Alaskan Adventures- Part 1

Ok so I'm not shooting in Alaska, but my mom and stepdad moved up here this past year so I popped up for a visit and I HAVE to tell you all about it...mostly because you're my captive audience but it's also A-mazing!

So they live in a small town called Kasilof (Kah-see-loff) which is on the Kenai Peninsula in South-Centural Alaska. The cabin is situated on a lake, not that you can see it for the 2.5 FEET of ice and a dusting of snow covering it. Let's bactrack, shall we? So I was picked up from the Anchorage airport around 9pm so we were on the highway LATE at night. I was half asleep when all of a sudden Doug (stepdad) slams on the breaks and says, "MOOSE!" He backs up to shine the lights on it and there, nonchalantly munching on a tree is the biggest (and only) bull moose I've ever seen! (picture somewhere). Down the road we also so a cow and calf pair and let me tell you, those things look odd. The best way I can describe them is a draft horse body and a camel head. They've got to be 6 feet tall at the shoulder like a Clydesdale, just big animals. The picture quality isn't that great because, although I love you all, I just wasn't willing to jump out of the car to get Goliath Moose's attention to tell him to smile for the folks at home. I'm telling you, I could comfortably take a nap in this guy's antlers, if only he'd let me without later trampling me.


I wish I had gotten a picture, and I will on the next clear night, but the stars; oh my goodness the stars! I've never been able to see so many stars in my entire life, I mean, you could see the stars between stars and Orion's full bow! Did you even know he had a bow?! I sure didn't!


Mom and I took a tour around the neighboring town of Soldotna (Sole-dot-na) and had lunch at this great pizza place called Pizza Boy's. Highly recommended if ever you come to Soldotna. Apparently, the landfill is somewhere along the highway which is marked by tons of bald eagles overhead. I guess the locals don't really like the eagles because they pick up bags of garbage and drop them on the highways and things in an attempt to break them open and get to the rancid goodies inside. Nothing in the back of a pick-up is safe either. Also along the way to Soldotna is the Kasilov River which is this great milky, ice blue. I'll try to get a better picture but the one I have just doesn't do it justice. To give you an idea of what it looks like, I've added a photo to this post, it'll be the only photo of a river.

Doug is the principal of Tustumena (Tus-too-meen-ah) Elementary School where I was show-and-tell. I was asked some pretty great questions including but not limited to, "Are you ever going to have kids?" Not at this moment kiddo, but thanks for asking. After school, it was time for some shooting fun with the Southern Chapter of the Kenai Peninsula Man Club. Sounds official, doesn't it? In reality, it's a group of teachers and principals who live in Soldotna and Kasilof (which is south of Soldotna, hence the "southern chapter") who go out and do "man things" while my mom is instructing their wives' Zumba class. Anyway, I had the rare honor of being invited to Man Club so they could teach me a thing or two about shooting. It was a great time with the old manual target thrower machine. That's got to be my favorite part about shooting, it's a tight-knit community that can strike up friendships because of this one passion in common. Good stuff, good stuff. We have yet to investigate Homer (the land of eagles, so I've heard so expect pictures) and maybe even a Kenai River Brown Bears hockey game! So consider this "Part 1" as there will be more pictures of the wonderful place called Alaska!

Things I love about Alaska:

     - The people. The people are all so down-to-earth here! There are no telltale signs of whether people have money or not; no class system; just people. I can dig that.
     - The scenery. Enough said.
     - Have I mentioned the awesome people??

Things I could live without about Alaska

     -The cold. If you're standing out for a long time, for instance while participating in Man Club, everything goes numb if you aren't wearing the correct clothing. I was in a lot of layers on the top, but only had jeans on my legs...dumb move, missy, dumb move. My legs burned with cold. My face went numb to the point that I felt like a had to really talk big to force my mouth to form actual words. Ever get numbed by the dentist? Yep, just like that but your entire face.

I'm sure I'll continue to add to this list, but the "loves" certainly outnumber the "could live withouts"!

I made friends with a demanding squirrel who insisted I should be feeding him and promptly leaving after doing so instead of taking pictures without his permission.

2008 World Cup Suhl, Germany

Next, we travel to Suhl, Germany. The interesting thing about this range is that this is where they moved the shooting sports after the attack on the Israeli Olympic Team (later called the Munich Massacre) by Palestinian members of Black September  at the '72 Olympics in Munich. We did end up back in Munich but that won't happen for a year or so. For now, we're in Suhl.

We were there in June which was just in time for a festival. To this day, I don't know what they were celebrating, but do they know how to have a party! There were canons, yes, CANONS being shot right outside our hotel. Of course, they were just burning powder charges but the blast was enough to set off every car alarm in the vicinity. How do I know? Well, Caitlin (my roommate) and I were walking back to the hotel and were too distracted to realize where we were walking. We had gone right passed the universal, orange "Don't pass this point, you idiot tourist" sign and ended up directly behind the men discharging the canons. The canons in question were so loud, it took me a second to hear the car alarms going off behind me. I looked up to see that all of the official "string pullers" (because I don't know what else to call them) had their earplugs in, but Caitlin and I were out of luck on that one. Men and women were in  traditional dresses and lederhosen and beer flowed freely as long as you were of age. They had bouncers checking ID's in all the beer tents.

The town was one of those small, chapel in the center kind of towns. We ate at the same tavern every day (talk about creatures of habit) and I can't be certain, but I think I ate reindeer on one occasion. If that's what it was, I highly recommend it! One thing I noticed about the German portions is that they can feed two hungry people per serving. Either they were amazed at all of us ordering our own meal or those Germans scan really put it away. I absolutely loved the food there. It was so flavorful that you couldn't overeat. It was like you only keep eating to get more of the flavor, but here that wasn't an issue. The streets were all brick and cobblestone and no cars were really allowed inside. That's one thing I like about Europe, no cars are allowed in the town square...and they have a town square! We spent most of our free time wandering around town trying to find something that looked authentically German with little luck. Everything was pretty much the same as it is in the States as far as trinket stuff. If you're looking for authenticity, go way out of town and find villages if you have time and if you don't, as is my case usually, just shop at the airport. I know, I know, but it's not like any of these places are still in the dark ages, we're all about the same. Heck, I saw a Ford dealership in Slovenia, but that's coming up later. Point is, we're all industrialized and have the same brands. Although, Americans really stick out in these places because we're the only ones who wear T-shirts. Looking down the street, it's really easy to spot my teammates because they'll be the only ones in a hat and T-shirt. Everyone else is just a half step up wearing at least a jacket.

Here in Suhl, I had what I would deem the most embarrassing moment of my life a the tender age of.....16? Not quite 17? Young, in any case. You've met my roommate, Caitlin? Yeah, well we wanted to go get some gelato, which if you don't know, is better than ice cream. Our teammates, Sean and Frank knew where a gelato stand was, so I asked Caitlin what room they were staying in so I could ask where this place was. She told me and I dialed the phone and Sean answered, but didn't really say anything intelligible, just muttered, laughed and hung up the phone. Oh, I know he didn't just hang up on me! So I redial and get the same thing! What a jerk! I'm frustrated at this point because I really want gelato and now it's a matter of honor so I walk my little self down to their room and give it the age old, "you better open this door now or you're in trouble" kind of knock. You know, the knock, knock, knock, knock, KNOCK kind of knock? That would be the time that the door opened to reveal, not Sean, but two of the junior Ukrainian skeet shooters. The one who answered the door was obviously the same one who answered the phone because he looked horrified as he waited for his impending doom. I jumped back searching for words when his roommate peeked out from the back of the room saying, "Come in, come in!" and I stammered something like, "Umm...uhh....wrong room!" Meanwhile, Caitlin is standing back at our room in hysterics as she realized she'd given me the incorrect room number. Now, one of my many flaws is my propensity for public embarrassment to boil into rage in the matter of half second. I marched back to my room and pulled Caitlin in with me, asking if she knew the whole time that she was setting me up for failure, like it was the Spanish Inquisition. Needless to say, I wasn't in the mood for gelato after that, but Caitlin felt so bad that she went and got the boys and brought me back some gelato. From that day forward, I would be known as "Min Pin". Some people still call me that but, thankfully, the story as fallen in the ranks of other old stories pulled out only once in a while.

Let's move on to the range. The range was fairly small with a green tree background. To signal the end of the round (because it wasn't obvious enough by shooting the last target) the field would play, "London Bridges". At any one time "London Bridges" could be heard on 3 fields at once. The countryside was what really impressed me. Instead of fences dividing fields, tree lines had been either planted or left. If you've seen Band of Brothers, it looks just like the movie with an open field bordered by two thin tree lines. The country is so old, I couldn't help imagining all that the earth had seen. We had time one day to go up into the mountains to a glass blowing place. This shop had been handed down for generations. The current owner was using the same table that his grandfather had built 100 or more years ago. We watched him make a small elephant with a palm tree, and various orbs. It was so interesting to see it done the old way in a small cabin on an old table.

 I ended up not shooting too bad for a rookie, but not making the final. I think I ended up with a 65 or something. Suhl has probably been one of my most favorite trips so far. If you get the chance to go there, take it. It's a great place with so much history.

Puerto Rico Training Camp- Dec. 2012

Day 1

God was really on the ball today getting me to each flight when it seemed impossible. I went to the wrong airline at check-in and had quite a little walk to the correct desk, which lost me some time right out of the gate. Then, the security lines were really long, but a nice TSA agent tipped me off that the next station over would probably be shorter. The other side of the coin, however, left me on a long walk back to my gate. A weather delay prevented me from being late. 4.5 bumpy hours later I ended up in not at all sunny Atlanta. The delay left me with only 20 minutes to get from A to E gates, and Atlanta happens to be GIGANTIC. Thank goodness for their train system that got me there just in time to…not board? Another weather delay! The time passed quickly with my teammates and we were back to brothers and sisters again. When we finally boarded the plane to San Juan, Puerto Rico it took another 3.5 hours to arrive. I watched The Bourne Legacy the whole time (not complaining) but as a side note, what the heck was that ending?! It just BAM ended!! Ok I’m done on that subject…*shakes head, clearly still thinking about it.

We were supposed to have two houses on a beach or a lagoon of some kind but that fell through. We ended up with one apartment and one beach house. So 7, I say again, SEVEN girls took over the three-bedroom, two bath apartment. I opted for the futon couch in the living room to make things even and it turns out to be surprisingly comfortable!

Our digs are situated on a golf course, which explains the miscellaneous golf clubs and old golf shoes in the closet. If we get bored (unlikely with SEVEN 20-something women) fear not! We’ve got board games in another closet!

Day 2

Well it’s a beautiful and HOT day. Hot for me anyway, it’s got to be 70-something. We ended up at the range around 10 and it looks like their whole Olympic Complex. After we passed the guard station, we took this winding road around a track, high dive, and other event sites. The whole place is covered in green hills (almost mountain status) and it kind of reminds me of a green Colorado or Northern Wyoming. The backdrop for our shooting was a great big hill with brown-green grass that made it very difficult to see the target. We all agreed that this is one of the most difficult ranges that we’ve shot on yet as far as visibility, which makes it a great training range! We got a solid day of practice in with some of the Puerto Rican team and it turned out to be a good day. Apparently, there are iguanas running around here, but I have yet to see one. That’s my mission: catch an iguana. Why? I’ve never seen one in the wild. Now that I think about it that might not be such a good idea more on that later.

For lunch, we went to a little kabob place that served the BEST BBQ chicken kabobs I’ve ever had in my entire life! There had to be two chicken breasts worth of chicken on one stick! A-MAZING!!! Definitely going back there every single day!

After the range we did some shopping…grocery shopping. Burgers and games at the guys’ “fish camp” as we called it. This place was in the middle of a small, and what appeared to be a poorer part of town. The “lagoon” it is situated on is more like overflow but it would make a great bachelor pad or fishing camp. Now that they’ve figured out how to pump their water, they may have a hot shower…poor guys. We finished up the fun late tonight and are looking forward to another great training day tomorrow. And finding an iguana. Must find an iguana.

The outdoor bathrooms at Fish CampThe team at Fish Camp

Blue Crap caught while fishing at Fish Camp...they were looking for fish...but this works too!

Day 3

Another day in paradise and the same schedule. Wake up; get 7 women through the shower and out the door by 9:45 and at the range by 10. Yesterday, the skeet shooters had to shoot on the range that required a bit of a walk so we were really happy today when our coach said that we would be shooting the range closest to our vehicles where we had made our base camp. We’ve been practicing the new target sequence that will be enforced in 2013 and I must say, braking 8-year-old habits is no easy task! I still need reminders when I need to get off the station, at which point my teammates kindly say, “Get off!!!” Thanks guys!

In other news, I saw my iguana!!! They’re fast little guys so I couldn’t catch it, though. I was waiting for my turn and looking at a low hanging tree branch when I saw a small pair of eyes staring back at me. When we made eye contact and I really started studying this little baby iguana, he started glaring and slowly unfolded his bright red throat flap. This gesture made me not want to attempt to pick him up at first but once I broke eye contact when I stepped back, he was gone. I saw two other small lizards but I don’t know what kind they were. Will try again tomorrow.

After practice, we had time to sit by the pool before getting ready for dinner at the Fish Camp with the boys.  The coach and a few team members of the Puerto Rican team came as well and we had a great time talking about the intricacies of the brain and eyes in relation to shooting and life while some fished. Someone even caught a blue crab! I’d never seen one in real life before, but apparently they can be found in Puerto Rico in a mango grove!

Tomorrow’s range day will include a 50 target + final match AND an all around match where we will all shoot 25 skeet and 25 trap targets. We’ve been hearing about this great beach that is just out of our reach with longer practice days. Our coach says that our ticket to that beach is at least one perfect score throughout the competition.  Let the games begin!

Day 4

I’ll spare you the “woke up, ate breakfast…” bit and assume we all know the process that got us to the range. We had a few rounds to practice before we started our 50 target + final match. Last night, some of the Puerto Rican guys offered to take us to an island not far from Fish Camp that is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous. Our ticket to go was a perfect score throughout the day. Another thing mentioned was an iguana hunt. Apparently, the things are like rodents here so it’s open season. O. My. Goodness. BUT the ticket was the same price as the island: a perfect score. So we started our practice and I started off with a 24 and a 22 in practice. Close, but no cigar. Up comes the match and I shoot another pair of 24s. How frustrating! One of my teammates shot his iguana hunt-qualifying round in his first practice round! What a little twerp! I ended up winning the skeet match after the final and a 2 target shoot-off. Then it was time for the All Around match! After waiting what seemed like 2 and a half days for the trap shooters to finish their finals. The new changes in the way finals are shot will make for some long days in 2013!

Trap went pretty well for us not using our own guns and only having shot trap a few times in our careers. The top score was 18/25 and both my other teammate and I brought up the rear with 17s . Trap is so repetitive that we didn’t know how many targets we’d shot half the time and were all surprised when it was over. The trap shooters. Oh the trap shooters. Bless their little hearts, the trap shooters. Let me say that it’s a lot easier to learn how to sit still when you’re used to moving (skeet shooters shooting trap) than it is to learn how to move when you’re used to sitting still (trap shooters shooting skeet). We had a ball picking on each other while they were shooting and trying their best to master an International Skeet mount. In this mount, the shooter must start the butt of the gun at the hip and only break from that line when the target comes out. This is difficult to learn anyway, but when you’ve trained yourself to mount the gun before you call for the target and remain as still as possible and to have your head on the stock in a certain way, it is very frustrating to learn out to throw the gun up and pull the trigger. Not to mention the targets whiz by at what must seem like warp speed to someone who is used to watching targets go away from them vs. across the field. It was great fun and, although we were supposed to shoot a perfect score to earn a trip to the island, our coach went easy on us and we all get to go tomorrow…probably because only one person shot that perfect score. I really wanted to go on that iguana hunt but only 4 people can go. It was postponed today because it was only about 70 degrees and overcast, too cold for the iguanas to be out. We’ll try again on Saturday and hopefully I’ll be able to go as well.

Dinner tonight was interesting because we ate in a pirate ship. Yes, a pirate ship. The entire place was the shell of a gigantic ship with a stage AND a mechanical bull! Unfortunately, the bull wasn’t on but there was a nice 8 foot pirate snowman for the freezing temperatures of 70 degrees above 0 *insert eyebrows rising. One of my teammates said that a Puerto Rican mentioned to her that when the temperatures reach 70 degrees the schools close because those are winter temperatures. I’m thinkin’ I’ll trade you winter for winter straight across and I’ll even through in some rain! Any way, dinner. So we’re at dinner and this place runs on island time. 4 of us split a big platter that turned out to be *ehem: ½ chicken, ½ rack ribs, 1 pound steak, at least ¼ pound fried onion straws AND a plate of French fries. Yeah, we were full. And don’t forget the nacho appetizer! With all that food, I’m glad we got in early. It’s been a long couple of nights with an early day tomorrow so we have time for another match and the island!

Day 5

Today was a short day because…..we’re going to the island today!!! All we had to shoot was 4 rounds but we had to be at the range and shooting by 8 so that we could be back to the Fish Camp by 1. The boat was going to pick us all up there and sure enough, there it was! Our coaches stayed behind for some quiet time and I can’t blame them one bit. One of the Puerto Rican shooters (2012 Double Trap Olympian) knew a guy with a boat and set it all up and he went with us to make sure everything went smoothly. About a 10-minute boat ride away, there was paradise. 

A small island covered in lush trees and a small beach since it was high tide. I was imagining a monstrous, white sand beach with a town, but this was more like an island that someone would be marooned on and not mind it. The sand was coarse and the water had to be 75-80 degrees, which the Puerto Ricans assured us would be freezing. Sorry Charlie, but I’m a Washington girl and if it’s warmer than 40 degree glacier water then it’s warmer than anything I’ve been in! It was only after we had returned to the main island that it dawned on me. I had sat in the Caribbean Sea!! Our host and captain asked if any of us wanted to go on a boat ride and only 4 of us stepped up. That little boat took off like a bullet! We had to be going 25-30 knots! They took us to an even smaller grouping of islands where they like to go. The water was calm between them but the current was swift so we swam around and chatted for a while and then headed back to gather the others and head back in seeing as it’d been 4 or 5 hours since we’d left shore. They even let me drive the boat back! I was cautious because it wasn’t my boat and I didn’t want to waste his fuel or anything until he reached over and hit the gas and we did 30 knots all the way back to the rest of the group.

We got back and started telling stories to our coaches about a million miles an hour like little kids after their first day of school. They finally shut us up long enough to ask if we were hungry and, come to think of it, yes, we were all starving! The Puerto Ricans knew of another little hole in the wall that supposedly made the best food and boy were they right! This little place was a bar and restaurant with a dock so you could just tie on and come in for lunch and a drink and be on your way again, or you could be a square and drive up. I had one of the best burgers I’ve had in a long time. One thing about these guys is that they don’t put seasoning on top of their food, they put seasoning in their food so you don’t have to do anything to it and it works! We stayed there and played darts, talked and ate until we all got tired and headed back to the apartment. Of course, placing bets on whether or not our horse would be on his corner where he always was when we passed at a certain time of night. He was.

Day 6

Today was the first match day. We shot 75 targets with the Puerto Rican team to fill out their world cup team selection match. I shot a 25, 24, and a 23 for a 72, which also took the high score for the day! We will shoot another 50 targets and a final tomorrow but that 25 got me a ticket for the iguana hunt!!!!!!! That was the perfect recipe for one excited Jaiden! Me, two of my teammates who also shot 25’s and my two coaches who reluctantly (wink) agreed to fill in the space headed out with more Puerto Ricans in their Jeeps to their favorite iguana hunting territory. It was just outside of town, down a dirt road where everyone dumped their unwanted furniture. Lots of tall trees and long grass and bugs. Lots and LOTS of bugs. The ones that bite and itch like crazy! It wasn’t long before we found our first victim sunning in the very top branches of a tree. Where else would you find sun, right? My teammate got the pellet rifle out and took the dinosaur. I was surprised at how big they are! The thing had to be 2 ½ feet long from head to tail and they said he was small. O goodness. We kept finding them in the trees ranging from yellow, orange, red, and green on the legs, belly and beard; beautiful, in that scaly prehistoric lizard kind of way. 

The one I got was a bit bigger around and dang near as long as I am tall. It was a pipsqueak in comparison to my other teammate’s iguana. That sucker was massive!! As I was talking with one of our guides, I learned that iguanas are an invasive species to Puerto Rico, brought here as pets that grew too large and were released. They have no natural predators on the island and when they lay their 80-odd eggs they all hatch and flourish, hence, the open season on hunting them. They can climb, swim, and run like the dickens. If you corner one, watch out for that tail because that’s their weapon of choice if there’s nowhere to run or climb. From what I’ve heard, iguana tastes like chicken, but more tender, juicy and flavorful. Tasty. I’ll talk their word for it.

Day 7

Match day 2 and our last day at the range here in Puerto Rico. I was a complete idiot and ate a lot of bread, including but not limited to half of a Krispy Kreme that someone spoiled us with, and my blood sugar was so out of whack it left me anxious, paranoid, and ready to pass out at any moment on the field. My eyes could catch the bird, but my brain was too fried to send the signal to my hands so I got out of there with a 21 on the first round and a 23 after a few hours and my body calmed down a bit. That made me tied for first with my teammate and one ahead of the other. That didn’t matter going into the final, however, because we start at 0 according to the new rules. I ended up taking 3^rd overall, which is fine with me even though it’s last place in our group.

The Puerto Ricans made a big spread for lunch today: fried turkey, fried pork, and fried breadfruit. The breadfruit tasted like a sweet potato to me, but it’s more like a fried plantain. They peeled the fruit, chunked it up, fried it, let it cool, squished it, and fried it again. The result was a round, flat, crispy, soft chip of sorts. Add a big pile of rice with black beans and it was one heck of a meal! These people really know how to cook! And it was the men that prepared the meal!

 Dang Puerto Ricans kept spoiling us with treats.

Once everyone was done with lunch it was time for the traditional baseball game in the field behind the clubhouse. A Puerto Rican and American captain were chosen and the teams were decided. The wives and children of the Puerto Rican shooters played as well. The kids had been looking forward to it all week and had been practicing during our training days. I played the role of photographer since I’d had a bad cold all week and didn’t want to aggravate my cough. The game was a fun one to watch with people yelling in Spanish, English, and sometimes both. We didn’t play for score, but everyone knew what it was, of course not that any of us are competitive. It was great to see these people, most of whom strangers at the beginning of the week, playing baseball like they’ve known each other for years. It warmed my heart hearing the Laughter at strikeouts and giving second chances, cheering on the younger kids, and dads encouraging from the outfield in another language. That’s why I love this sport so much. It’s the impenetrable bond that comes from having this one thing in common: a passion for shooting. We may not get along every moment of every day or agree on where to go for dinner, but if one of us gets into trouble, the others would jump into the fight without hesitation. And friends made on one trip overseas will be friends every time you visit common countries. We will always go over to the Puerto Rican tent to say hello to our new friends until we’re old friends. That’s just the way this sport is. And it’s all thanks to the love of sport.