The Think Tank

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]

Mom and I bailed out of town just ahead of the snowstorm that has dumped several inches on the Portland area, and headed to Las Vegas for the annual World Archery Festival.

Friday was sort if rough for me. Last week I traded my 2012 dominator for Matt Anderson’s 2013 dominator, and it had been shooting so well the last few days that I decided to shoot it for the first day of the tournament. Unfortunately it’s mojo seems to have worn off: I shot a 297/19x (with an 8 no less). Given that I have been shooting 299-300 with 22-24 x’s pretty consistently this year, the ’97 was disappointing. That was good enough for 90th place, out if about 850+ archers. Also disappointing.

I switched back to the blue bow and practiced for about an hour last night, then mom and I spent the afternoon with our friends Craig and Karen who live just outside Vegas in Henderson.

Today went a little better. I tried to pay special attention to my bow arm today as I was letting my shoulder sag some yesterday, and that proved highly beneficial (as it always does). I dropped my first arrow, which sucked, although I really thought it was a pretty well performed shot, so I couldn’t get too upset about it. After that I rattled off 22 straight X’s, which I think might be a record for me. I got a little nervous and my shoulder was hurting pretty bad the last couple ends, and I dropped three more X’s, but the shots were pretty well executed, so I’m good with that.

I ended the day with with a 299/26x. The X’s were pretty good although the ’99 was a little disappointing. However, as I said, I felt I shot 30 good arrows today, which was what I was aiming for and something I haven’t been able to say for a while. Many of those 30 were about perfect.

Unfortunately being down four points isn’t going to do me any good from a placement perspective and my overall goal of shooting my average score for the weekend is now unattainable. However, there are still some positives to be had:

1. 299/26x is a personal one-day best at Vegas.
2. 22 X’s in a row is a tournament best for me, and may be a personal all-time record.
3. 30 consecutive arrows without an ill-performed shot in a big event is a big step. It’s tempered by the miss as well as the fact that I was effectively out of contention yesterday, but still, it was a goal achieved.
4. Even though I was very disappointed about my shooting on Friday and about the 9 today, I recovered very well and just kept doing my thing. I never got upset or made a fuss or anything. That has been a bugaboo of mine in the past, and both days I handled adversity well.

More to come to Tomorrow.