Oh, what a wonderful weekend... Appleseed!...

   I am in driving distance 1h 45m from Port Townsend and the rifle range for our Appleseed. Dark from start to finish of the drive, Winter is coming. I meet 'Janer', the Shootboss, and we are setting up in the pistol bays but maybe squeezed, over twenty with walk ons signed up. 'Never on Sunday', and Yankee Terrier are in IIT positions and we begin to check people in, set up equipment line and firing line. The fire is lit in the warm up shed, we expect cold but not freezing weather. I miss putting Josh on the right side of the line, for his left hand shooting. But we moved the instruction right along, just enough words to make the points. The morning was prone, and the afternoon was full of sitting and transitions. and the first Appleseed Qualification Test, and one former Rifleman, repeated and became our first Rifleman of the weekend. He wasn't going to be the only one, but Sunday would show that two others were hiding on the line.
  Sunday was the day of the wind, and the wind won. We had the canopies erected for keeping the rain off, and they decided to try flying away... almost made it. So took them down and moved to another range where the wind would be behind us, closer to the warm up hut and cover in case of rain, but the rain held off.  There would be target corners and sheets lifted by the wind, the chill would stay with us, but all instruction was given, and one AQT before lunch, Dangerous Old Men stories and back out to shiver on the line and we need to anchor the mats better, since they would lift and try to move the rifles on them.
   I must be getting old, didn't spend much time on the line just covered up and called the line commands. Didn't do too much instruction and no demonstration at all... hmm... My overall feeling was that the shooters overcame the wind and the chill, we didn't give them too many things to remember and they performed wonderfully. It is all a shared learning experience, and we could take the memory home and put it to bed.
   Off the line and away from the shooters the discussion was often about the threat of more constraints against the range by local forces that don't really know anything about shooting, the ranges nor safety. Just GUNs are bad. Never ending ignorance. Now to get ready for Christmas.