoints past the “Oh, we don’t like Wolf” gatekeeper by protesting that these were not magnetic and had actual brass cartridges. It was fortunate. The pistol found the expensive hollowpoints too blunt to feed and the offensive stuff went through just fine.

  6. Ah, Yes, “Forgotten Weapons.” The YouTube channel that’s more addictive than crack. Hosted by Ian McCallum or as one of the commentators called him, “Gun Jesus.” I’ve wasted more time than I like to think about there.

  7. Astute politicians in California are working hard to ban the growing numbers of 80% completed apartment/store buildings.

    According to recently released statistics, the unregulated buildings/stores are increasingly the buildings/stores of choice for the growing numbers of gang members and mass murderers… and can be ordered on-line without a back ‘ground’ check and completed at home, opening them up to abuse by the growing numbers of criminals and the mentally ill.

  10. “… dropped my second piece of toast onto the kitchen floor — and proved the Jam Side Law yet again.”

    Actually, it is called the “Law of Selective Gravitation,” and isn’t limited to toast. For example, when a small object is dropped on the floor, it will always end up in an inaccessible location.

  11. Come on down to our range!!

    Yes, a bit of a drive. Couple miles south of downtown Mansfield. Arlington Sportsman Club. Member only club, as my guest ( normally $5 for a guest. You will shoot free, my guest.). I am one of the range officers. Restrictions, no 50 BMG. Your Wolf ammo is fine. See our website for more info.
    https://www.arlingtonsportsman.com

    John

  12. Back in the ’60s my family was taking the Shoreline Highway to Muir Beach in Marin County. It was a two lane winding road. About halfway up a section that averages about a 5% grade we passed a cyclist on a high end Italian bike. He was wearing cycling shorts and a jersey which in those days was pretty unusual, and not for wannabees. We paced this guy for a minute or so; he was doing about 23 mph.
    Back then you’d embarrass yourself if you wore lycra and weren’t pretty much riding with the traffic on city streets or roads like that.

  13. I feel some of your Range pain. I have made plans to go to the range 8 or 9 times in the past two weeks and crap keeps popping up. I have 2 357Mag loads that need testing and I keep getting blocked. I had the fuel pump go out in my truck. Upon removing the bed I decided it was a good time to do a cheapo repaint after the fue pump replacement. That killed two planned trips. Work killed another. The wife going to visit the daughter killed the 4th and 5th. Random drug test killed the next planned attempt – shy bladder and a half hour after the test I was in the bathroom every 45 minutes for the next 6 hours. And so it goes. I planned to go today but after 11 hours non-stop I decided to pay homage to single malt distillates of my Scottish heritage. I may go tomorrow or wait till next Tuesday. I don’t go on weekends and the range is closed Mondays.

  14. Kim –

    I would have never dreamt you to be a David Allan Coe fan.

    He has been my favorite artist for 45 years (ever since I started college and he finally got out of the joint).

    I only listen to “good” music, but that term covers a wide expanse of genres and sub-genres.

    All the way from opera to outlaw country music to “classic” rock (the kind I grew up listening to).

    “Good” music does not include pop or pop sub-genres (e.g. most of the stuff coming out of Nashville – other than the indie scene there).

    DAC is chicken soup for my soul.

    10-15 years ago, I would invariably set out on Saturday mornings loaded up with guns, targets and ammo and head for a gun store or 2 (something about the gravitational pull of the earth seems to draw us to gun stores and shows on the weekend) and then to the range (frequently with a new acquisition).

    On many of those excursions, I would listen to DAC for hours at a time, with occasionally putting in a little Waylon Jennings or Jerry Jeff Walker.

    Those were some swell times.

  15. Sympathies. I rarely shoot the Makarov or the SKS any more because of range restrictions on the plentiful russki ammo. I don’t like burning substantial percentages of my reloadable nonmagnetic ammo because I don’t have dies for either caliber. Outdoor range where I could sometimes use steel jacketed (depending on dry conditions) is 2+ hours away and I haven’t had whole days to give.

    Weather permitting I may be able to hit one in November if they’re still open…

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