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2005 Canadian National Championship
This trip borders on light insanity - at least as far as driving and making four major matches into one trip goes.
| This trip started out driving with the Clark family from Denver to Quincy to compete at the US Nationals. After a week of good times at the Barry range, I was supposed to drive with my good Swedish/Canadian/Polish friend Mats and Swedish/Canadian buddy Fabian to Toronto. At least that was the plan. Unfortunately they couldn't come so an alternative plan had to be made while we shot in Barry. After a thoroughly celebrated banquet, I was lucky enough to catch a ride with Mike and Phil up to the Canadian border in Windsor, Canada. We made the trip up there on Sunday night. From there, the easiest solution was for me to take the Greyhound @ 2am from Windsor. I wish I'd taken pictures, sitting at the busstop. I had my clothes, guns, bullets, powder and everything I needed for a six weeks trip laying spread out on the ground . I ended up sleeping on my stuff to make sure none of the characters around would steal it. It was a pretty shacky Greyhound bus stop.. At 6 am I rolled in to Toronto. |
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Mats and I stayed in Toronto for a week, practicing, working on equipment and getting ready for the match. Mats, Mike Lao and I drove his minivan from Toronto to Fredricton, New Brunswick; about 2,500 miles from home. New Brunswick reminds me of Norway; beautiful open spaces, somewhat barren, but serene and peaceful. We stayed in a little shacky motel outside of town for the four days we were there. The match itself was pretty good. The most difficult thing to get used to was dealing with 10 round magazines. In the beginning I did too many reloads, shaking my head at myself as I ran through the courses. After a while I started really liking it. When I was competing with a single stack .45 in '91-92, I truly enjoyed all the reloads. It provides a different challenge that we've lost with our 28 round HICRAP. Knowing you have 11 rounds in the gun and be required to fire 9-10 precise shots from a position dictates a discipline lost in today's game. |
| Canadians are great people and I had the best of times while I was there. Saturday night we all got together at a friend's Caboose for a big BBQ. Alex and Doni was there, Auger, Mike Burrrell, Josko, Nick, Terry Maxwell,, Mike Lao, Mats, Jose Silva and a few other people. Thanks to Burrell we had pictures to commemorate the evening.
Mats and I was supposed to fly down to Ecuador about a week after the match, but we ended up staying in Toronto which was fun for me. This was my first trip to Canada so I got to see downtown Toronto, and Mats, Doni, Alex and Mike's local shooting ranges. Even got to have some fun at the local weekend matches.
Good times, good times... May have to do this again... ;-)
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