NYC

This is a bit late, but I finally got some time to update my blog.

I met up at the airport w/ my locked gun case w/ 3 of the school's expensive competition grade guns. I had to go and inform the baggage people that there were firearms inside, and had to get them all inspected. After the inspection, I locked them up, and sent them on their way. The flight to NY was fine. We had some fun turbulence that bounced us around a little. I was hoping for more though.

By the time we landed, got luggage, and rented a car, it was already 2 am. Then we drove 50 some miles to a hotel. It was pretty scummy, and we were probably the only fluent English speaking people in the entire building. I slept on a pull out bed for a few hours, then ate breakfast. We went sightseeing at WestPoint and had to get all the firearms inspected again since we were going into a military college. They had a cool Museum of Guns there, and other warfare related exhibits. It went in chronological order, and started with a pointy rock which I found amusing. We didn't have enough time to look at them all.

We then headed back to the base, and set up for our first match. I did Air Pistol, and let one of my teammates use another gun, ("freepistol") since his broke the day before. I didn't do terrible in Airpistol, but I didn't do as good as my last match. I let myself get distracted, and I got nervous. We left the base, and ate at a REALLY yummy Italian restaurant. Then we checked into another hotel (thank goodness). I attempted to start on some homework, but fell asleep in the warm hotel room. In the morning we quickly loaded up w/ some breakfast, and headed to the remainder of the competition. We barely made it on time since we had some traffic complications. I got out the free pistol and knew I'd have to make adjustments since a team member used it last. When the timer started I had a generous 2 hours to fire 60 scoring shots, with unlimited sighter shots. I spent over a half hour trying to sight the damn gun in. The rear sights were loose, and were moving all over the place after each shot. I was pretty angry and frustrated, but I eventually got into a somewhat working condition. The guy who used my gun last also complained about the same issue. I had a couple of strings that were really good, and then a bit more that were less than desirable. After that match, my arm was pretty tired since I used almost every minute of the 2 hours shooting. (usually people finish in about 1.25 hours ) Then came "Standard Pistol" which consists of 3 separate events; slow fire (5 shots in 2min 30sec), timed fire ( 5 shots in 20 sec) , and rapid fire (5 shots in 10 sec). I typically like this event because my grouping in rapid fire has been really tight. However, my hand was a bit shaky possibly because my arm was tired, not sure…. But I also shot some undesirable shots, and I was frustrated again. My rapid fire score wasn't bad, but I've done MUCH better before. Come to find out just today, the threads that hold the barrel in place were almost 3 full rotations loose, and the thing was wobbly. I feel like an idiot because I didn't even bother to check that it could have been the guns fault. Nonetheless after the competition, we submitted our scores, and left to check out NYC.

We got into the city, checked into our hotel in Queens Jamaica City. Then we rode the subway all the way into downtown Manhattan. It was neat, and looked like Seattle by a magnitude of 10, plus subways, and more lights. The people seemed fine, the food was great, but my group I was with drove me nuts. Next time I go, I want to go alone. We must have spent close to 3 hours debating about where we were going to go. One guy wanted to go to a Hungarian restaurant, another wanted to see a Broadway play, and I wanted to go somewhere high up (empire state building) before the sun went down. Obviously my request didn't make it because we spent so much time farting around not doing anything, and backtracking w/ confused map readers. We ended up going to the empire state building, and the wind was insane. They had roped off one section of the observatory deck because of the winds. Some little kid was almost swept away from with gusts.

We went back down, checked out some other scenes, and ate at some Persian restaurant. Then after it started to get chilly, we hit the subways back to our hotel room. The cab drivers tried to rip us off, but we haggled a bit. A couple of my teammates didn't bother sleeping since we had an early flight, and just goofed off all night long, got packed and took the shuttle to the airport. I slept most of the flight home, and slept when I got back. Now back to the scholastic gauntlet.