BlogShoot Success...

The First Annual West Coast Milbloggers Shootout was a definite success. The attendence was small select, but there was no shortage of fun - as was reported in several places by others in attendence (Hi, John and Maggie!). Of course, the weekend really started on Thursday night, with Bad Cat Robot and I joining the Armorer and SWWBO for a delicious meal at the 520 Bar and Grill, as ably documented by John in his travelogue, part I. The company was grand, and we could easily have stayed and talked all night, except for the whole needing-sleep thing. So we adjourned to recharge, perchance to sleep. On Friday, Beth and John toured the town with BCR's able guidance. Meanwhile, I worked my fingers to the bone so that I could leave on time to grab some edibles (and drinkables) and trundled off to BCR Labs, for the seekrit Friday night meeting of Denizens. In addition to John and Beth, we were joined by Sgt B and Princess Crabby. The chatter was often zany, always fun, and potentially recorded for use in later blackmail by SWWBO, using her 2GB MP3 cube. We may all be in deep trouble!! Too soon, the evening was gone, and I had to get myself home to grab some sleep in preparation for the Shootout. Saturday's events started with a gathering to break our fast at Alfred's Cafe, which was handy since it shared a parking lot with the Bulls Eye range and Gun Shop next door. I planned it that way, of course. Bad Cat Robot and I met up in the parking lot, and were quickly joined first by Echo9er, and then by Heartless Libertarian. We all went into the Cafe to nail down a table and await our tardy blog-buddies. Finally the remainder of the gang arrived, and we were all well fed (lovely food at Alfred's Cafe!) and had consumed more than our normal daily ration of coffee. So we trooped across the parking lot to the Bulls Eye, and scanned the goodies in the Gun Shop. (Whoo Hoo! I found the rubber grips I wanted for my .357 Ruger! Pictures to follow in a later post.) The Armorer tried to find an item among the rifles that would add to an empty spot in his collection, but (not surprisingly) nothing fit the bill. So we made our way upstairs, checked in and selected targets, and repaired to our shooting lanes to perform mayhem against pictures of Barney and Osama Bin Laden. As you can see, John and Sgt B were able to take out the dinosaur with extreme prejudice, and seemed to take great pleasure in doing so. My personal mission for the day was to ensure that Maggie fired at least one weapon. To my surprise, she was coerced into convinced to fire not just one, but three different guns. First my little .22, which is just plain fun to shoot. Later, to my surprise, she was coached on firing the .44 magnum revolver that BCR brought along! Once that barrier was broken, it was a small step to firing HL's 9mm AR, pictured below. She earned her Denizenne stripes, for sure! There was plenty of happy noise-making, and many targets were maimed. Finally it was time for HL to head off to his family plans. The rest of us had another Tacoma stop planned, though. We had to invade the Corina Bakery, which BCR and I had scouted a few weeks ago. Once there, we each selected some delicious (and LARGE) portion of cake or cookie bar to over-indulge in. Personally, I had heard that the Red Velvet cake was special, so I chose to test it out. Delicious, indeed - but I almost went into sugar overload trying to eat it all by myself. (I failed) The good news, though, is that we got to talk with Walt Gaya. We found that he had a gallery showing of his photography, so off we trooped to find the Art on Center gallery (check Maggie's site for details). Walt's photography is very good, and the gallery had other interesting art photography on display as well. A very worthwhile change in our schedule! That was the end of our day time events, and I'll have to tell the rest of the evening's fun later, cause it's past my bedtime. I'm still trying to catch up on what I lost over the weekend ... *grin*!