The Countertop Chronicles

Sometimes it pays to get the hell out of dodge.

Sitting in DC, no matter who I talk to, its just a constant barrage of bullshit. Leaving the city of talking points, therefor, is bound to be a refreshing change.

With that in mind, and considering this new moon is the start of this years rut, I decided to head south, to North Carolina and get an on the ground feel for what the election will bring (and with the hope of landing a buck Sarah Palin could be proud of).

Yesterday afternoon saw us outside the Eastern Carolina town of Keanansville where I learned the local bucks are mostly dog driven and just not too big.

Spend some time at the Keanansville bait and tackle as folks hauled in the first bucks of this falls big buck contest. Some nice bodied deer, but a little lacking in the rack department.

We headed out to greener pastures though, a 3,000 acre QDMA managed property with gated access (not high fence, simply gates at the driveway to prevent folks from coming in

They put me on a stand overlooking a river bottom and under some powerlines. Had about a 1500 view down in both directions and sat down around 5pm to watch the action.

And action it was. At a range of about 800 yards (too far for me to shoot) I witnessed 3 bucks in a battle royale on a grassy bluff overlooking the river. I was mesmerized, when I decided to look the other way and saw 5 medium sized does grazing.

All of a sudden a small 6 pointer, probab ly 2 year old, buck jumped out into the field. He had a nice rack for his age, and will certainly be a wall hanger, but not yet.

He too became a bit skittish, and I was hoping a dominant buck would appear, but none did. Instead a couple of more does wandered out.

Still, as the sun went down, I could hear deer fighting all around. Eventually, a nice sized doe materialized, and with shooting time down I decided to take her with a 185 yard shot to put food in the fridge. The 140 grain sierra game king powered by 54.5 grains of h4831 was just devastating, putting a small slit into her left side and blowing a good chunch of her heart and lungs out a softball sized hole on the right side. She was knocked down, then sprang up and ran about 20 yards leaving a river of blood behind.

Word to the wise, if your hunting in the afternoon, don’t forget a flashlight. And have a backup. Its tough to dress a deer in the dark.

My buddy final picked me up, and under the lights of his truck, I gutted her and then hung her over night.

Its now 6:15 am, and a brisk 31 degrees. I’m in a different stand, closer to where those bucks are and along a line of heavy scrapes and rubs between some food plots, a watering hole, and the nasty tangled brush the big boys love.

Can’t see anything, but can hear lots of deer. Shooting time starts in 20 minutes or so.

I’m sitting next to this (NSFW) on the flight back from Minneapolis. Hot damn! She’s got a mold of her butt under the seat.

Love it. Gotta love it.

UPDATE

Its even better. She’s ridden the Sybian on Howard Stern!!! And hooked up with Artie!!!!

Here’s here web page and her myspace page. I’m in love.

And, Boyd, while she had clothes on - her ass rocked and her tits were gorgeous. And pretty much hanging there for me to stare at the whole time. It was an epic struggle trying to keep my focus on my laptop.

Than pretty girls in bikinis at the beach.

Just saying.

UPDATE

jetfxr69 in comments

This post is useless without pics.

Ask, and ye shall receive (after the jump)!
(more…)

Well, there is something fundamentally wrong with the road system in Virginia. Somewhere, someone, screwed up in a tremendous way, and frankly I doubt this state will ever be able to fix what is wrong. And no, simply throwing money at Northern Virginia isn’t the solution - in fact, the idiots at VDOT have shown time and again that more money only leads to more ill considered worthless projects.

No, things need to be peeled back - and the entire morass needs to be examined and perhaps, if possible, ripped up and started all over.

Case in point:

I was supposed to do three things on Saturday. I was going to head down to meet my trainer and work with the dog. Then, I was going to head over to Richmond to the Virginia Sportsman’s Show - I had free tickets compliments of the Roanoke Times. Then, we were gonna race back up to NoVA and shoot some skeet.

We had it timed out right, but then we hit the Virginia road system.

Dog Training
Told the trainer, I’d be there at 10:30 with my buddy. We were gonna work the dog a couple of hours in the field . . . shooting some birds over him and working on different retrieving scenarios. I left, for the hour and 45 minute drive, at 8:30. No traffic at all, till I got to I-95 - and then just sat. And crawled. Finally making it to Fredericksburg at 10:30 and not getting down to his place till noon. Where I got to spend all of 15 minutes with him because I was so damn late.

Sportsman Show
We then left, drove on I64 over to Richmond. No problems here, and the sportsman show was neat. Great, impressive, buck collection. Someone clearly has better property to hunt than I do. Saw lots of neat hunting gadgets, almost bought a couple of duck calls, and got to speak with some hunting guides. All in all, it would have been worthwhile, except I was so ticked off about not getting to train with the dog it just ruined the whole experience for me.

Skeet Shooting
We raced on out of the Sportsman Show by 2:00pm, with what should have been a 90 minute drive on a lazy Saturday afternoon to get to shoot skeet. Heh. By 3:30 we had traveled 30 miles and reached Fredericksburg, where I tried to hop on VA17 to save time - and went 3 miles in 1 hour - before bailing and hopping back on 95. In another hour we moved another 25 miles and I was able to hop on VA 234 to cut across over to Mannassas. By then, it was nearly 6 and having sat in a car for 8 hours already it was too late to do much skeet shooting - so we hopped on I66 - and sat for another hour, not getting home till 7:30.

Thanks Virginia, For Ruining My Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday
I made up for it Sunday.

Started the day looking at canoes. I think I found a great one - I’ll be testing it out tonight to see if I want to buy it. Its an Old Town Duck Hunter - about an 18 year old canoe - thats perfect for hunting as well as for trips down the river with the family.

From there, I threw my kayak in the Potomac at Pennyfield lock. It was a gorgeous ride.

I paddled up into the islands and explored them a bit, taking coordinates on my GPS and checking out how they had eroded since last duck season. Your not allowed to built permanent blinds on them, but we constructed a series of makeshift blinds with deadfalls, etc. last season that survived most of the winter. Unfortunatly, it doesn’t look like any survived the spring floods. Whats more, there was a fair bit of erosion going on, and some new channels opened up.

I ran into this guy right in front of one of our old blinds.

I also got out and did a bit of scouting in one of the areas I go deer hunting. The corn didn’t look so good, but they had a real healthy crop of beans. It should be a good season!

Just saying.

Kudo’s to VCDL for getting the ball rolling and the NRA for getting it across the goal line!!!!

The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), through the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, today issued a proposed rule to amend regulations prohibiting firearms in National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. The National Rifle Association (NRA) led the effort to amend the existing policy regarding the carrying and transportation of firearms on these federal lands.

The proposed rule was filed today and will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, and can be found online. It provides sixty days for public comment.

Go Forth and Submit Your Sane, Reasonable, Well Thought Out Comments.

What ever you do, don’t be a loon.

And by that, I mean, keep the black helicopter talk to a minimum, don’t tell them your offended they are doing this because they don’t have the authority to limit your ability to carry a gun one way or another, or otherwise come across as someone who might scare generally anti gun DC residents (they are, like it or not, the folks who will be reviewing the comments and implementing the rule)

Remember, the other side doesn’t have crap. Let them come across as dysfunctional. We need to keep the high road.

UPDATE

In light of this post, I’d point out that the Virgin Islands have a wonderful National Park, very much worth visiting.

We finished our meeting in the city of blues around 4:30 yesterday and settled in at Hooters downtown for some conference tournament excitment.

When we arrived, ran into colleuges who skipped out early. At noon.

They had set a goal, they were going to drink every last BLUE aluminum bottle of Bud Light there.

At 5, when we showed up, they had a pile of 80 empties stacked up. By 7, the mission was completed - the entire supply of commemorative bottles was consumed by our guys. 6 cases.. And the night was young. I’ve got no idea what the final tab was, but they were there till closing - at 1 am. They spent a total of 13 hours drinking. Had to be some kind of record

Me?? I headed off across the street to Mike Shanahan’s, a sports themed steakhouse to watch UNC - Duke.

Duke lost. Yeah!!!

We had fat steaks, and copious amounts of booze. Total tab, for 10, was $965. Which wasn’t too bad, I didn’t think, considering all we drank there.

Steaks, which were thick and well marbled ran $35-45. Service was generally adequate, with on glaring exception,, though I thought my steak was overcooked. I ordered it blue rare, and it was light pink.

Sides at $7 left something to be desired. Wild rice dish was small but well seasoned. Asparagus were a little soft for me, and served only with butter. I would have expected some cream sauce option at least.

Creme Brule was fantastic, but desert was marred by the fact that our coffee came about 10 minutes after we finished desert. Considering the profit center that the desert course is to a restaurant, and the lasting flavor it leaves, this was simply unacceptable. And while the restaurant was jam packed busy when we arrived, by the time we got to desert we were one of the few tables left.

Got back to the hotel, and ended up whyling the night away drinking Rye whiskey with depressed Creighton fans.

iN S. lOUIS.

wITH cREIGHTON FRANS.

DRINKING al ot.

at a duelling piano bar.

Total midwest experience. who njnew they ahad so many hottie slutts?
Wow.

Go Creighton.

in other news, we acutioned off a shotgun - it went for a lot. Guy from Tennessee bought it. Just as i fuugoired.

also, im in the wall street hournal today

good deal.

If you want the full file, click the pic

and I promise this is the last photomerge for some time.

Remember this impressive guy?

Well, these guys were at Fisherman’s Wharf tonight.

I think we can all agree that this is a good thing.

Troubling on one level, but also promising that young minds aren’t raised in this culture.

Other thoughts:

For the most part I have no idea who is gay. I know there are lots of them, but I can’t pick ‘em out. The guys at least. There do seem to be lots of lesbians, or should I just call them 45 year old women with mullets.

And the class divide is shocking. The poor are destitute and the rich live in gorgeous homes with heavy gates and armed security. No wonder they push gun bans here, the rich are as armed as any politician and have only the unwashed masses to fear. Strangley like Soviet era Russia even

I grew up in Northern Jersey, right on the edge of the suburbs of New York City. My parents are New Yorkers. Dad’s from the Bronx, mom’s from Queens. Growing up I spent a significant portion of my time walking the streets of the city that never sleeps. This was in the dark ages of New Yorks history - the 70s and 80s - when the worst socialist, anti capitalist, anti war elements of the Democratic Party ruled the city.

It was, then, appropriately thought of as destitute. A failure. A city of crime and run away homicides. They tried many things but nothing worked. And then came Rudy Guiliani. Say what you will about him, he cleaned the city up by arresting criminals and panhandlers, eliminating (where he could) those bloated government programs and taxes and regulations that had driven the life from New York City. As much as I hate him, Michael Bloomberg has at least kept going the renaissance that Rudy launched. The result has been to the financial and cultural benefit of all New Yorkers, and indeed the entire nation.

I live in the D.C. area now, and while D.C. has its bad parts, the crime is largely limited to those out of the way places that neither tourists nor the commuting business professionals frequent. So, it came as a shock when I headed out this morning in the one party anti war socialist city of San Francisco. Where the freaks were absent on Sunday, they were out in droves come Monday.

I loved the city after my walk yesterday. I can’t wait to get home after seeing the amount of hideous scum and hucksters and scam artists and pick pockets and pimps and hookers and beggars and stealers out this morning.

Seriously, does no one even question a little bit the mental/physical/financial shape of the city’s stuck-in-the-60s-homeless-hippy population??

I didn’t mention that Virgin has by far the hottest flight staff of any airline currently flying the friendly skies.

Or, at least U.S. Skies.

For that, Richard Branson deserves our sincere applause.

Hot. Smoking, Drop Dead Gorgeous.

Down Boy Down.

And he’s not afraid to dress them in a fashion that highlights, ahem, their ASSets.

Where air travel has become mudane, predictable, simply a longer version of the across town cab trip (complete with the puke from the guy who the taxi picked up last night), travel on Virgin harkens back to a day when it was exciting, an adventure that was as glamorous as it was fun.

And it all starts with a healthy dose of sexism.

Like I said, Richard Branson is a rock star.

Did I tell you the stewardess was hot??

at and ungodly hour for San Fran.

Took Washington Flyer for the first time to the airport. Its very efficient. They pocked me up in a nice luxury SUV and drop me off right at the terminal for $37 (including the tip). Considering convenience and that it costs $20 a day to park, its a great no hassle deal.

Flying Virgin. Cool. Richard b ranson is a rock star. Entire experience is enjoyable, from quick check in, small well designed boarding pass (picture coming soon) to the lack of terrorists at check in

More, including pics, later