So for Memorial day I was out of town for the longest practice run of the season. The longest practice run is supposed to be 3 hours, which turns into 3 hours 20 minutes when you do not be able to hear your turn around alarm with head phones in. I ran 9.5 out, turned around and ran 9.5 back. I was very impressed with myself, I have beaten a personal longest run, and I was going pretty fast, roughly 11 minute miles, which is my ideal pace for the marathon here in June.
I realized at about mile 17 of my run that while my feet hurt that I was only going to be in tempory pain and there were people who are, have been and will be in worse pain until a cure for cancer is found. This caused me to keep going. I think I can do the 26.2 miles when it gets here.
So the reason I was out of town is the local chapter of the Alaska Machine Gun Association (AMGA) was going to do a machine gun shoot at the range in Anderson. For those of you who don't know your very small Alaskan towns, Anderson is a town of about 400 located about 5 hours drive north of Anchorage, and 1 hour south of Fairbanks just off the parks highway. A machine gun shoot is where a bunch of people who own machine guns (yes they are legal, there is just a bunch of paperwork and background check first, then a very large check to buy it) get together and shoot at things. Then cook over camp fires, drink beer, complain about slow drivers in the left lane , how shopping carts always have one wheel that doesn’t work right, and their kids play too many video games.
The local fire department donated 2 wrecked cars for us to shoot at, and then after we have "really wrecked them" they chop them up for practice pulling people out of wrecks. The cars were pretty much about like Swiss cheese by the time we were done though. So the fire department was happy that the cars were well “wrecked”. Because we made quite a bit of noise for 2 days, a donation was taken up for the local fire department and they will likely be getting some fancy new gear. Here are some of the guns that were used.
The old guy with his cannon, the stuff in the back is all the stuff he needs to keep it running. He says he never has tailgaters either... It is a blast(pun intended) to fire, you can see the cannon ball hit the ground and skip. I can say for a fact if you shoot a ford escort in the trunk the cannon ball will go through the trunk, through the rear seat, through the front seat, through the fire wall, break when it hits the drivers side shock, and then keep going.
This is a video of me shooting my friend Sean's very high caliber sniper rifle, (at 5 bucks a shot, I only took one, I didn't want him to go broke). I hit the target, I just didn't knock it over.
I don't own any of these things, YET. Someday after the marathon is over with, I'll likely get some, maybe.
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