Well, this weekend, I experienced the most humbling thing that has ever happened to me with a gun in my hand. What was it, you ask? It was my first Appleseed, and already I am planning my next. It's official, I am hooked. I showed up early on a cool October morning expecting to get some pointers on how to improve my shooting skills, only to find out that I had no skills to improve! Now in most cases this would be a bad thing but I really came with an open mind and a teachable attitude, and I left with the desire to come back as soon as possible.The staff of volunteers from "Red Hats" to "Orange Hats" were all helpful, skillful and they seem to want me to succeed as bad as I wanted to succeed. That was cool to see, they really do strive to create "riflemen" from "cooks". The coveted "Rifleman" patch eluded me, but when I saw the 12 year old kid 4 mats down from me get one, I knew I had to have one. To top off the weekend, Saturday evening, after talking with the wife, my 6 year old son gets on the phone to tell me about his Cub Scout outing that day. He began the conversation with "Dad, I hit the target all 12 shots with the BB gun today!! Mom says I shot better than you"!!........ah yes.....just what Dad needs to hear after shooting sub 100 rounds on the AQTs at Lodi.
I cannot wait until the next Appleseed that I can get to. That patch will be mine, my cooking sucks. Until next time, my most sincere THANK YOU to "dragonfly", "ahshoot", "trisha", "infidel", and the others at Lodi this weekend. I had a blast!!
