The Think Tank

Crestfallen Manor

The big day is finally upon us, and I have been negligent in getting photos or descriptions on here so that those of you who cannot make it are able to see what we’ve done this year.  Making matters even worse, I don’t even have a good excuse for not doing so.  We worked very hard this year to get everything up and ready early, and we succeeded in a way that I don’t believe we ever have before:  We were basically done by the second weekend in October, and completely done by 21st.

Getting everything done early was really nice because I got to just sit back and enjoy it for quite awhile, instead of having to be outside building it every night until Halloween, just so I can turn around and take it all down again.

I didn’t add much by way of new things this year, instead focusing on fixing several things that broke last year and making improvements existing elements. I did make a couple of new things, simple things though, just because I can’t help myself:

The Drinking Man

The first new thing I built was our Drinking Man.   I found a really good skeleton for an affordable price, and I rigged him so he sits on a barrel which is filled with water (dyed red, of course).  I put a small pond pump in the water, and a tube up his back so that the water pours out of his mouth and makes it look like he is trying to drink, but the liquid just pours down through ribs and back into the barrel he is sitting on.  It’s very simple but also effective.  I quite like him!

The second thing I built is a small pneumatic prop in the side yard, which is motion activated and springs up when people walk past.  I built the mechanism that drive it at Fright Fest this year.  The original idea had been to use a spider as the prop, but we found a light weight little skeleton with a glowing face and decided to use that instead.

We stuck him in the side yard, and he has been doing a great job of scaring unsuspecting people as they walk past the yard all season.

Chief among the improvements that I made was to fix our Crypt Creeper in two ways: I improved the apparatus that swings him out from behind the crypt, and I changed his sensor and added a couple of boards which do two things: 1) he makes sounds when he is triggered, screaming “Hail to the King, Baby!”; and 2) he now will wait for 20 seconds before being triggered a second time, even if the sensor detects motion.  That is a big improvement over last year, because when it got really busy he just popped out and hung there for minutes on end, not scaring anyone.  This year will he will continue to retract and pop back out again, so he will scare people even when it is very busy.

Other improvements to the yard were minimal and I honestly can’t remember what they all were, but they are nice finishing touches on several things.

As usual we will be doing our annual haunted yard tonight, so anyone who can should try to stop by!  It’s really a blast to see all the little kiddies coming through, hear all the screams and see the occasional parent run away down the street in horror.

You can see all the pics by following this link.

Happy Halloween!!!

Yesterday was the big day: Shannon now officially lives with me and Mom. With help from Kevin, Joel, Kyle and Maure we got the bulk of Shannon’s stuff moved from her apartment in Wilsonville to our house.

As anyone who has ever been to our house knows, it is not overrun with empty space, so she had to give up much of her furniture: her table and chairs, one air conditioner and her computer desk went to Kevin, and her futon went to Joel. Her grandmother’s bedroom set was very special of course, so that went into our bedroom at the house, necessitating some shuffling and Craig’s Listing on our end too, but we pretty much got it all done. An awful lot of her stuff has had to go into the attic as well, since it was duplicating stuff we’ve already got here. That’s kind of too bad, since it needs to feel like her place too, but she says she is not bothered.

We have some small stuff left to bring over from the apartment, but shouldn’t have any problem getting the last of it out before Wednesday, which is the due date.

The last big hurdle is introducing the cats. Shannon’s cat Luna came over last night, but we kept her in our room in an effort to slowly acclimate her to the new surroundings. She was kind of wigged out in the middle of the night, by has been ok overall. Growler so far is in the dark about the whole thing. I’m not sure how she’s going to take it, but hopefully they can become friends.

Any way, just thought I should let everyone know the news.

PS: I made this post from my phone so I apologize for any typos or mistakes. They are all Apples fault!

WCW holds a FITA tournament every month from around April to September. This is the second one that I have competed in. Last time I shot very badly and I was very disappointed in my performance.

So far, I have not done much better this time around.

Just as an experiment I decided to try my old Bowmar stabilizer this week. I shot with it at practice a couple times and if felt ok, though it was heavier than I was accustomed to, but I thought I’d give it a whirl this weekend. All in all I like it quite a bit, but it’s noticeably heavier than my four rod Kudlacek, and after not very long my shoulder was really hurting and my aim was suffering quite a bit. That contributed to my problems today at the longer distances, though I was doing a fine job of shooting bad shots all on my own as well. I kept up what is fast becoming a habit of shooting 10s or 8s, good shots or really crappy ones. Very little in between.

The sad part is, on the whole, I felt pretty decent today. But, when I messed up it was so big that it undid the good shots: three nice tens, a nine and two eights is the same 55 points as a wholly unremarkable end in which I shot no group and only managed a single ten but kept all of the arrows in the gold. It’s frustrating to put forth the effort for the extra bullseyes and come out of the end with the same score.

I switched back to my four rod stabilizer half way through the 70 meter round in deference to my shoulder, and I was monkeying with my release for a lot of the afternoon as well, trying to get my shots to come off faster. I was holding pretty well for the first few seconds, but I could ne’er get the thing to fire during that time, so I wound up fighting it most of the time, and that makes for a rough day Especially when my shoulder was already acting up.

At one point part way through 50 meters, I added up my total 10s and compared it to my total arrows in the red: 32 10s and 21 reds. That is a depressing ratio. That was when I started feeling really frustrated.

I was very down and not having any kind of fun at all. I decided I wasn’t going to stay and shoot on Sunday. That at least gave me some hope in that I wasn’t going to have to keep shooting this bad for much longer.

I’m not sure if that was the difference or if I was just tired of looking sour in front of everyone again, but the fog sort of lifted and I started focusing on my form more acutely, starting to get the feel right after the shot was gone. Also, my shoulder was getting less sore and I was holding better, which I’m sure made a big difference too. But suddenly I was grouping for the first time all day. They weren’t great groups, and the scores weren’t great, but atleast the 10s were outnumbering the reds by a fair piece.

30 meters was better, but still nothing to be excited over. But again, I had more good shots than bad and mostly acceptable groups. Often times one would fly out, but I usually had at least 2x’s and I had one 5x 60, and the miss was only by a hair. I ended with a somewhat disappointing 354 (out of 360) at 30 meters, but given how the earlier part of the day went, I took it happily.

I finished with a 1337 today, a score that is mired in mediocrity, and only 2 points better then last time. I guess that’s improvement, but I was hoping for something more along the lines of 20 points, not 2.

I’ve talked myself into staying for the Olympic Round and Eliminations on Sunday. I have mixed feelings about my chances. On the one hand, I feel Like i’ve seen this movie before: I shot basically this same way in May on day one, and wound up shooting a disappointing OR on Sunday and was handily beaten in my first elimination round.

On the other hand, this is a whole new day. Being fair, I know that I can make myself shoot well just as easily as I can make myself fail. It’s all up to me.

I just need to keep that in mind tomorrow.

One slightly optimistic point in regards to all those arrows in the red: I would like to pick up about 20 points on todays score, and I shot about 25 arrows in the red. It isn’t all that hard to stay in the gold, and that alone would give me the 20 extra points I’m looking for. Converting 8s to 9s is much easier than finding extra tens, so this goal should be well within reach.

Additional Info:

—————————————

Start date: Aug 20, 2011 10:18 AM Target: FITA Total score: 1338

— Sent from my iPhone

Joel and are taking part in the Providence Bridge Pedal this morning. More updates to come.

One of our better ends

The Sherwood-Nottingham shoot has always been one of my favorites.  It started in 1956 when the Mayor of Sherwood, Oregon, wrote to the Lord Mayor of Nottinghamshire, England, and proposed an archery challenge.  The Lord Mayor agreed, and the tournament was started.

We shoot 90 arrows a day (30 arrows at each of three distances: 60, 50 & 40 yards), two days in a row.  The top 8 archers form the team for their respective city, the scores are sent over in a secret envelope, and when everything is done the scores are compared and a winner is crowned.  The wining team gets to keep an intricately engraved silver bowl (recently appraised at more than $8,000) for the year.

Our shoot is held in conjunction with the Sherwood Robin Hood Festival , always held on the third weekend of July.  The local schools elect Maid Marion and her Court – selected primarily for civic achievements and activities in her community – and she starts our tournament every year. This year I had the honor of helping Keith Kemmerer instruct Maid Marion on how to shoot her bow (she’d never shot archery before).

This years shoot took place on one of the rainiest July weekends that Oregon has ever seen, and it marked only the second time since 1989 that the shoot was rained on.

Saturday started out with some drizzles, but quickly changed to dry and windy.  The wind picked up the throughout the day, keeping things challenging as distances got shorter, but it wasn’t anything too terrible.

I shot alright at 60 and 40, but 50 was sort of disappointing.  I ended with an 877 out of a possible 900.  I haven’t been able to find a list of previous results, but I seem to remember shooting in the mid 880’s the last time I shot in this tournament, nine or ten years ago.  877 wasn’t bad, but I dind’t think it was anything to shout about.  Still, it was good enough to put me in first place by 10 points after the first day.

Sunday was a different matter.  The wind was gone, which was fortunate, but in its stead was an impressive rainstorm.  It was raining so hard at 60 yards that I had to add 2-3 yards to my sight marks to compensate for the rain pounding the arrows out of the air.

My first 12 arrows were very rough.  I was shooting a clarifier in my peep site (a device that makes the image in my scope appear more clear), but the rainy weather and warm temperatures caused the piece of glass in the clarifier to fog up, which meant I could see absolutely nothing.  Its hard to shoot when you can’t see anything.  I tried several things to correct the problem, but nothing worked very well.  This did not reflect well on my score card: after 12 arrows, I was down 10 points.  (That equaled the total that I missed at that distance on Saturday).  I finally just used a small allen wrench to pop the glass out of the clarifier.

After that I could actually see, although the scope was still pretty covered in rain drops which made it hard to see at times as well.  But even when it was bad, I could at least see some part of the target, which wasn’t the case when the clarifier was foggy.

I finished 6 points worse after 60 yards than I had been the day before, but aside from the first two ends, I was shooting pretty well.  We moved up to 50 yards and I shot much better, beating Saturdays score by 4 at that distance.  We moved up to 40 yards to finish the day, and the rains started again in earnest.  I took a little bit of a guess at the site mark, attempting to offset the drop that would be caused by the rain.  As it turned out, I gave it a little too much, and my first arrow missed out the bottom by abut 1/4 inch.  I adjusted my site and the next arrow pinwheeled the X.  I went on to finish the round with a 299 out of 300.  I would have liked to clean it, but I was happy with that performance in the end.

When I added everything up, I finished with 877 again, for a total of 1754.  As I mentioned earlier 877 is not a bad score, but it isn’t anything that I felt was particularly special, although given the weather conditions it was more respectable.  So I was very surprised to learn that the 10 point lead I had to start the day had ballooned into a 43 point victory.

As the rest of the scores were revealed, it was determined that all of the Sherwood teams – Compond, Recurve, Longbow and Juniors – beat our cousins across the pond. It was a total US sweep.  The Bowl is ours for another year.

The Sherwood Compound Team managed another victory, but it was by one of the narrowest margins ever: 270 points.  (By contrast, in 1994 we whooped them Brits by  more than 2,000 points).  I guess we will need to pick it up for next year!

I will post a link to the final results when they become available.