Missed flight, forgot stuff.

So the night before I was supposed to fly out, Bobbi had some unexpected work drama and before I knew it, it had gotten too late for me to go to bed.

See, I'd booked myself a 7:30AM flight from IND to ABQ via MSP. I like getting to the airport two hours before flight time to make doubly sure there are no TSA hiccups with the big case full of guns. There never are, but it's cheap insurance against the eventuality and I don't mind airports anyway. Once you're past the hassle of TSA, you're just hanging out in an overpriced mall.

So a 7:30 flight meant I wanted to get to the airport at five thirty, which meant leaving the house at 0500, which meant calling for an Uber at 0445 or so.

No problem, I'd just sit on the futon and read my newest P.J. O'Rourke book for a few hours and then summon my ride.

There was a front moving through. I could tell by the way my right knee and shin were twinging with pain. I rotated in my seat to elevate my legs, propping them atop my luggage stacked on the futon, and kinda laid back a little to continue...my...readi...zzzzz

The next thing I was aware of was Bobbi yelling "Tam! It's six o'clock!"

Holy crap.

I grabbed the small camera bag and slid it down over the extended handle of the big camera bag, tossed the assembly onto the porch, followed by the suitcase and gun case. While doing this, I summoned my Uber, which was fortunately only six minutes away. I grabbed the camera on the way out the door and slung it around my neck...no forgetting it this year!

The Uber driver got me to the airport in record time, and there was no line at the Delta counter, but it took a good ten minutes to shuffle through TSA, not helped by them wanting to run my bag through the scanner a second time.

I gathered up my stuff and bolted to the gate...just in time to see the jetway disconnect and the plane get pushed back.

That's the first flight I ever missed.

Fortunately, I had built in a 3-hour layover in MSP because I didn't want to arrive at ABQ too early, and so I was able to catch the next flight out and still not miss my connection. They gave me seat 29A in a full Airbus 319. Seat A! A window seat! A miracle!

Row 29 in a Delta Airbus 319 doesn't have windows, if you want to make note of that for your next seating selection chart.

Got to ABQ, checked the weather for Blogorado and...whoopsie. Looks cold on Saturday! I may have made it out of the house without forgetting any camera gear, laptop power supplies, or gaming mice, which are the usual things I forget, but I forgot my coat. In fact, I had not packed any jackets or sweaters of any kind.

On arriving at our final destination, however, we stopped at the local Tractor Supply analog for ammunition and other sundries, and I went to look for a jacket. They had a clearance rack of Carhartt coats and I found one I liked marked down to $50. Even better, the cashier scanned it and pronounced the actual price to be $40.

When I reported this to my fellow Blogoradans, they descended like locusts on the clearance rack until the place looked like a Carhartt convention and the clearance was truly cleared.

This is my first piece of Carhartt apparel, and I'm pretty impressed so far.
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Ch-ch-ch-changes...

The first couple times I went to Blogorado, I still had my first smartphone, an LG Optimus burner from Virgin Mobile. Cell phone service was nonexistent for me for the weekend, but I'd eagerly update the blog from any pirated wi-fi source I could find.

Conversely, switching to T-Mobile meant that my current iPhone was almost never without signal the whole weekend. I used my Amazon app to order replacement eye cups while we were driving along a stretch of highway where you could see to the horizon 360 degrees and not glimpse a single man-made structure other than the road. But I took a little vacation from the blog, the longest one ever since I started, I think.

But I'm back now!
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I can't make up my mind...

...about whether I think the bling-y M17s Sig Sauer just made for the purpose of being carried by the honor guards at the Tomb of the Unknowns are garish or super cool.

All I know is that if a BB pistol or airsoft replica version is ever offered for sale, I'mma be on that thing like a fat kid on a Twinkie.
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The Cholula bottle has a quest for you...

Double Action Summer Autumn

This summer was supposed to be an experiment for me. Having had good experiences on the 2,000-round tests with the HK P30L and the CZ-75B Omega, I was going to spend three months or so extensively shooting several of the better traditional DA/SA guns on the market with an eye toward adopting one as my next carry gun. This would coincide with me switching to an AIWB holster, having lost a bunch of weight.

Well, all that got put off by the broken collarbone, so now it's going to be the autumn of Traditional Double Action instead of the summer of ditto.

It started with yesterday's range trip:

My HK P30L just got back from Grayguns, where it had received their Reduced Reset Carry Perfection Package. The DA pull is indeed lighter and smoother, and the shorter reset is immediately noticeable.

Also on deck was the Langdon Tactical Beretta 92 Elite LTT. The trigger on this thing is phenomenal. Between the "D" mainspring and the Wilson Combat trigger bar and a few other enhancements, it's among the nicest DA/SA triggers I've played with.

Both guns shot extremely well...

This target was from me just railing on the guns, doing big goofy mag dumps from seven yards.

This is gonna be a fun few months, because there's more to come...
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...and that makes 2,000*.

When I first got my hands on the Wilson Tactical Carry Professional a couple years ago, the first thing I did before launching the 2,000 round test was to glorp a generous amount of Lucas Extreme Duty Gun Oil down the slide rails as well as schmearing it all over the chamber hood and muzzle end. The gun ran through the whole test without a bobble.

With the EDC X9, I didn't glorp. Instead, I put a single drop of Liberty Lubricants CLP on the barrel hood and muzzle end and dripped two drops each on the frame rails.

I don't necessarily think anything was wrong with my choice of lubricants, but definitely there was with the amount. By the 1,700 round mark, the slide was noticeably sluggish in closing, due to the presence of fouling and the absence of lubricant. On rounds 1,711 and 1,724, the slide didn't close all the way.

Rather than turn this into a display of me possibly damaging a dry gun, I grabbed a bottle of FP10 out of my range bag and glorped some onto the four major lube points. The gun proceeded to chew through the remaining 270 rounds like it was brand new, despite being as filthy as filthy can be.

I'll be doing a detailed teardown post and a Q&A in the comments over at the Patreon page.
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Free Speech Enforcer

Great piece up at BuzzFeed News on Marc Randazza, possibly the most entertaining member of the legal profession at this moment in time. I'm a longtime fan.

It's a conundrum these days that our "public squares" tend to be hosted on various corporate servers where a desire to keep customers allows the heckler's veto free reign and there's a never-ending war between callout culture and shitposting trolls, and where the First Amendment is nominally not in play at all. I wonder how long such a situation can hold?

Meanwhile, listen to this:

We are all Tod Lubitch now.

So, the biggest effect I've seen regarding l'affaire Kavanaugh on social media is that it's allowed people to more effectively caulk the leaks in their bubbles by purging people who they suddenly discovered did not share their particular orthodoxy as closely as they thought they did.

And the best part is that they feel completely righteous in doing so!

After all, they're only shunning and/or blocking those people who [don't believe women & enable rape culture/don't respect due process & enable political chicanery], and who wouldn't want to be shut of *those* assholes, amirite?

The meteor can't get here soon enough.

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Pretty much.

#StateOfTheUnion pic.twitter.com/ZlGyUKbKx5

— Michelle Ray (@GaltsGirl) September 30, 2018

QotD: Bad Image Edition...

From my friend MattG:

"You can generally tell a hit piece, lately, by the photo which accompanies it."

Go and RTWT...
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A Pair of Sevens...

I went walkabout to Fat Dan’s to get ribs for lunch. I was carrying the Sony a7 with the 24-240mm zoom my friends bought me, in case I saw things along the way that needed photographing.

Fat Dan’s is packed on a lovely early autumn weekend. There’s a Cubs game and an IU football game on the tellies and the overhead doors that face the street are both rolled up. Both the dining room and sidewalk tables have a bunch of people doing interesting people things.

And I have a full-frame camera with a bazooka of a lens on it that is about as un-subtle as if I started swinging an RPG launcher around. The only way I’d be less able to get candids would be with a big ol’ putty-colored Canon L-lens.

I wish I’d brought my black Pentax Q7 with the 15-45mm f/2.8 zoom. I’d order another beer and just sit here against the wall and enjoy myself...

Poor kitty...

Rannie is always so miserable at the vet's office. Our local vet has gotten Fear Free certification, but Miss Wu is generally shaking like a leaf and wanting to just stick her nose in a corner and pretend that none of this is happening the whole time she's there anyway.

Lucky score...

So, I had bought an EOS-1Ds to go with the old 70-200mm f/2.8L lens that a reader had graciously made me a fire-sale deal on. And due to KEH's error and their appreciation for my honesty, I wound up with an EOS-1Ds Mark II for $399. And I had an EF 40mm f/2.8 still laying around from the days when I was shooting Canons.

Because good things, like bad things, apparently travel in threes, I saw a new listing pop up on eBay for a Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX DG lens...usually about $3-400 on the used market. This one was $167.

The seller had an excellent rating, offered a money-back guarantee, and said the only reason for the price was because of a crack in the plastic shell on the lens.

That seemed worth the risk for the price.

The lens works fine. It's an older Sigma EX zoom, so it's a little soft wide open at longer focal lengths and can hunt for focus in dim light, but for a $165 lens, it seems to be the berries. Now I have some wide(ish) angle glass to go with the 70-200 tele. Can't wait for vacation!

Mo'cycle...

Shot with the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II & Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX DG lens.

I had no idea this bike even existed before I walked past one yesterday, and now I want one.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #175...

Coming soon to a post on the sadly-neglected other blog, a Colt New Line revolver in .38 rimfire. This one dates to 1875. Unlike many European firearms manufacturers, the Colt plant has never been bombed flat by the Luftwaffe, RAF, or the Eighth Air Force, and so serial number records exist going back to the beginning, and Colt has made them electronically searchable, at least for date of manufacture.
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I LOL'ed.

OOCQOTD: "Aside from 'separating money from rednecks', there is nothing the [Taurus] Judge does well."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 26, 2018

L'affaire Kavanaugh...

You know what pisses me off about this whole situation?

My conservative friends keep bringing up Bill Clinton and The Evel Knievel of Chappaquiddick, and they don't grasp that the #MeToo movement was in *response* to that environment in the past.

People don't understand how common sexual assault and straight-up rape is...and, yes, #MeToo...and this groundswell happens where now we're not going to sweep it under the rug, we're not going to let it slide with a "boys will be boys" or "she should have been more careful".

But somehow the movement got shanghaied, first by people who diluted the meaning to "someone at work said my ankles were fat", and now finally we've come to this.

DiFi's smug little last-minute "Aha! I've got a 'gotcha' that'll stick it to the GOP but good!" expression...its blatant politicization...is in danger of becoming the Pickett's Charge of the #MeToo movement. Movements have backlashes and pendulums swing both ways. Thanks for f$cking it up, Diane.
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Boom.

Democrats haven’t chased this many people out of restaurants since the civil rights era. https://t.co/KAMWcUWPqf

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) September 25, 2018

Last night...

I saw the color of the light streaming in the kitchen window, and grabbed a camera and ran out front to see if I could capture it...

The above photo was with the Fuji X-E1 and the Zeiss 32mm f/1.8 lens. I wished I had a more conventional wide-angle lens for the Fuji, but lacking that, I ran back in and got the fisheye...

By the time I got the fisheye on the camera and got back out front, the sky had lost most of its dramatic color, but I was still happy with the "pools of light" effect I got in this photo.

Brunch!

View this post on Instagram

Brunch @gallerypastryshop is a #chorizo, #poblano, red onion, & feta #omelette with a side of @smokinggoosemeatery jowl #bacon! #brunch #southbroadripple #yum

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Sep 23, 2018 at 1:28pm PDT