Day at the range. Should have listened to my instinct and stayed home Part 1

[imschur]

My day sucked enough that I'm going to break it up in to three posts.

Part 1 Getting There:

These days my typical shooting outings are very informal, squeezing in an hour or two where and when I can. In an unusual motion I agreed to a day long formal shooting session with a good friend Mario . I typically like to shoot alone but I like Mario and refer to him as my little brother. I felt somewhat obligated as I encouraged Mario to get his CCW permit, was with him for his first AR-15 and 1911. We set a date for Friday August 5. Mario also asked that I bring as many  firearms  as possible for him to try. Now this is probably not a big deal for most but for me it's a bit of a hassle. I live in a city with a high crime rate so all my shooting gear is either locked in the safe and stored in my various secret locations. I can only prep the night before as I am not comfortable leaving the guns out when I am not home. This would not be a big deal except that the night before Deb and I had planned to attend a local Italian Festival to eat Fried Dough and check out pretty  ladies. I was a little hesitant to go to the festival as last year the food disagreed with me violently. But some times you have to do what you have to do to keep the peace.

Thursday at the office was just dreadful. At about 4:30 I went to visit this site one last time before heading to the Italian Festival. The site was down, in fact all my sited that run off of databases were down. I thought to myself "Here we go" and "this is a sign" of how the next 36 hours is going to go. I quickly rebooted the server with no success. Sites were still down. It was now 5pm and I needed to get to the little womans house but I still needed to get a hold of the guys hosting the server. So a quick email and out the door I went.

The little woman, Deb lives with her elderly parents about a 1/4 mile down the road from where we work. I arrive and as usual it's madhouse. Her father is a selfish, rotten, mean, miserable nasty old man. He's not supposed to let the cats out because the Coyotes eat them. so just to be an asshole he let "Blackie" out just before I got there. This essentially starts a predictable war of words, screaming and slamming. I bite my tongue. I check my phone, sites are still down. Now we are all looking for Blackie with full-blown hostilities still going on. Finally she shows up at the door and Deb grabs her.

We pack Debs parents and off to the festival we go.

The festival was nice until about 8pm when the type of visitors began to change. The Welfare Zombies and thugs began to arrive. We left. I was home by 9pm.

I get home, log on to my pc to find the sites are back up and i have a note from tech support that they were unable to recreate my issue. Yeah whatever. I also have a message from Mario that he can't leave work until noon and he will meet me at 1pm. I reply I'm going to be there by 9 or 10am and I'll meet him at the range. I begin preparations. I had big plans. I wanted to swap several optics around between the weapons.This would require sighting everything in again. No problem as I have a few bore sighting tools including my favorite Leupold Zero Sight. I spend a few hours getting stuff ready and inspecting my weapons. I started to get excited about the prospect of shooting as I had some new and or upgraded hardware to try out. I put the Magpul Gen 2 MBUS on my CMMG Sierra .22lr upper, I had a new 308 AR upper as well as a few other items to try out.

4:30am I wake up in agony. The same agony I purchased at the Italian Festival the year before. Again I thought to myself "here we go one more sign about how this day is going to go". I got up around

8am Still not feeling well. There will be no getting to the range for 9am that for certain. I start loading the truck when I realized I forgot a few things. I packed about 500 rounds of .223 and nothing to fire it.  I also forgot the spotting scope. I headed to the basement to grab the spotting scope. Along with it I found a one gallon Ziploc bag of .308 ammunition and about 200 rounds of .223. If I recall correctly the .308's were from my CETME stash but the gun just would function with the stuff. I wasnt too concerned as I don't buy crap ammunition. It was a safe assumption that it was most likely a generic from a domestic manufacturer. Anyhow once back in my apartment I grabbed ann AR-15 upper that had an EOTECH on it. The Optic needed sighted in and I could legally use that upper with the lower that was with my CMMG Sierra. I load the truck, still not feeling well. Suddenly I remember that the AR upper is missing a c-clip on the ejection port dust cover rod. Luckily I remember where I put it. I bring the upper back in the house. This clip busts my chops for about an hour.

10:30am - Still not feeling well I head out to my truck to program my GPS. I have a bad memory and I havent been to this range in 10 or so years. The GPS has gotten flakey with age. I need to remove the DVD and reinsert it to get it going. About this point I'm pretty aggravated. Wishing I borrowed Deb's 4runner, portable gps and pocket camera. I manage to get the gps working. I go to search for the address. The remote used for data entry doesn't work. I think no problem. I havent changed the batteries since winter. I replace the batteries and it still does nothing. No problem. When the original remote was stolen I ordered two spares. I grab the new remote, it works fine but the gps wont find the address. I head back in for the phone number because the gps can also search by phone number. That worked. I select the shortest route. I wasnt overly concerned because my android phone with google maps will work as a last resort.

Noon - I email Mario I'm finally leaving. I still don't feel well so I swallow a few Amodium AD's. I grab my mobile phone. Freaking battery is dead and I can't locate my car charger. No big deal it was only to serve as a back up to my gps. I leave. According to my gps I will arrive at my destination at 12:27pm. Everything going well. The last turn tells me I'm on the correct road. With 1.4 miles remaining the correctly named road turns into a trail. Now I'm freaking pissed off this was the final straw. I have no clue how to get to the range, I'm in the middle of the woods and my phone is dead. I turn around and start driving. The gps begins giving me brand new directions. 10 minutes later I arrive at my destination which was a little funny because my gps was still telling me to go someplace else.

As I pull in I see the cops parked on the road just outside the shooting range property. At this point I realize that I forgot to bring the registration document for my Colt Sporter which the State of CT deems an assault rifle. I sit on my tailgate and wait for Mario.  After about 15 minutes I see the cops are stapling up "No Parking" signs because there is a pig roast at the range saturday. I breathe a sigh of relief. 1:15pm Mario arrives.