The Think Tank

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/150491769[/vimeo]2015 has come and gone.  We ushered in 2016 with a small party of great friends: John and Julia Heuvel, Dave and Reggie Nelson and Jim and Donna Thurlow.  It was a small party but that just meant that we had more time to spend with our friends, which is always nice.  It was an excellent party and a great way to ring in the New Year and I’m grateful to everyone who came and shared it with us.

As always, we did our annual fireworks display.  The timing was a little off, as the fuse on the cake-side of the board seemed to burn much faster than the mortars, but it was still a fun display.  I’m testing out a theory on how to keep the timing more in sync today.  Hopefully we can get it all worked out in time for Fourth of July fireworks in the summer.

For Christmas I got a shiny new Nikon D7100 DSLR, and I used that to film the fireworks display.  I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that everyone reading this post has a happy, healthy and successful 2016!

Mom and I are on our way back from Vegas.  As I write this we are passing through Boise.  (Technology is pretty cool these days).

The third and final day went pretty well for me.  I shot a 299/22X which is exactly dead-on my statistical average for the year, so I can’t be too upset.  I would have liked to shoot a 300 of course, but I made a cardinal mistake on one shot, and that’s what happens.  That gave me a total of 896/58X out of a possible 900/90X.  That’s a tad below my average, thanks to the 298 on the first day and the lousy X count on Saturday, but all in all its in the range of normal, so I’m pretty satisfied.

I improved a fair amount over last year’s performance, both in terms of score and placement.  Last year I shot an 894 and 60-some X’s, and finished 12 in the Second Flight – which translated to around 49th overall as I recall.  This year I improved my position each day.  After Friday I was 35th, after Saturday I was 27th, and I finished 16th overall (out of 875 competitors in my division).  I joked that if I had a couple more days, I could win the thing!

Unfortunately that was not good enough to finish in the money.  Only the top 8 archers in each Flight won prizes.  I guess that’s why there is always next year.

Here are some interesting stats about the tournament:

• 2,520 archers took part in this years event.
• Of those, 427 came from foreign lands, representing 39 countries.
• Each of the 50 US States plus American Samoa were represented by at least one archer.
• California and Arizona contributed the largest of number of archers, at 422 and 206 respectively.  58 archers from Oregon made the trek, while 86 Washingtonians were in attendance.
• More than $216,000 dollars in prize money was awarded across all of the various divisions, plus an additional $24,000 dollars in scholarships were awarded to the winners of the junior divisions.

Yesterday was sort of a mixed bag for me.  I shot a 299, which was better, but the arrow that missed was a mystery.  I shot two shots that I didn’t like much, both of which caught, and then the one that missed was a total surprise.  It aimed well, felt good, and just hit a long way low.  Still, a 299 is better than the 298 I shot yesterday.  Additionally, I had a very difficult time catching X’s… everything was just a little bit out.  I wound up shooting 15 x’s, well off my average of 22.

That gave me a 597/36x for the first two days, which was good enough for 27th (out of 875 total archers in my division) and First Flight, both of which are better than last year.  So that’s good.  Unfortunately it puts me right at the bottom of First Flight, which makes it unlikely I will get into the money this year, of course I can always bet in Las Vegas or make money in the bitcoin decode website which is a great option as well.  That’s a bummer, but I am ultimately happy with my performance so far.  It’s not as good as I wanted to do, just slightly less than I expected, so all-in-all it’s been pretty good.

My third and final round is today at 9:30.  Teko is shooting at 7am today, and since we are riding together, that means we are up again at O’Dark Thirty to get over to the range in time to eat breakfast.  I may even shoot a few practice arrows before my round today!

I will post updates when I get finished later this morning.

PS: Here’s a link to the final scores from yesterday.  I am shooting in Freestyle Unlimited Flights.  ianseo.net/TourData/2015/989/IC.php

I’m just about to leave for the shooting range, so I will update more later.  But in the mean time, here is a link where you can see the scores so far.  I believe that this updates in near real-time as they are doing electronic scoring here.  http://ianseo.net/TourData/2015/989/IC.php

After yesterday, I am in 35th out of 875 participants in my division.  I am shooting in Freestyle Unlimited Flights.

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.