Lorikeets!

I found a whole bunch of pictures on my camera while killing time before Gator Cup starts up tomorrow... so I thought it would be fun just to share the good pictures to help with pre-tournament antsiness. There should be plenty of Gator Cup pictures coming up at the end of the weekend and if I place in the top 8, I'll also get to shoot at the USA Archery World Championship Team trials. Odds are extremely improbable given I'm doing the equivalent of going against a bunch of gun-slingers with Tae Kwon Do training by shooting a longbow against Olympic recurves, but one can hope and try, right? 

Besides wolves, coyotes, and raptors, I seem to have a bit of an affinity towards parrots too... and seems like they tend to like me, especially if I have something tasty or fun to chew on with me! And sometimes, I get to be the chew-toy, although I got lucky this time...

Lorikeets! They're an interesting type of nectar-eating parrot with tongues specifically adapted for eating nectar and act as pollinators. I don't remember what species they are though.

 Here's one posing for a nice picture.This one was more interested in investigating me than in the cup of fruit juice I had in my hand but s/he took a sip anyway before posing for more pictures with other visitors. I guess parrots can be a little vain too!

I made a new friend! This fellow here saw me with a fairly full cup and hopped onto my hand before I knew what was going on. S/he must've been really hungry because the cup certainly got emptied out! This little one here also followed me around a fair bit in the aviary while I was looking the other lorikeets.

More USIAC Pictures

All of these pictures are courtesy of the awesome Georgia Tech photographer, N. Posner, who also had a cool camera and a spiffy media vest that let him take some amazing pictures that the non-media folks couldn't quite take.

USIAC 2013... A Tale of Random Luck

Full suite of pictures here.

 The deadly trio of female barebow medalists. Wow, I'm the ogre among the three at least in build. I could probably tackle (or dead-lift or maybe even do a single push-press or a bench press) them if I wanted to...

 I really, really need to watch my eating habits and increase my physical activity a whole lot more... and I could work a lot on my form as well. I'm definitely going to have to hit the weights and WODs much more aggressively to get rid of all that blubber!

 Yes, I take a lot longer to shoot than my little apprentice...

 Whew... yeah... definitely could use a lot more CrossFit training and optimizing my nutrition even better. Heck, I should probably train like a body-builder as well to really get some real muscle in there!

 Team round with a pick-up team from University of Texas and Georgia Tech University. I think those academic hit-miss targets are a lot of fun!

Hit or miss? I actually liked going last of the three of us because I can either go snap-shooting if the first two are a bit slow or actually focus on a strong shot if the first two team-mates are fairly quick. Luckily my team-mates were pretty quick and gave me 45-55 seconds to get my two shots off.

I exploded! A really strong explosion in my back will often send my bow to the left as pinch my shoulder-blades further into my spine. Still trying to determine whether this style of release is better or if I should go for a uni-lateral "explosion" and my bow-arm scapula moving away from my spine.

I scored one of our points!