Pennsylvania to Houston to Connecticut
We’re on to Lehigh Valley Sporting Clays and had another great three days of learning with a lot of new folks and several of our repeat offenders.
Lehigh is in an old limestone quarry and has a lot of different presentations. They have three different courses, so a lot of diversifications in targets. And of course, there is always one or two on the course that someone just hates, so off we go.
The biggest “aha” was that students could actually shoot with two eyes open and not close the other eye. The biggest difference was they could see the target better and it appeared to be slower.
The other “aha” was that the perceived lead on every target was cut in half. Boy, did that get a second look when I told them to cut the lead in half. But they did, and the target broke. So they would try it again and again and again.
WOW! Pretty awesome!
Another amazing thing was that you don’t need to start with the gun mounted and get tired faster by having it up longer. It made life a lot easier to start with the gun lower, then making a soft mount to the shoulder, keeping the head up and eyes and nose on the target, then watching the target come to the gun.
The shots became very easy and calming, and if you missed the target, you knew immediately how to correct it. Everyone was self-correcting by the end of the day.
Back to Houston for a week then on to Connecticut. But first, our daughter Andrea was coming in on Wednesday to check out her flooded house. She, her husband Tim, and granddaughter Avery live in Eugene, Oregon; so off we went to see the damage.
We had a crew that had gone in, when they could finally get in, and cut out all the sheet rock, pretty much gutting the place. Fortunately, she was renting the house out; the couple moved out on August 1st, so no furniture was in there – only appliances.
There were very high debris piles in her subdivision and all the lives of people were on the curb waiting for the debris trucks. What a mess. Brian, Andrea and I got all her debris to the curb to eventually get picked up.
Then we went shopping for cabinets, flooring, sinks, appliances, and everything else to make the house livable again. After four days of going in and out of Home Depot, the greeter knew her name. It was at that point that she said she needed to go back to Oregon. But there’s still a lot to do, so she will be back in a few weeks.
It is so sad to drive around and see how many lives have changed forever. But there are so many signs at the houses that say “We will rebuild,” so the attitudes of the resilient people of Houston will not allow this to get them down.
