The Think Tank

As always, there are a number of friends and families who are unable to make it to see the Halloween display in person, so here a quick run around Crestfallen Manor.  I tried to point out some of the new things we built, and the good ol’ ones that needed to be rebuilt this year.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/296573915[/vimeo]

This yeas big project for Halloween is to rebuild the columns and gate at the front of the yard.

Keep reading if you want want to hear all about how we made these, and all the cool little features we put into them!

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I came out to shoot after we got home from the beach. Prediction was for 40-50% rain, which was about right. It rained lightly most of the time but hard only occasionally. I primarily shot the red perform x as the gray one seems a little more critical and I have not yet shimmed the bottom cam over.

I’m not sure why, but the sight marks changed steadily through out the day, migrating lower through the afternoon. I’m not sure if that is due to the rain, or the strings stretching (I have shot maybe 100 arrows through that bow so far), or a combination, or something else entirely.

I noticed that when it started raining harder, I had more left and right issues which made me think that I may be having some torque issues. Right at the end I slid the rest forward about 1/4″. That seemed to help quite a bit at 40 yards, but my sights dropped significantly at 20 yards. Strangely, my gap got smaller, so perhaps it straightened out the arrow flight a little? Or maybe it was because the rain had died down again and had been drier for the last 10-15 minutes. Hard to say.

The last group at 80 was very nice as you can see from the picture.

I will need to see what happens when things get really wet again and my grip is sliding around a little more. By the time I made the rest change, the ran had pretty much quit and everything was dry.

I should probably get the grip really wet and my palm real wet and test it.

Bow: Red Perform X
Release: Fulkrum Flex
Notable Changes: Moved Rest forward ~1/4″

Mom, Maure and Shanon gave me an early birthday present a couple of weeks ago: a new Traeger smoker! We wound up getting the Tex Elite 34, which is really bigger than we needed but during the annual Costco sale it was the same price as the 22″ version so that seemed like the thing to do.

Right out of the gate we smoked a chicken and then a few racks of ribs, all of which turned out pretty tastey. The last week I decided we should make pastrami, which is just a smoked corned beef, in honor of St. Patricks day. Corning beef a process which takes at least a week and since I got the idea too late to corn our own, we started with a store-bought corned beef. I wasn’t able to be home to smoke it, so mom took the controls on Thursday afternoon and smoked one one meat cut of meat!

We brought it with us to Grays Harbor for an Archery tournament and holy moly, was it good! I had Reuben sandwich for lunch and then we had pastrami, fried cabbage and mashed potatoes for St. Patty’s dinner while we watched the Blazers beat down the Detroit Pistons. It was a great meal and the 12 win in a row for the Blazers, so it was a great holiday all around!

Shannon and I arrived in Las Vegas today for the annual Vegas Shoot, the largest indoor archery tournament in the world. Breaking with tradition we are staying at the host hotel, the South Point Casino and Resort. Since this isn’t he host hotel, we skipped the car rental, which makes the money work about the same as every year.

Mom asked to see a photo of our room, so here it is.

For those of you with smartphones, you can track our progress through the shoot by downloading the The Vegas Shoot app and searching for the name of the archer. Or, for those of you who do not have a smart phone, you can follow the action at this link.