Breakfast

Try a Scottish omelette. Haggis, hash browns, egg, and jack cheese. Delicious.

Exercise

That which doesn't kill me... yeah, yeah. The approach matters. Last weekend was supposed to be 2 bike rides, one of 22 miles and one of 7 which all together would visit 4 craft breweries. This is like finding those health boost boxes in a Doom game. 29 total miles, 4 beers and half an hour rest at each stop.

Didn't happen. Instead we got 8 inches of snow which makes for dicey bicycling, even with snow tires.

This weekend I tried a makeup ride. By way of prep I had Mexican breakfast of 2 eggs, Chorizo, potatoes, and green chili topping. Your heart starts slowing down just reading the menu at El Tejado. 5 cups of coffee counteracts this. Leaving my house, 16 miles up to Great Divide Barrel Bar, 2 beers, and back. Worked out pretty good. I only needed 45 minutes of unconsciousness when I got home to resume normal functions.

Great Divide had only just opened when I got there so no crowds. The Roadie Grapefruit Radler really hit the spot, thirst quenching, refreshing, vitamin C and 4% ABV which is about all I want. The Velvet Yeti Nitro Stout is a nice main course as well at 6% ABV and very smooth.

Anticapitalism - Drinking

Colorado by any standard seems to fall in the middle of any sorting method. Average everything and our liquor laws are no exception. We retain about half of the prohibition regulations left over from the 20's and the purveyors of drink seem to control which ones.

A bill was recently introduced to allow our 140+ craft breweries and 50 or so craft distilleries to open 2 additional tap rooms each at locations remote from the originating facility. This has been shot down mostly through pressure from restaurants and bars who note that the tap rooms, which would feature only in-house products, wouldn't have to jump through as many hoops as the full-service places. Tap rooms for example don't have to serve food. Most of them have a food truck that visits the place and pizza and other delivery services advertise in them.

The Official Reason for killing this is that the expected 380(+/-) new businesses would require the services of 3 additional state employees at an aggregate cost of some $160K/yr. Like these places wouldn't generate $420/ea/yr in taxes.

When the right to conduct business is controlled by politicians, the first thing bought and sold is the politicians.

Glock Bulge Buster 2

I ran 200 cases using the rig shown 2 posts below and had 6 cases refuse to go through the die. Thinking about that it would seem that pushing the cases through this kind of resizing open end up might tend to force the bulge down without pushing it in plus balancing the cases on the pusher makes for a difficult time trying to hit the die mouth so I tried something different.

Note that the new pusher is nothing but a .38 super brass fitted normally into the shell holder. The open end of the shell is tapered from being pushed into the .40 shells placed over it.

The shells feed into the die much more easily and the bulge is forced the opposite direction from before eliminating the possibility of developing a wrinkle. Finished shells pop out the top of the die as before.

Like I said, I don't shoot 9mm from a Glock so I have no brass problems with this BUT it seems like doing this to your 9mm brass before doing the usual size-and-decap would probably reduce any Glock bulge to manageable proportions.

QOTD - Trump Derangement Syndrome

Found on Insty:

“You know, I’m honestly starting to think that Trump has actually driven a lot of people to madness.” Well, to be fair, most of them were close enough to walk.
                                                                  Second sentence from Glenn Reynolds

 Reminiscent of the classic reference to the $.50 cab ride.

May Day

Here we are again at that iconic holiday celebrated the world over for different reasons, some better than others. The older and more light-hearted version goes

Hurrah Hurray
The first of May
Outdoor f*****g
starts today.

Your climate may vary. This year around here while most of the 7-12" of snow we got 2 days ago has melted, the water saturating the ground is only a couple of degrees warmer than the remaining snow.

In the last 100 years or so May 1 has become an excuse to skip work and carry red banners denouncing the dehumanizing effects of working. By contrast, remember the successes of the capitalists, who recognize the humanizing effects of eating regularly and sleeping indoors, at the Battle of Berkley and the 2017 D.C. inauguration. Try this in consideration :
  
Hurrah Hurray
The first of May
Bash a Commies
head today.

Some of the participants in the inauguration are complaining that after dutifully following the lead of some shadowy Fearless Leader had gone out to beat people and break things, are finding themselves on the wrong end of federal anti-rioting charges, looking at 1-3 years in the Federal joint, and seem to  have been hung out to dry with no one in a position to order the justice department to stand down to help them.

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: First Series

 Nice sentiment in the right context. Seems however that Mencken was unaware that a major religion had already incorporated this into their fundamental doctrine.

Glock Bulge Buster

Brass fired from Glocks frequently exhibits a bulge near the base which can cause problems later if the stuff isn't completely resized.

Roger's comment from the previous Glock post notes that:
When a case has a Glock bulge, it will commonly chamber almost all the way in, stopping a few thousandths of an inch before full chambering.
This can and does cause the barrel to fail to go up completely into battery,
This commonly causes misfires and off center (low) primer strikes because the case / barrel are not all the way up in full battery and alignment with the firing pin.

 Some resizers don't reach that far down the case, so Lee sells a kit called the Bulge Buster which consists of an elevated brass pusher and a small bin to catch the resized brass. You need the Lee final crimp die in your caliber with the internal bits removed for this.

Or if you have the die, remove the internals, put an improvised pusher made from an old steel .223 brass with an old 9mm steel brass on top,

 a small plastic tub with a 7/8" hole will catch the brass as it pops through the die.

This brass had already been decapped and sized so this operation addressed only the bulge. There was a great variation in bulge amount from one to the next with most brass passing through the die and staying above the smallest diameter. I did have one that seemed to have no bulge at all that came back out the bottom having encountered no resistance at all going up. 

I tested this batch in my barrel and found them all to drop fully down with no resistance. NOTE: This trick will NOT work on loaded cartridges. Drat! Remember to lube the cases before resizing.

Everybody Talks About The Weather...

Al Gore and Michael Mann assure us that they can actually do something about it but frankly I've got my doubts. Yesterday was in the upper 50's and generally nice. Today the high is to be 34 and I just measured 8-1/2" of heavy, wet Globull Warming on the grass in the back yard. What has hit the roads has been melting as fast as it comes down around here although not so much outside of town where I-70 has been closed in both directions due to accidents.

Good day to stay indoors unless you like this kind of weather. Notice here the large footprints I found going down my drive this morning. Compare to my own footprints following them.

He walked along the sidewalk, apparently preferring the snow to the concrete. Hard to see in this light, but it seems the Yeti is making a comeback in the 'burbs.

It Can Always Be Worse

Here is an Instagram post of Rep. Chaffetz' foot following surgery to repair damage done when he fell off a ladder in his garage. From the look of it he was installing a turbo V-6 garage door opener at the top of a 20 foot ladder, and in the fall the engine landed on his foot.

If you look at the left hand picture, you'll notice a faint arc through the bone just above the ankle joint. That arc, only fainter, is what my wrist looked like when I went in. Recovery from removing the impressive collection of nuts and bolts from Rep. Chaffetz' foot is projected to be 4 weeks. Recovery for the shadowy fracture in my wrist is running 7 weeks but I guess the bone healing takes longer. He doesn't mentioned how long it was before he was able to put on normal socks and shoes again, but I imagine it was quite a while.

Glock K-boom, Rebuilding and testing

When I rebuilt my Glock after blowing it up, my original plan was to take it up to the range as soon as I got done with the Dentist. This plan didn't include breaking my wrist. It's now been about 4 weeks and the doc says I have 3 more weeks in the cast to go. Impatience won though and I tried out the new parts today. Here's what I learned:

1. Pulling the slide back with a left hand in a cast is very difficult.

2. I used to be able to shoot strong hand only passibly well. Now it seems I need some more practice. Shooting 2-handed borders on impossible, and weak hand, let's face it, isn't there.

3. The new barrel from Lone Wolf is very nice. It's also much fussier about the ammo I'm trying to feed it. I'm getting lots of failures to feed which I didn't get before. The cause I originally traced to insufficient final crimp, which seems to be back with the tighter barrel. I guess I get to re-crimp all my ammo.

4. I had been seeing some light strikes before, but much more now and noticeably off center so it looks like I need a new firing pin. I was beginning to suspect that problem before so I can't say I'm terribly surprised.

5. Trying to eject a lightly struck round from a tight-fitting barrel with a cast on your left hand is a waste of time. Change to an empty mag, use the rubber edge of the table against the side of the slide, and push. The stuck round pops right out.

6. Disassembling the gun with the fingers poking out of a cast and with limited flexure seems to be surprisingly difficult. I may need to make a tool to help pull the disassembly buttons down.

Gives me something to do during the impending snow storm. Mighty mountains from tiny molehills grow.

Marching Season

The militant wing of the DNC, Antifa, is making news all over the country, in Berzerkly where they vow to shut out any speech they don't like, and the mayor, who is a member, has promised his police will not interfere. In related news, one of the more violent Antifas has been identified as a professor at Berkley.

In Nashville, Antifa goes back to its roots as the communists version of Hitlers Brownshirts and Mussolini's Blackshirts and has a permit for a May Day march and rally. Some Gadsden Flag types have set up a counter rally in the same area. Be interesting to see how well or even if the Nashville cops keep the two groups apart. Nashville denizen Glenn Reynolds has noted that Amazon has some good deals on Hickory ax handles and heavy Texas style walking sticks.

Hippie reservation Portland has cancelled their spring Rose parade after the local Antifa announced it had some 200 soldiers prepared to rush the parade and forcibly remove the Multonah county Republicans if they attempt to participate. Once again, the Mayor doesn't seem to want to send his cops out against his constituents so the entire parade has been cancelled.

The Donks are aware that between 100 and 200 million people were murdered in the last century in attempts to prove that Socialism in one form or another was a viable system, and they want to make sure that those folk didn't die in vain, no matter how many more have to join them.

NOTE: Don't forget your home improvement projects. On your way to the rally, stop be Home Depot for one of these perhaps.

Springtime

Not much actually going on so here's some non-serious stuff.

A couple weeks back I remarked on a foot bridge being installed apparently leading into some fellow's back yard. Now it seems the curb and gutter was in the wrong place, and his back yard is being shortened.

Until we see water in the canal again, the footpath through the gulch and along the edge of the new chasm is how you cross the canal. More cement is anticipated on the far side at some point, maybe even a sidewalk.

Highline canal is lined with cottonwood trees, most of which are nearing the end of their usual life span of 110 years. Some have been decorated:

Loose pieces of bark aren't hard to find. Sometimes you get lucky and find unexpected stuff growing along the canal. Allium is not native AFAIK, but it's moving in.

Not much to see yet, but that dead puff ball on the upper left is from last year. When they bloom, that is a big blue ball, quite striking. Assuming that the canal maintenance folks don't just mow it down with the weeds.

In other news, I saw the hand doctors today who removed the cast on my wrist, took X-rays, assured me that everything was healing nicely, and then replaced the cast and told me to come back in 3 weeks. Geez, it might have been quicker to use stem cells to simply grow a new one. Under advances in Medical Technology, the old cast was black, but the new one is lime green. Hulk Smash! Still a damn nuisance.

A local Meetup group, Pedals and Pints, has a bike ride planned for the coming weekend. Great ride, 2 of them starting at Great Divide Barrel Bar and visiting 4 other craft breweries and a coffee house over the course of about 27 total miles. Allowing 30 minutes and a 4 oz sampler at each stop, this should be a fun and easy ride. Except for the weather. It's springtime in the Rockies and in the last 4 days, Weather Underground has gone from 4-8" to 1-3" and back to 5-8" of snow. If the weather and the rest of my schedule cooperates the P&P thing is a great way to waste a Saturday. I checked. There are about 65 craft breweries within bicycle range of my house. 'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado, as the local fishwrap used to proclaim.

Antifa Calls For Arming Their Insurrectionists

Smarting from a defeat in Berkley where thugs armed with body armor, bats and bear spray were pushed back by Trump supporters, some of them are advocating for arming their people with firearms.

They are bitching a lot since the states in which they are the strongest also have the strictest gun laws.

Not getting disarmed is a big part of the problem, yes, but we need more than flags and bats. We need to take notes from the John Brown Gun Club and get firearms and training. I know getting firearms in states and cities we have a presence in is usually a hassle, but even handguns would help.

Interestingly in the posted dialog someone asks if using violence to silence opposing voices isn't a form of fascism. The reaction is priceless.

OBSERVATIONS: 1. When the police abdicate their responsibility, vigilantism looks like a reasonable and viable option. 
                               2. When an Antifa in Berkley was unmasked, his comrades couldn't tell him from the Trumpers and attached him with club, skateboard, and bear spray.

First Fix The Blame

Then consider fixing the problem. The NORKs are now blaming a string of missile failures on U.S. tampering with the missile flight software. Let me be the first to confirm their suspicions and point out that it gets even worse from here. If they succeed in finding the parts of the software that cause the missile to explode on the pad or shortly after launch, the next bug will be the one that directs the missile to land in Pyongyang.

Dear Mr Kim:
Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight

Exit: light
Enter: night
Take my hand
We're off to never never land

Article here.

Blog Birthday

Apr 19th is this blogs 9th birthday.If I'd have known I was going to live this long, I'd have learned to write or something.