July 7th - Shooting Range

Yesterday Tom and I cut down a dead tree, about 15" diameter at the base by 60' tall. It was close to Wendy's house. Actually Tom cut it down, I stood far back and gave him instructions on how to do it so that the tree didn't fall on Wendy's house <grin>. We cut the bottom part into three 10-12' sections. Tom used one of his tractors to pull the sections up near his wood pile. The rest of it was to far out into the woods to reach with the tractor and chain we had with us. The remaining sections are small enough that they can be dragged to the edge of the woods by hand, but by the time we got the other sections out we were to tired and hot to do it.

After a break we fired up Tom's wood splitter and split a nice pile of wood. We worked until mid-day, with lots of breaks for cool down periods.

Merv took all of us out for dinner last night. The photo below includes Kathy, Lillian (Merv's "girlfriend") and Merv. After dinner we went over to Lillians for awhile.

Today Kathy and I attended an eight hour handgun training course. Five hours in the classroom and then three more hours at the range. We took a 30 question test on the classroom section and had to fire 48 rounds each at the range. We both passed easily. Monday we will go apply for our Tennessee permit to carry a handgun (concealed or exposed). Below is Kathy drawing a bead on the target. She did great! It was the first time she had ever shot a gun. The guy in the black hat was our instructor. We fired rounds from three different distances.

There were 22 people in the class, 14 guys and 8 women. Many of the women were almost as new at it as Kathy. She did better than all the other inexperienced women as well as several of the guys. One of the gals was really good, better than almost all the guys. The elderly gentleman who is sitting down in the photo above was so shaky that the instructor let him shoot while sitting down.

I think that there is at least one other place in the Crossville area that does the classes. I was surprised to see how many people were in this class. This place has classes on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month. While I was talking to the instructors son he told me that almost all the classes are full.

It was hot and a little humid but I think we both enjoyed ourselves.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.