Oh Virginia how I miss you. Long story regarding Virginia but it seems like my time there has sadly come to an end. I will never forget it. I am a million years behind updating this blog, too much work and too many adventures.
So a friend of a friend is a gun enthusiast. I found this out and was more than a little excited. I found out that one of their favourite past times in University was going down to the range and shooting weapons. At our disposal was a 12 gauge shotgun a semi-automatic 9mm and a .357 revolver. The range was near Blacksburg and Virginia Tech and was nothing like what i was expecting. My first trip to a gun range last year in Switzerland was, in typical Swiss fashion, quite controlled. Not so in Virginia. The range was not much more than a clear area in the woods. There was no staff on-site. It was to my companions great disappointment that I brought nothing cool to shoot at. You can bring anything you want put it out on the range and fill it full of lead. Next time I am bringing my laptop.
Prior to shooting we enjoyed that Cascades in Jefferson National Forest, again this is near Blacksburg.
Cascades trail head
Waterfall on the way up the trail
The final waterfall
Now the real fun begins, the second amendment exercising. I went to a gun shop myself and bought this ammo. They were more than happy to help a foreigner buy as much ammo as he wanted, cash only. One small issue was I could only have one box of .357 ammo. Apparently after Obama's election there has been a run on .357 ammo. Just in case some liberal comes to impose universal health care on you, you are supposed to shoot them and show them how good the American health care system actually is.
A southern belle loading her shotgun
Me throwing a clay pigeon
I was deadly with this thing. I credit a misspent youth playing first person shooters. The shotgun held 5 shells, I could pretty consistently hit 3 out of 5 clay pigeons thrown one at a time.
This was the only annoying part loading the clips for the 9. One clip held 17 and the other two clips held 15. The owner of the gun let me unload the entire clip as fast as I could, that was cool. I also held it side ways al la "Hard Boiled" and didn't hit a damn thing.
The tools:
View down the range. Shooting the hand guns was fun but you got way less feed back than shooting the clay pigeons with the shotgun. When you hit the clay pigeon flushly it exploded into a thousand pieces. When you hit a can with a handgun it would ping but that was about it.
Anything goes in Virginia, an AR-15 I think.
You can see the whole set here:
