The Think Tank

I shoot today at 10am.  I felt that I struggled most of the day, but I did manage to get at least one monkey off my back: last year I dropped my first arrow all three days.  Today, I shot 3 x’s on my first end.  I was proud of that because I was oddly nervous heading into it today, so that’s good.

Unfortunately that’s about where the good news ends.  I wound up shooting 298 with 21 X’s (out of a possible 300 with 30 X’s).  All in all that’s a disappointing score, but given the trouble I’ve had this year, I’m not terribly upset.  The arrows that I missed were poorly performed shots, so you can’t get too upset with those missing.  I just need to shoot better shots tomorrow and things should be fine.

I did feel like there was a little issue with my wheel timing today.  I had to put a new cable on my bow on Monday, the day before I left to head down here, and they always stretch a little bit when they are first put on.  I tried to shoot enough arrows to work that out, but apparently it wasn’t quite enough.  I saw that my wheels were a little bit out on Thursday during practice and made an adjustment, and then at the end of today I could see that they had stretched out again and wound up back where they had been before I adjusted them.  After I got done shooting, I went down to the practice area and made some changes, and shot pretty well down there.  I scored a 300 with 24 x’s in practice.  Granted, practice doesn’t really mean anything, but it is the first time that I’ve ever shot a 300 in Vegas, even in practice, so that’s a step in the right direction.

After practice, we went up and toured the “Fun Show” – the Archery Trade Show that always goes on during the shoot.  Most of the major archery companies are here, and many of them offer show specials with some decent discounts.  It’s also a great opportunity to see and test equipment that you can’t get at your local pro shop.

I spent a bunch of money as it turned out, exercising the “better archery through aggressive spending” idea.  My biggest purchase was a bow case that will hold both of my bows, at the same time!  My trusty case I’ve been using since the early 1990’s is a great case, but it will not hold both of my bows due to their shoot-through risers.  This new one not only holds both bows, but also has room for all my stabilizers, sight bars, arrows, and quiver, along with other pockets for essential equipment (like my handy dandy portable bow press), but it also has wheels to make lugging it around easier.  A new case has been on my list of needs for several years, and this was the first one that I found which met all of my requirements.  So I think that was a good deal.  I also got enough material to make 8-10 full sets of bowstrings and cables, for less than it would cost to buy a single set, so that also was a good deal.

After Teko finished shooting, around 6:30pm, we came back to the hotel and made a reservation for the steakhouse at the Riviera.  Part of the deal that Teko got with the free suite was a $150 dollar certificate to the steakhouse, which she very graciously shared with us.  That covered all three of our dinners, with enough room left to get us each a piece of cheesecake for the road.

It was a lovely dinner and lovely company, as always.

I got unlucky and drew the 7am line for tomorrow, so I need to go to bed now so I can get up at 4am and head to the South Point Casino in time for breakfast and a few practice arrows before we start shooting at 7.

Mom and I drove down to Vegas yesterday for the 2015 World Archery Festival.  The trip was uneventful, which is always a good thing on a long road trip.  Unlike last year, the weather was perfect.  No snow, no rain, no traffic to mention.  Perfect.

Since the weather was so nice, we decided to try a different route than usual.  Last year we went I-84 to Salt Lake City and down from there, but this time we shot straight down US-93 from Twin Falls and saved ourselves about two hours.  All told it was about an 18 hour drive, including potty breaks, fill-ups and an hour or so for dinner.

Along the way we ran into this very cool scene near Emigrant Valley, where the fog had filled up the whole valley.

Fog in Emigrant Valley

We arrived in Vegas around 5:30AM, and naturally were pretty tired.  We slept for a bit and now are headed over to the South Point for official practice.  As of right now, I shoot at 10am tomorrow and 7am on Friday, although I am trying to get moved to a different line so that I shoot the same time as Teko (our friend we are staying with).  Otherwise, we will be caravaning back and forth all day.

I will update more later.

Our Suite

The Main Room in our Suite

The view from our balcony

This weekend was the 59th annual Sherwood Nottingham archery match, which is an annual tournament between Sherwood, Oregon and Nottinghamshire, England.  This year was a particular treat because 4 archers from Britain made the trip to the US to shoot with us.  Getting to spend time with them and discuss the differences in how they run their shoot vs. ours was really fun.  2016 will be the anniversary (1956-2016) and us Yanks want to have as many people as possible cross the pond to do the same thing.  Mom, Mo, Shannon and myself are making early plans to head to England in 2016.  It has always been a dream of ours to go over and shoot in both events, and it sounds like we might finally get to make that dream come true.

On a personal note, this years event went well for me.  My Saturday score was 888, which was a little substandard as far as I was concerned, but not completely outside the realm of acceptability.  I wanted to stay at or above an 890 for the weekend, so I wasn’t far off, but I needed to pick it up the second day.  Both of the last two years I missed the tournament record by one point, and I really wanted to get it this year.  Last year I was in great position after the first day but didn’t shoot well enough on Sunday to get it done.  That has bugged me all year.

Sunday I really buckled down and tried to shoot smart.  The wind was gusting a bit, not terribly strong, but it was continually changing directions which made it difficult know how to correct for it.  I finished the first 30 arrows down 5 points at 60 yards, which is a respectable score, and then I shot a perfect 50 yard score.  That was a first for me and it really helped me get on the right side of the numbers for my goal.  40 yards should be easy enough to clean, but I always wind up dropping at least one, and Sunday was no different.  My first arrow at 40 missed to the right.  It felt like a good shot, but the wind had been blowing pretty strong right-to-left on the last two targets at 50, and it reversed and was blowing strongly left-to-right at 40.  I adjusted my sight a little bit before shooting at 40, but apparently not enough.   After that one point I shot pretty well, only dropping 5 X’s the rest of the way.

On top of my own personal outcomes, the Sherwood teams swept in every class where we had enough participants to form a full team: Senior Compound, Master Compound, Junior Recurve, and most importantly, Senior Recurve, which means that the US again gets to keep the silver bowl here in this country for another year.  We’ve held the bowl here since 1996.

On a personal note, I wound up breaking three records:  my own one-day record from last year with an 894 (last year was an 891); the one-day 50 yard record with a perfect 300 (the old record was 298 and had been set by Don Kudlacek a long time ago); and the overall record with a 1782 (the previous record was 1775 and had stood since 2001).

If you are interested, here is some information about the shoot: http://www.robinhoodfestival.org/archery.html

Joel, Rogan and myself rode in the annual Seattle to Portland bike ride last weekend.  For Joel and I, this was our fifth consecutive year, but it was Rogan’s first.  The weather was sort of funny: on Saturday it was really hot and humid.  It was 77 degrees at 5am on Saturday and near 100 when we arrived in Centralia; But Sunday was cool and it rained on us for about an hour as we were coming in to town.  There was even some thunder and lightning to welcome us home.

As some of you undoubtedly know, Joel was hurt very badly about 7 weeks ago when a board kicked back off his table saw and smashed him in the face.  He suffered multiple face and skull fractures, crushed sinuses and broken orbits.  His doctor told him that he could not do anything strenuous for 6 weeks.  Well, STP was about 6 weeks and a day away, and Joel was determined to complete the ride.  His family and girlfriend weren’t all that crazy about him doing it, but he did, and he made it through like a trooper.

There were sections where he I don’t think he was having much fun, but he pushed through, slow and steady.  I was very proud of him getting through it.  I’m not sure I could have done it.

The party was a bit smaller than usual this year, as the weather was so beautiful that many people went camping instead of hanging around town, but that was actually nice in a way as I got to spend more time visiting with the people who did come.  We had a really great time.

Thanks to everyone who came, and to those who didn’t make it, stop by any time!  We made a bunch of beer and still have some of everything left over!

The fireworks boards worked pretty well.  The show lasted about 8 minutes this year.  The video below shows the whole thing, but the last couple of minutes are the really fun part if you want to just jump to that part.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/101355147[/vimeo]