On The Greatness Of Firearms And Other Things

The past few days have been rather busy for me. As you all know, I happened to head on back to the old stomping grounds of my hometown for a few days in order to make a trek out to the desert with Sam for a day filled with the unloading of ammunition and general stress relief. I left San Diego after work on Saturday night and made it to Sam's place just before 11 pm. While we weren't scheduled to go shooting until Tuesday, I typically drive straight from San Diego to Sam's as the prospect of seeing my best friend/cousin/brother outweighs stopping by a house of sleeping people just to drop off my bags. Not to mention the warm acceptance given me by the rest of the Campagna household (and extended family). As often as I believe that returning home constitutes ample amounts of sleep in a comfortable bed with the added value of a heater during a brisk season, I always find myself corrected in this assumption. My first night home I remained awake until 4am slaughtering masses of 3D Japanese people on the island of Pelelieu and watching Sam decapitate hordes of Nazi Zombies. We also chatted and watched some DVDs. It wasn't all Call of Duty 5. Jeez.

The next night was slightly more tame as I remained at home. My grandparents visited for a few hours and I even spent some time at "The Great Indoors" with my folks and grandfolks, bored out of my wits looking at a liquidation sale with prices on tacky items still outrageously priced. They weren't even the good kind of tacky. Either way, I happened to get to bed around 1am and at roughly 6am I was woken by my beloved Frank who had been left outside when my parents left for work. Being a clever dog and knowing that I was home and hadn't left with my parents, she decided to whine, cry, and bark until, frustrated and quite upset, I walked downstairs and let that bitch into the house. That shut 'er up real good-like. The next three hours of sleep didn't go so well, but I managed a bit and by 9 I was up and showered, ready to head for a supply run with Sam for Tuesday's events. Oddly enough, had my dog chosen not to wake me and had I not been scheduled to meet Sam at 10am, the jackhammers that only seem to show up when I come home appeared at around 9.

Sam and I left for Bass Pro shortly after my arrival at his residence and spent the next few hours basking in the glory of reasonably priced outdoor goods. Sam picked up some ammo for Tuesday as well as a few other things that were quite nifty, such as a new pocket knife (whose brand name I can't remember at the moment). I came out of it with four Moon Pies, a hatchet, a pair of wool gloves (which were on sale from $12.95 at $5), hand warmers, and a Winchester "Tanto" knife that I later accidentally stabbed myself with...twice...

We then dined at the Hat. Pastrami burger + chili cheese fries + hot mustard = heaven. We hit up Best Buy, which had nothing we wanted. Game Stop had what we needed and Sam bought me a copy of Call of Duty 4. Thanks Sam! I bought Call of Duty 5 and we ventured back to Sam's to partake in more Jap-slaying festivities (Call of Duty 5). I made a brief stop at home for dinner and to see my folks after they'd gotten back from work and when they went off to sleep around 9/9:30 I went to see a friend of mine who I hadn't seen since summer time.

The plan that night was for me to spend the night at Sam's since we were to leave at 8am next day, that way we'd be able to sleep in a bit and we wouldn't have to worry about me not showing up on time. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, I happened to go out with a good friend of mine who I hadn't seen since summer. Prior to leaving San Diego I'd met an employee of SPV who goes to school at the same place as my friend which reminded me to see how she was doing. After contacting her, we made plans to hang out on Monday night. I figured I'd be back early enough to get back to Sam's place before he went to bed, but little did I realize that hunting for a bar in our area on a Monday night was a bit more difficult than I'd thought.

After trying the wine bar in Pomona with the lazy bartender who wanted to go home by 11, we decided that we were to go on an adventure to find a bar that wasn't a restaurant or sports bar. The idea of testosterone-filled alpha-males with ample amounts of hair gel, the latest fashions where everyone looks identical, a loud environment and empty-headed individuals wasn't for us. We wanted a dive. The hunt took us two hours. Chino Hills was filled with all we didn't want, Brea was shut down, leaving us with Downtown Fullerton. Our contingency plan was the bottle of bourbon that remained in the back of my truck from my camping on New Year's Eve. We ended up at a small bar in Fullerton with an hour until closing time, a bag of chips and a beer each. As bad as it sounds, the whole evening was actually a very enjoyable and fun time. My friend and I swapped embarassing stories from our past, expressed our general happiness in the fact that we try as hard as possible to avoid most people from high school, discussed the comfort in having a destination in our futures with an unknown path, and came to agreement that having run into each other at a Ted Leo concert nearly two years ago after having hardly spoken in high school and none at all since was quite a good thing as a strong friendship had been forged since that day. After being kicked out of the bar for closing time (and being the only two people there) we drove back to Chino Hills where we stopped in our High School parking lot. For the next 45 minutes I taught my friend how to drive a manual transmission automobile (not due to alcohol, I'd had 2 beers in a 4 hour time period, inebriation wasn't even in the picture. She actually wanted to learn). She's actually quite good. I was confident enough in her abilities to let her drive all the way home after she asked if she could. So either she catches on quick or I'm just a damned good teacher. We got back to her place, said our goodbyes and after pulling away from her driveway I couldn't help but feel stupid for not telling her how cool she is and perhaps something more. Maybe it's because on the 18th she goes back to Berkeley while I'm away in San Diego, or maybe it's because of my defences telling me that I'd likely fail at any sort of attempt at a relationship, especially a long-distance one, but getting back to my house I was generally tired and somewhat depressed at this occurrance, especially since the night had gone so well.

With my (possible) missed chance in mind, and my 7am waking time, I was ready to relieve some stress and shoot some damned guns for once in my life (second time with real firearms). After gassing up and picking up Sirena, we drove out to meet Randy and my uncle Ed at the McDonald's by Randy's place. After about an hour of driving we reached the exit which led us to a dirt road. A dirt road to victory (with a vengeance)! The off-roading trail brought us to a deserted spot with a flat area for parking and what looked like a makeshift fire pit. Up a small slope was to be our firing line. After setting up the targets all along the hill we returned to the line and prepared the weapons. What followed was several hours of bliss.

I was somewhat intimidated at first by all of the handguns to fire. Fearing that they would fly out of my hands while shooting was my main concern. That and I didn't want to look completely inept in my handling of guns, especially since I was with people who'd been shooting almost their entire lives. But after shooting one of Randy's handguns and them being completely fine with me missing most every shot, I calmed down a bit and had fun. The rest of the day was smiling, laughing, and feeling a strange sensation of nothingness, but not the bad kind of nothingness, the kind of nothingness that makes you forget that anything could ever be wrong in the world. I already posted the photos from the day's events, and to try to name all of the weapons I fired would be chaotic and I would need Sam's confirmation on the brands and calibers, but hundreds of rounds were shot and - as sam puts it - it smelled like the 4th of July. I left the desert with a high that may or may not have been produced by that smell. In fact, my shoulder is a little sore from Mr. Blast-a-lot.

Sam, Sirena and I stopped off at Lucille's on our way back where Sam then treated us to a nice and hearty dinner. We capped the night by watching Little Britain and making a trip to Borders. It was there that I finally said "see ya later" to Sam and Sirena and went home to watch John Adams take both the Vice-Presidency and the Presidency (all in two episodes!) and dowloaded the photos of the day's events. I need to get my camera cleaned. As you've probably noticed in some of the photos there is a black mark that shows up on either the top (if it's a vertical shot) or the right (if it's horizontal) of the pictures. I (unfortunately) had to crop some of my photos to remove it from sight, but it made its way into some of them as I found that cropping it might compromise the shot itself.

I'd like to thank Sam again. The trip, and this mini-vacation was well needed and had it been a typical visit home it would not have been as good as it was. Tomorrow I head back down to San Diego for work at 4. When I get home from work I'll have Call of Duty 4 and 5 to spend some quality time with. Longer than usual, but much has happened over the past few days and I'm quite tired at the moment (as it's now 1:37am). If I've left anything out, then I guess it's too late, but Sam will likely remember it and bring it to my attention. Ugh. Sleep-time.