Lia was kind enough to allow me to leave the house for 48 hours, so I made the best possible use of that time. Thomas, James and I loaded up the guns and cheese puffs and headed over to East Tennessee where they surprisingly do have laws, they just choose not to enforce any of them. James' family was kind enough to let us use their land in the middle of nowhere, and even opened up their electricity-less, plumbing-less cabin for us to stay in. The perfect location to ensure that no woman would ever want to tag along.
So before everyone talks about how I am an evil person and am shirking my duties as Pippa's father, I would like to counter with two things. First, I worked on the yard for 2 hours yesterday securing it and making it Pippa safe. There was a nice big gap under the deck and Lia and I thought it may not be a good idea for Pippa to be able to get down there. Pippa may be fearless, but I'd rather not come face to face with a possum in a dark crawlspace. I also used this weekend as a seminar of sorts to see how dogs behave in the wild. To help with that, Thomas brought along his dog Lucy.
When we got to the land, James dad and brother were waiting for us. In Tennessee fashion, they were both armed as well so we thought we would begin the shooting fun. At first we were just shooting at paper targets, but I brought some Georgia shooting experience to the party. Whenever my uncle would take me shooting he would comment that "whats the point of shooting at something if you can't tell you hit it?" I agree with this and so we switched over to hanging a small log from a tree branch. Everyone in attendance was a good shot, so there wasn't much jeering or emasculation necessary. Take a look at the incredible form:
I prefer to rock the Miami lean a bit. You should be relaxed even when shooting at stuff. I'm sure Rick Ross or Pitbull have mentioned that before.
Thomas wanted to differentiate himself from the other 2 white guys with beards so he decided to bring a top hat. It was shiny and sort of matched one of the guns. It may have also helped with his balance a bit, although it did not fix the fact that he shoots with the wrong hand.
How often do you actually see camo in an environment where it is effective? The untrained eye would never realize that James actually has an entire head.
I want to get through this next part quickly because it is a point of shame for me. We didn't even think to take any pictures until it was dusk, so if anyone with authority over me is viewing these pictures please know that 99% of our shooting occurred during safer daylight hours (sorry, mom). So these next two pictures are complete flukes.. the only reason I didn't get a cool picture as well was because of the light. The iPhone camera takes a long time to focus when it is dark outside, so we couldn't time it very well. Because I am bitter that I am not included, I am just going to skip over the next two pictures.
Not bad for an iPhone camera, eh?
After we had our fill of shooting stuff (read: it got too dark for us to see if we were hitting our target) we went over and built a fire. The first started strong but we may have had a slight issue with consistency. Even with an Eagle Scout present (not me, gangs were much more popular than boy scouts in my hood, yo) we had not anticipated having to burn a bunch of scrap wood left over from some construction. The fire may have been a bit unorthodox, but it did a great job of keeping us warm and cooking our beer brats.
The next day we drove into Knoxville, had a delicious meal at the infamous Cracker Barrel, and then Thomas and James got to see their families for the afternoon. James' family adopted me for the day. We had some conversations regarding what I will suspiciously refer to as "the endeavor" and then made our way back home. I think after a weekend of manliness, I am now ready to become a puppy father... or at least closer to being ready than I was last week.
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