Weblog Entry - 01/26/2003: "rocking weekend"

This was one of those mad dash weekends, the kind where too many things of too many different qualities with too many emotions follow too closely upon each other.

It started right after work on Friday, with a rush hour ride out to one brother's place for a birthday dinner celebrating the next generation's first teenager. A relatively quiet evening, if a house with a teenage girl and her six year old sister can be thought of as quiet. Relaxed talk, good food and wine, and up much too late after a busy week.

Saturday brought another morning and afternoon spent back at work. It's hopeless to think I can catch up but if I don't try, then things will be worse on Monday. After work was another family run, this time to another brother's for his daughter's first birthday. More kids, more noise, more food, lots of balloons with sugar high kids jumping for the ones on the ceiling.

The celebration was tempered somewhat by unexpected orders for an earlier than anticipated departure. We knew my bro' was headed back to service in the Middle East but had hoped he'd be around for a few more weeks. This week he got a call, "Get your ass down here, we're leaving Monday night." Kind of turned the world topsy-turvy, with weeks worth of preparation being squeezed into a few days.

There were a few hours to spare this morning... hours snatched back by rising before dawn... time set aside for one important but incredibly enjoyable task. I don't know just how he wrangled it and I may not even want to know, but somehow it became possible for him to do a T&E on a Heckler and Koch G36C. Now the last thing you want to carry into a dangerous situation is a weapon that hasn't been properly sighted in, so a trip to the range with a few hundred rounds seemed the thing to do.

As expected from an H&K, the weapon functioned flawlessly. Once the sights were adjusted, a line quickly formed for some weapon familiarization... okay, play time. In looking over the rifle earlier, both my brother and I had noted the lack of a 3-round burst setting, commonly seen on H&K's submachineguns. It turned out that the cyclic rate was slow enough and the recoil so minimal that it was very easy to control burst length and squeeze off short and on target bursts.

If you're not a part of the gun culture.. well, hell, you've probably stopped reading by now... you just wouldn't

understand.

Pretty nice piece. A friend of mine has a G36K in the back of his patrol car. That's the only one that I've ever had a hold of. This one is more the size of my Colt M4. The only thing I can see wrong with it is that it's not at my house.

Todd bought a new rifle so I was finally able to see the process of mounting a scope and making the adjustments. I've heard him talk of six clicks this way and eight clicks that way but had never seen it. I can now say that I know what "dialed in" really means. Takes a lot more work than a person not of gun culture would expect.

now.. that's a serious gun. Unfortunately, I'm not part of the gun culture, but it's always interesting to see what people are doing with them. HA!

Okay.. I hope all is well and that work isn't killing you to much.. so you can get back to the wonderful world of picture making. =)

Posted by not of gun culture (no matter what goes on in my basement) @ 01/26/2003 07:17 PM ET