Double Tap Championships

Sabumnim and I went down to the Double Tap Championship in Texas this year. The Double Tap range was nice and they obviously put a lot of work into the match. The theme was Flinstones and the props were just awesome. They had a Flinstones car, a dinosaur-crane, and a lot of really interesting details—like a bowling ball painted to look like it was carved from granite, and clubs, all sorts of cool things. They even had a podium made to look like it was carved from stone.

The day we got there, it was gorgeous. It was sunny and 70 degrees with a little wind and no humidity. We walked the stages, wrote out our plans, and browsed at the vendors a little. By that evening it was chilly and rainy

The next day when we shot it was freezing, snowing, windy, and pretty much unbearable outside. The targets were bagged for the first part of the morning and they burned spent targets in barrels all day so people could keep at least momentarily warm. I melted my gloves sticking them to the sides of a barrel and almost caught my hair on fire twice. It was worth it to be warm. :D

The wind was terrible too. The range is sort of cut into an alley and the wind just goes right down it. We only shot 6 stages the first day instead of 8 as planned to get everyone out of the cold.

The second day was a little better, but still terrible and it warmed up in the afternoon. When it did thaw the mud stuck to our shoes at the stages were just a mess. We all wandered into the Holiday Inn carrying our shoes and begging for plastic bags.

It would be interesting to run the numbers and see how much better the people who shot in the first session when the weather was beautiful instead of the second where it was miserable.

You know, it’s a real shame that the weather was so bad because the match was really well put together. The stages were interesting and fun, the props were great, the lunch was good, the staff and organization was good. The prize table was outstanding—every person who shot got something and I bet each prize bucket was worth half the match fee or more. I won an STI slide via random drawing! (Not that I have a gun for it, so if you’d like one, I have one to sell :P)

I shot about par with my normal shooting—finishing in the top of the bottom third. I think I could have done better in warmer weather.