Oh boy, it has been a whirlwind week! On Thursday I left town to do a little camping with my friends. It was my buddy Chris’ bachelor party and we decided that it would be fun to spend three days shooting at things in the forest. We brought like 20 guns and over $1500 of ammo. So, needless to say, we had a good time.
Day one: we drove up to some BLM land in the middle of BFE. We brought lots, and lots of guns. And tons of alcohol (always a good combination). And tents, and manly stuff, like steak and bacon and jerky. We went shooting in a couple of places. It was pretty rad. The highlight: practicing drive-by shooting with Chris’ illegally modified short-barreled 9mm rifle. With Gangsta Rap on. Like OGs. White and Asian OGs. When we got back to camp, after chopping some firewood, we played a fun game that I like to call: “Try to start a fire with sopping wet wood.” We lost the game. I really don’t understand how forest fires happen, I can’t light a fire to save my life. So Rob, J, and Colin drove into town to get dry firewood and some DuraFlame logs, while Chris and I stayed back to practice catching hypothermia. Once we finally got the fire going we ate sausages roasted over an open flame, like real men. Then we smoked pipes and toasted Chris while taking turns taking swigs from a bottle of moonshine. J took a massive pull off the bottle to finish it off. We drank the bottle down in about fifteen minutes, which is better than it sounds considering it tasted like rubbing alcohol mixed with sorghum. J was pretty drunk, which led to the quote of the evening, “I got invited to the bad kind of threesome, two dudes and a guy”.
Day two: went back into town for more supplies. It was my goal to make something blow up. I bought a can of propane, a can of aerosol starter fluid, a flare, and something called “Fire Paste”. First I lit the Fire Paste and set the propane can in front of it. I sniped it from about 100 yards with a 30-06 that Rob brought. The can flew 60 yards. Towards us. The Fire Paste wasn’t able to withstand the explosion. Next I set up a lit road flare. I tried shooting the can of lighter fluid from 100 yards, but was having trouble hitting it, so Chris took a shot. It blew way the fuck up. The rocks around where it had been sitting continued to burn for ten minutes. I walked over and shot the can with a 12 gauge just to make sure it was dead. Then we played some fun and completely unsafe games involving skeet. (The kind you shoot. With guns. Like the orange clay things, shit, get your mind out of the gutter…) It was fun, cause we got to do all of the things that we normally get kicked off of the shooting range for trying. We went back to camp and grilled up some steaks over the fire before packing up.
Day two point five: We drove back home to see a movie with Alex. We saw “Street Kings”. Worst. Movie. Ever. I promise. It’s 109 minutes of my life that I’ll never have back. So, of course, Chris loved it. Which is all that really mattered. We kicked my girlfriend out of our condo, and crashed there. And then I got up four hours later and got ready for my flight to New Orleans.
New Orleans was interesting, I’ll give it that. I’m not sure what was so “new” about it. It was a giant tourist trap, and really overpriced. Nevertheless, I got to see live jazz, got drunk off my ass, and bought souvenirs. So I can’t really complain. They had a bunch of cool art galleries that never seemed to be open. The one thing I was disappointed about: there is only one kind of food in New Orleans. Creole. If you don’t want a bowl of all of the primary foodgroups stirred together into some type of mushy stew, too bad, that’s what you get. And, I know somebody is going to hate me for this, but I just have to say: I totally understand why the city hasn’t really been rebuilt, three years post Katrina. The people there seem quite comfortable living in slums and abandoned buildings. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice. And also lazy, trashy, and gross. Good to see the money I donated helped so much.
