Houston Clinic and More

Lessons Learned in Houston

It’s been a strange week here in Houston, Texas.

We had a great clinic last weekend. Gil did individual lessons and I took on the clinic for two days. We had so much fun and frustration, all in one group of people.

I had three hunters and one person who hunts and was just getting back into sporting clays. I started with the animations. For some it was helpful and for others, it was too much to comprehend, since they didn’t have the database to understand it. But it didn’t take long for it to come together, and for three out of four, it came together early.

One person had a little harder time letting it come together since he had been doing something else for so many years. The student who was getting back into it found that it was so different from what he had been doing and that it was a lot easier to recreate. He had a great move and mount, which helped the rest of the system to come together faster.

And once again, we found out that each student needs to practice the gun mount before they come to a clinic or go hunting or shooting of any kind. I remember when we were competing, we had that gun in our hands each day. And before we go to Argentina in May 2015, we will be practicing every day for the two weeks before we go.

Practicing your gun mount is never-ending. You shouldn’t think of it as a chore, but as a way to get better.

Shooting Pairs and the Importance of Breakpoints

The second day of the clinic was fabulous and everyone came a long way. We shot a lot of pairs and talked about how to separate the eyes from the gun and how important that was.

We did the practice of shooting the target then finding the biggest piece and shooting it. And we talked about how that was helpful when shooting pairs. Reading the targets as two singles helped them not be overwhelmed with two targets in the air.

Breakpoints are so important when shooting pairs so everyone realized that they needed to be able to shoot the targets in every place on the flight path of the target.

The day ended with everyone knowing what their weaknesses were and what to practice to improve. I can’t wait to hear how everyone is doing improving their scores on the clays course or improving their percentages in the field.

So Much for Fishing…

Gil and I left Sunday night to go to the bay house to do some fishing. Well, at least we thought that was what we would do. Mother Nature had different plans for us.

We did get to go to Rockport and fish with some very good friends and caught 20 trout before the cold front blew in. We left Rockport with a temperature of 75 and by the time we got to our house an hour and a half later and the temperature was 54. The winds were out of the north at 20mph and gusts to 25mph. So fishing on our bay was out of the question.

By Wednesday afternoon, we turned on the faucets and the water was bubbling out and had a grey color to it. We went to turn on the water outside and it was worse.

We called some of the folks in our little subdivision to find out if this had happened before. They said to run the outside lines on the pier and all outside of the houses to see if that would take care of it. It didn’t.

The water well has failed and saltwater was now in our water lines, so we’re waiting on the repair guy to tell us what we need to do. So much for fishing. Besides, we are having January weather here in Houston and it’s just November. So, back home we go to bring in the plants and hunker down for the week. This isn’t going away for at least a week.

I know you folks up North are used to it, but we are not. But at least I get to wear all these great winter clothes that I own and never get to wear. More later.