The Countertop Chronicles

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)!
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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!

Route 27 - Just outside the Chickamauga Battlefield

God Bless America

Pics from the Countertop Archive

From this

to this

How could anyone be anti gun??

God Bless America (NSFW)

And a whore

from back in the day . . . . so so sexy

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.

Nikon D40, 55mm

Taken yesterday afternoon. In front of the Federal Courthouse here in D.C.

Nikon D40, 55mm

Jay G wanted folks to show their mug . . . well, here ya go.

I too have two main cups.

One for the drive in

And a very fitting one for the office -

Is hot

Going out celebrating tonight.

We pulled the oldest from private school a couple of weeks ago and enrolled him in our local elementary school. The difference in attitude is amazing and I’m shocked in how much he picked up in 1/2 a week at his new school compared to almost a full year at the private school.

But thats not what we are celebrating - rather, he was accepted into Fairfax County’s amazing language immersion program. He’ll be spending half his day speaking French.

And in that honor, here’s a sampling of the the great conquests he has before him (Kim Style)
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Sebastian posted today about a great Flickr group: theitemsthatwecarry. He was most impressed by the fact that someone there had posted their Glock.

Well, thats all well and good . . . but I’m a 1911 man and low and behold, happened to be carrying mine while perusing his blog. Well, that means only one thing . . . I ought to post my own 1911 positive entry.

28th Floor, Hilton San Francisco
1:00 pm

28th Floor, Hilton San Francisco
7:00 pm

28th Floor, Hilton San Francisco
6:50 am

He’s was flying around the house earlier this evening (he’s down the toilet now)

update
Per the comments: Thanks to a host of folks, I’ve learned its a stink bug.

btw, considering I took it while I was trying to kill it, ya got to admit thats a pretty decent picture. Would have liked to get a shot from the front, but I didn’t want to risk it.