Rangers and Knights

After a week from hell at UF involving writing up a mock grant proposal, grading lots of papers, baby-sitting undergrads and sitting through a certain class that must've been designed by a true sadist, I decided that I needed a weekend away from all things that require more than two or three brain cells.

First was the Traditional Bowhunters of FL (TBoF) Charity shoot. I completely forgot that to compete in the Longbow division, I had to shoot wooden arrows. I took Sparrowhawk and aluminum arrows. I shot Sparrowhawk remarkably well -- 8 misses out of 40, nearly all were me shooting over the target but with a perfect (or near-perfect) line. All in all, I couldn't complain about a 240/400 -- it was cold, rainy early on, and I barely shot at all for a week. Had this little oversight not been there, I would've taken a 1st in the women's longbow division, but I'm just as happy with a 5th-6th in the recurve division -- the top three were well in the high 300s and 4th was mid 300s. It was just a blast being with my buddies, enjoying time in the woods, and shooting well for the given conditions. Here's a few "highlights" -- the rest of the pictures are posted here.





We also went to the Hogtowne Faire, which is pretty much a huge SCA/Renaissance Fair type gathering. It was a real blast seeing friends there too and just watching fun stuff like jousts and medieval combat. After running around there, we just decided to hide out at Gator Bowmen to tinker around with some really sweet little short recurves. Here's the highlights (ie, the ones my camera didn't barf up too badly):