Sighting In Anduril Reforged

Something tells me I need to sleep in a better position at night after having a great practice session interrupted by a cranky left shoulder.

 Not sure exactly what this bug is but it looked extra cool as I was going into the training facility.  I like huge bugs as long as they're not crawling on me or my food!

 Home sweet home! Now if there was some way to spend more time there and actually train without having a 100+ mile round trip every time I go there.. or if the cesspool of a town I live in will learn to be logical and put up an actual target archery range somewhere accessible with reasonable hours!  Alas they seem to really favor the overglorified team "sports" that interfere with all things academic and turn the majority into blubbering idiots that understand no logic and only seek to destroy all that is good and holy as well as turn the fall semester into a living nightmare. 

 Anduril reforged, awaiting testing to see how much of a change will be required in my sight settings.

 I was also hoping to do more work with ArcherZUpshot, an amazing software package that may be a little hard on my phone but has lots of amazing analysis and tracking tools.  Kudos to the Slacks for their impressive efforts to create this wonderful app - both Marc for doing all the coding and debugging and Fern for being the person to pique my curiosity in the first place as well as just being an all-around great person to correspond with!

I'm mostly sighted in... and then not long after that, my left shoulder decided it wanted to be a real butt-head and I didn't even train that hard... just a few simple scaled-down workouts and a bit of longbow work yesterday.

Visit to Old Roots

Sometimes I do shoot the longbow just to mix things up a bit... and apparently the Olympic recurve has helped even if I do miss using the clicker! I was at 18 meters (20 yds) for the bulk of the day.

Anduril Reforged

Unfortunately I'm still shooting cooked spaghetti noodle shafts... but I haven't lost any speed despite dropping to a not-so-spectacular 41 lbs @ 28". 

Poom Belt: One Step Closer!

I got my Pom Poom belt in Taekwondo! Taegeuk Pal-Jang was one heck of a form, especially remembering to make sure my feet were parallel in my inverted front stances and when to use tiger stance vs back stance.  And then there were my crescent kicks... including breaking a 1" pine board with what my instructors referred to as a "Tornado kick" which was pretty much an outside-in crescent kick that turned into a JUMPING outside-in crescent kick. Talk about brutal - but I will take that kick over back hook kick any day!

 This was prior to the test, where I donned my high red belt one last time. I enjoyed my run with the high red belt but now it's time for Pom Poom belt! It's the equivalent of me getting ready to really bolt down on my basics and work on my calisthentics!

 Here's the board and the certificate that I am now officially a Poom belt! That tornado kick took a few tries to do it - apparently my center of gravity likes to hang back even if everything else in the kick went well!

 And here's to our newly promoted Tae Kwon Do folks! We had a lot of kids at our graduation event but those kids are every bit as deadly as the adults, if not *more* so!

 That's me after the action with my brand new Poom belt. Now to remember to keep the black part of the belt on top and the red part on the bottom!

 My brain is jello... but I figure I can have some fun posing in my version of a kicking stance!

 Me and two of the guys, including Instructor A, who has grown quite a bit and is quite the instructor as well as the all-around deadly one!

And now Instructor S has also joined us! One day I'll join the ranks of Instructor A and Instructor S, not necessarily as an instructor, but as someone who can be just as deadly with hands and feet as well as the bow! 

Irresistibly Cute Stress Relief

Warning: if you're ophiophobic, look away now!

 I got to handle a pastel lesser platinum phase of ball python. I gotta admit, there's just something amazing about handling scaled, slithering pest control!

 I also got to have some fun with a very friendly normal phase hog-nose snake. He's pretty well-fed so he doesn't have the food/prey drive and I have to admit, he's a lot of fun to handle!

All in all, I still favor handling wolves because they are a whole lot more cuddly, but snakes are fun too!

Stress Relief Before Going into Mordor

Working on aiming small and mental focus at 18 meters indoors.  I have yet to master the art of the 5 spot target but it's getting there. First things first though - need to get my 70 meter game but with limited time (read: I have a boatload to grade!) indoor is better than nothing!