Working out on the range...

We jokingly refer to this past summer as The Lost Summer.  With my main gal and I both in the education business, summer is our time to kick back, enjoy, travel, shoot vacation, shoot, fix, paint, dig, clean, and all those other things that we can't do during the school year.

Starting summer off with a major surgery and finishing it with another surgery to remove my first experience with a kidney stone... not much except keepin' on with keepin' on was accomplished during the past three months.  The surgeon and family doctor finally gave the green light to go back to work and start exercising again about two weeks ago and along with that... all those things that haven't been getting done are now starting to get done.

Some of you folks who stop by regularly may have noticed my twice per week posting has dropped down to once a week, but I'm trying to keep up with little items on the Facebook page and there is so much to catch up on.  My little gal has begun  her senior year of high school and her varsity tennis season with matches to watch.  I've also been back at exercising and working out each morning before work and getting after yard chores.  Guns have been getting a real workout instead of daily dry-firing and all my John Deere buddies in the barn are glad to see me again too.

We have two shooting ranges on our property and the gals and I began a project last spring to re-configure our fifty-yard range with the covered shooting line into a fifty foot pistol range with a horse-shoe shaped berm that would allow us more "tactical" and "practical" type of shooting practice such as setting up IDPA-type scenarios and conducting the range portion of my NRA/CCW courses with complete safety while engaging multiple targets at various angles.

Hurricane Isaac's remnants never seemed to completely arrive here in southwest Ohio except a few sprinkles and the weather folks had predicted six to eight inches of rain this weekend.  With decent weather, we've been hard at it all weekend finishing our shooting range changes and upgrades.  I figure with a little luck, decent weather and about two weeks we'll be finished... oh, and about thirty-five to forty more tons of washed, number eight gravel.

We've had a lot of excavation and drainage work on the property this summer, especially with the shooting range back-stop/berm construction.  There's still an acre or two of field and a lot of filled in drainage trenches that need tilled up and planted back to grass.  We're all pretty excited to get it finished and enjoy one of our favorite past-times.  When it's done, we'll be blessed with one of the coolest, private, covered, out-door pistol ranges around that should offer shaded, dry shooting... well, at least the gals and I think so.

We hope you and yours are staying safe and enjoying this three-day weekend, but as for us... it's time to call it a day... and it's been a long, very hot day... Working out on the range...