Thoughts on Gun Safety

I was doom scrolling my Facebook feed here a day or two ago when I landed on a post by an acquaintance I "met" here in blogger land who used to have a blog of her own. She has since taken it private and relegated most of her other musings to Facebook. She leans left of center politically, and her post was a photo of her nightstand upon which a revolver (Taurus snubbie in .38 or .357 by the look of it) was prominently displayed. She proceeded to state that she "hates guns a lot" and wanted "all the gun control". 

I chose not to comment on her post because I had more important tasks on my plate at the time, and I know the person well enough to know that no good would come of me opening that particular can of worms. For reasons that most of you will already guess, that post set my habitually firearm oriented mind spinning like a game of Russian Roulette.

Setting aside (for the moment) the irony of someone who hates guns and wants all the gun control leaving a revolver out unsecured on a nightstand, it got me to thinking about gun safety. Not the liberal left's view of of gun safety, but the actual-for realsies-don't shoot yourself in the face-gun safety. 

So, I thought I would share a little vignette from my deep past to illustrate the point which is guns, by themselves left to their onesome, cannot hurt a sole. For crying out loud, someone found a Winchester leaning against a tree in the woods after 130 years. The silly thing was rusted to Hell and gone, but it was sitting there for 130 years right where the original owner left it bothering nary a soul. 

Back to our story. Once upon a time in the early 1990s, I was a young lad getting back into the shooting sports after coming of age and having my own money to spend. At that time, semi autos still hadn't made the full transition to being the primary sidearm of choice for pretty much anyone beyond the military. Heck, this was a few short years after taking my driving test with a state trooper who was carrying a huge revolver. So, I was the proud owner of a 6 inch Taurus .357 revolver. This was back in the day when Taurus quality was a crap shoot, and I didn't have the money for a Ruger much less a Smith & Wesson. Colts were already discontinued by that point. So, that wasn't an option either. 

Small digression, I worked in the layaway department at Walmart for a time while in college back when Wally World still sold handguns and cool stuff like Marlin Camp Carbines. I was working the desk one night when one of our sporting goods guys (great guy named Bud who was a WWII/Korea fighter pilot who flew F2G2 Corsairs [the Goodyear version of the Vought F4U]) brought an attractive lady back to put a revolver on layaway. It was a monster 7.5" barreled Ruger Redhawk in .44 Magnum. I asked her what she intended to shoot with it. Her response: "Husbands". Priceless. 

On with the main part of our story here. There's a point in here. I promise. So, during college, I was dating this young woman. She had 3 sisters, the youngest of which had never shot guns before. I offered to take them both out shooting at what was then my grandmother's property. We load up the Taurus, my Remington 870, I think I had the Marlin 60 back then, as much ammo as I could scrounge, targets and set off for the back pasture. 

After a little warm up, I gave the Taurus to my lady friend for her to have a go. She took a couple of shots, and then proceeded to take a pose in which she rested her chin on the hand holding the gun with her other arm supporting the gun hand's elbow with the Taurus sticking out at about the 10 o'clock position WITH HER FINGER ON THE (please enjoy this soothing music while our author vents a spleen in colorful euphemisms using all permutations of the universal adjective) TRIGGER. Now, granted, she was unlikely to receive a .357 caliber Qtip out of the deal since the muzzle was pointed at the stratosphere instead of her dome, but she'd have had the potential to be deaf in one ear for life had I not gently reached over and secured the gun before catastrophe struck. Besides, I don't like cleaning blood spatter of guns; and, contrary to popular belief, stainless steel isn't stainless. Ask Number One Follower about his Colt Mustang II. 

The moral of the story is that gun's are not to be taken lightly. If you don't like them, don't get one. If you don't know what you're doing, get some training. If you like guns and want to keep them, start educating people about how to safely handle them. 

Thus endeth the sermon. 

Sunday Funnies - The "Where The Hell Has He Been We're Dying Here?" Edition

 Greetings friends. My apologies for the long drought of humor. M&M's summer camp was the last week of June and first week of July. In east Texas. Yes, it was every bit as hot and humid as that sounds. The Queen and I volunteer for the camp. She has gotten Basketball/Volleyball two years in a row. Due to my work requirements, I was kitchen staff last year and "Dining Hall Monitor" this year. 

Let me elaborate on that for a moment. My job was to pick a random camper or staff member to ask God's Blessing on the meal, make sure the assigned campers assisted with clean up, sweep the floors and wipe down the tables between meals. Simple right? Do you know how big a mess 200 campers and staff of all ages can make in the course of an hour? I know some of them are raised in and around barns, but I'm reasonable sure bears might be involved as well. 

I had to remind several young men to go find their shirts before coming into the dining hall. 

Me: Where's your shirt?

Camper: We just got finished with waterskiing.

Me: That's cool. Where's your shirt?

Camper: Down by the dock.

Me: Go get it.

Camper: But, but, but

Me: Go get it. Food will still be here when you get back. 

I tried to make the best of it and have a bit of fun. Like soliciting suggestions from the young lady campers which young man they wanted to through under the bus for asking the blessing, having a "who's better looking vote?" between two brothers who are Irish twins and nearly indistinguishable in appearance, table cleaning races, etc.

After we got back, we had the inevitable recovery period to get reacquainted with normal life. Hopefully, your regularly scheduled irregular content will resume now. 

I don't see the point with this one. Dr Pepper (aka Texas Coffee) and vanilla ice cream is easy to put in a bowl or a glass. Having it "pre-made" seems to be for the REALLY lazy out there. 

"It's good to be the King"

M&M is closing in on 12, and she is already getting the attention of a certain boy at camp. 

This will be My Sister...The Devil in 10 years.

RV Life

Well, as I have said before, much as transpired since last we spoke. Life has been hectic as usual which has left me neglecting my blog among other things. I will try to tackle subjects each in turn to do them justice. So, first up is the title subject.

After literally discussing the possibility of full time RV living with The Queen for a decade, we finally pulled the trigger in March and bought a large travel trailer with the express purpose of living in same full time and (hopefully) traveling more. Of course, we picked the absolute worst time to buy a travel trailer with RV demand through the roof in the middle of a buggered up supply chain, record inflation and has eye watering gas prices.

Yeah, we have great timing that way.

We decided on a travel trailer instead of a motor home or a fifth wheel for several reasons. In hindsight, a fifth wheel probably would have been a better choice for our situation (two adults, a growing girl and a 7 animal menagerie). Having said that, the trailer we did get is about as big as “bumper pull” travel trailers go and even puts a few fifth wheels and all but the biggest motorhomes to shame in terms of usable space.

So, to answer the obvious question of “why?”, that’s both simple and complicated at the same time. We had the disastrous attempt at buying a house last year which was a blessing that turned into a curse. With the discovery of mold in the living room, it became uninhabitable for The Queen and M&M who both have allergies to the stuff. With me, the sole provider, losing my job literally on the heels of closing on the house, it became a financial disaster too. Fortunately, we were able to turn around and sell the house at slightly better than break even which left us in need of housing. We landed at an apartment while we caught our breath and figured out what options we had.

If the housing market is nuts, the apartment market in North Texas is insane. We signed a 7 month lease on a third floor unit for more than we really wanted to pay, but it was a complex built within the last 2 years and had no mold issues. There were other pluses and not much negative. We came to despise the stairs especially after coming down with Faucimonia. We moved in and started getting our feet under us again. Things were cooking along great until January when we started smelling cigarette smoke in the apartment. The complex was supposed to be non-smoking everywhere on the property.

Yeah…. not so much.

As near as we can tell from hearing the arguments through the wall clear as day including creative use of the universal adjective and other choice words, the person who signed the lease was a married male; however, he did not live in the unit. The person who was in residence in the unit was apparently the tenant’s “side chick” and “baby mama” who desperately wanted the tenant to leave his wife and move in with her and her baby. That was not happening according to the tenant. Anyway, the hoochie in residence also turned out to have a fairly well developed smoking habit and the smoke started coming through the walls.

The complex essentially had their hands tied in terms of what they could do. Any attempts at evicting the offending person, who according to the terms of the lease should not have even been there, would have taken more time than we had remaining on our lease. During this crisis, the lease renewal offer came in with a minimum 30% increase in rent depending on the lease term selected. Needless to say, this was not a tenable situation for us. After much back and forth, we finally came to agreement with the complex management in which we were let of our lease early with no costs or penalties.

The timing of all this put us moving out just in time for the Dallas RV Show in early March where we happened to run into Number 1 Follower and Best friend along with his wife who were also on the hunt for a new travel trailer. Turns out, we both bought trailers at the show.

For those of you familiar with Texas weather, you are probably snickering in your beverage about now. For the uninitiated, March in Texas is anyone’s guess as to what you are going to get day to day. Snow, high winds, tornadoes, heat, flooding, hail, sleet…you name it, you’ll probably get it during March. Sometimes multiple varieties in the same day.

Our originally scheduled delivery date turned out to be cold, wet and very windy. Since we did not yet have a truck of towing the trailer, we imposed on Number 1 Follower who had just invested in a new diesel pickup. Due to the weather, we were forced to delay a few days and try again. We ultimately took delivery of a slightly different model than the one we originally selected after a weekend of panicky indecision. For the record, I’m glad we got the unit we did.

Why did we not have a capable truck yet you ask? Well, one of the things they tell you when you start looking at RVs is to match your tow vehicle to the size of the trailer. The trailer we chose has an empty weight of over 8000 pounds and grosses out at just under 11,000 pounds. The Queen’s Navigator is getting long in the tooth and simply does not have the towing capacity to pull the new trailer.

Surprisingly, there are very few half ton trucks that would even come close to having the capacity necessary. Ford F150s with the Max Tow package, higher gear ratio and the 3.5L EcoBoost engine is one. The were a couple of others; however, the consensus was that these options were right on the edge of the safety margin and did not handle the weight particularly well compared to three quarter ton or 1 ton trucks. There were even some three quarter ton trucks that did not have the necessary oomph to haul this puppy.

So, after an aborted purchase attempt at a dealership an hour away wherein they attempted to charge me $8000 more than the advertised  price for a “reconditioning fee” which was nowhere mentioned in the ad, we succeeded in locating a reasonable deal at a dealership 4 hours away in Houston on a gently used 2013 Ford F250 with 129,000 miles, the 6.2L gas motor, the right gear ratio, all the bells and whistles, tonneau cover and even a fifth wheel hitch already installed in the bed if we ever choose to upgrade to one.

After the purchase, we discovered records in the glove box confirming that the previous owner had just had a brand new motor installed at a dealership after the original motor crapped out just 2000 miles before we bought it. I’m positive the dealership was unaware of the new motor based on the asking price (under KBB/NADA trade in value).

I absolutely LOVE the truck. It’s a beast. It pulls the trailer without any trouble. The gas mileage while towing stinks, but that’s only been about once a month so far. Doing the math, a diesel did not make sense for us. Had we been towing every week…maybe. Diesel trucks are a significant premium over comparable gasser trucks. We would have paid $9000 or $10,000 more for a similar diesel truck not to mention the extra $0.80 to $1.20 per gallon more at the pump not including DEF, higher maintenance costs (diesels are pricy beasts to work on in terms of both parts and preventative maintenance).

We’ve taken a few “short” trips so far. Once was to a state park about an hour away as a test run to see if anything needed fixing/addressing and to help us learn the things we didn’t already know. The other two have been to east Texas for church related activities about two hours away. Our first “longer” trip is coming up in a couple of weeks when we head to Arkansas about five and a half hours away. We have a long trip in the works for October which will take us over2000 miles roundtrip to South Dakota and back as well as another 1000 to 1500 mile roundtrip excursion probably to Florida which will be shoehorned in somewhere depending on what happens in the near future on the job front.

If you see a big, dark brown and tan Ford F250 stuffed to gills with people and animals towing a 38 foot trailer, give us a honk.

More Adventures in Automotive Repair

6 groove belt decided it really identified as a 4 groove belt

Back in September, I was getting the family SUV ready for a road trip when I discovered that the drive belt (what we used to call a fan belt back in the day) when I discovered, for the second year in a row, that the drive belt was getting eaten. It was a little further along the path to destruction this time, and I'm reasonably sure that it would have come apart at the most inconvenient of times in the middle of nowhere late at night. Fortunately, I had a spare in the back (which I now need to replace come to think of it). 

The next set of photos come from an OOPS moment brought on by one to the stupidest trends: lowered and "stanced" cars. Late August/Early September, we went to our favorite breakfast place (Seven Mile Cafe in Highland Village...freaking amazing pancakes especially the cinnamon swirl pancake). Anyidiot, as we are pulling into the parking lot, I see the Black Scion pictured below limping into a parking spot dragging the rear bumper cover and grinding the frame on the pavement. 

Since I didn't see the precipitating event, I can only speculate. However, based on the damage and the drag marks in the pavement, it appears to me that the car was equipped with an aftermarket air bag suspension to get over bumps in the road like acorns and pieces of paper. It appeared to me that the air pump in the suspension failed as they were exiting the car wash next door resulting in the bumper cover getting yanked off and forcing them to grind their way to a parking spot. 

Now, I have nothing against people modifying their cars as long as it does not present a safety hazard to the general public. You do you. The modifications here, in my opinion, represent a safety hazard that should be confined to a show car or a track car as opposed to a street car. First, the suspension modifications make it difficult to go up and down even slight grades, speed bumps, etc. as evidenced by the rear bumper cover being torn off in a parking lot that normal cars have no problems with. The air bags are great....when they work. Unfortunately, they add in additional failure points that do not exist with the stock set up. 

Second, the wheels and tires. Using wider tires for more grip is an age old racing trick. Using tires that are a size or two too small for the rims...not so much. Lowering the suspension to the point that you have the wheel hubs have to be at canted to max camber angles eliminates the benefit of wider tires (specifically more contact patch on the road). There's the uneven tire wear to consider. And, most importantly, you can float that sucker in heavy rains no matter how much tread you have on the tires. Let's also not forget the damage to the frame. After grinding off whatever frame coating Toyota uses, the frame is now exposed to the elements and will rust if you spit in it's general direction. I wouldn't be surprised if that frame were to buckle in 3 to 5 years. 

Bottom line, don't do this kind of stuff and then use it as a daily driver. If you've got that much extra cash burning a hole in your pocket, invest in a truck and trailer to haul it to events if you need that much attention in your life. 

Is This Thing Still On?

There are lots of euphemisms I could use to explain my relative absence from this space for the last five months. Suffice it to say, much has transpired since we last saw our hero relocating to the supposed peace and tranquility of east Texas. I’m still looking for the proverbial country record that I can play backwards to get stuff back not the least of which is my sanity. 

So, let’s set the Wayback Machine for early May when we closed on the “new” old house. 

That was supposed to be a happy day. I was really looking forward to moving in and getting settled after all the chaos from the preceding year. 

Sigh….such was not to be. 

Once we took possession of the house and were able to get in a look around at what needed doing, The Queen immediately noticed the overwhelming odor of cat urine. It took a few minutes, but it finally penetrated my nasal passages which are not the greatest sniffers on a good day. A trip to Lowe’s for a UV Flashlight revealed that, yes, indeed, the prior owners cats' had sprayed everywhere all over the house. The worst of it was the living room. A quick inspection of the walls in the living room revealed that what we thought was painted sheetrock was, in fact, painted wallpaper over sheetrock. 

Well, thinks I, that’s a simple matter of removing the wallpaper (in a room roughly 15’ wide 19’ long with 12’ ceilings….I am such an optimist) and painting the walls underneath. 

 Let’s just say that Murphy is a dirty rotten scoundrel who hates me personally. 

 If you were not aware, East Texas is, in addition to being as hot as the rest of Satan’s outhouse in the summer, humid as steam bath. Why is this important? Well, we discovered through careful research that exterior walls that have wallpaper in a humid environment with HVAC will trap moisture and make for the perfect conditions to grow mold and mildew. 

Guess what we found behind the wallpaper in the living room? If you guessed mold and mildew, give yourself a gold star. Guess who has a major allergy to mold and mildew? If you guessed The Queen and M&M, give yourself another gold star. 

 Not happy making for Daddy Hawk. 

In addition to trying to get settled and keep work going, now I have to figure out how to get rid of mold and mildew off of sheetrock and find a place for The Queen and M&M to hide while doing so. 

 To add insult to injury, my boss called 17 days later and let me know my services were no longer required for the company. 

Well, POOP and other assorted four letter words. They claimed performance issues were the reason. I’ve never missed a deadline or failed to respond to matters timely. Yes, the preceding year or two were a challenge with caring for The Queen mum and dealing with the aftermath of her death, but who wouldn’t have challenges under those circumstances. So much for care and compassion and “work / life balance”. 

So, there I sit. Haven’t made the first payment on the mortgage, no job, a major project to deal with and a house that is unlivable for 2 out of the 3 members of the household. I did the only thing a rationale person could do. I called my realtor and asked what it would take to get the house back on the market. 

Over the next month and a half, I (with some help from The Queen), removed all the wallpaper from the living and study, discovered a water leak in the skylights (which were later determined to have been improperly installed in the distant past), hired a contractor to fix the skylights, painted the living room, hired another contractor to texture the study walls and master bath ceiling and did my best to keep up with the lawn care, car maintenance and job searching. 

We finally got the house on the market, and it sold for full price within a couple of weeks. Fortunately, I was able to land a temporary gig starting right before the closing on the sale of the house which allowed us to rent an apartment back in the Dallas area while we get our feet back under us. There were some other trials in the interim which are not terribly critical to our current story. The temp gig lasted a little over a month before I landed a better temp to hire gig with another company that is much more to my liking and pays better to boot. A big bonus with this job is that it is 100% remote meaning I can pretty much work from anywhere. 

Things are looking up overall. The Queen and M&M are doing much better now that they are in an apartment with no mold. My boss is happy with my work so far. So, hopefully the job will convert to permanent before the end of the year. 

So, the saga continues. Just not in the direction we thought.

Please Enjoy This Hold "Music"...

...while we are busy dealing with life's little disasters. One of you reached out via FaceBook Messenger asking if I was still posting. Let's just say I'm looking for a good country record to play backwards. If you don't get that joke, ask your parents about LP record players and backward tracking lyrics. Then get off my lawn you whipper snappers. In the meantime, enjoy these memes while listening to our hold music.