To Every Season

In about a month it will be a year. Day before yesterday I awoke early from a dream where I was having lunch with my Dad here at the ranch: sandwiches. I was talking, he was nodding, about all the work we had gotten done here – and he liked it.
I wish he and Mom had been able to come up here to the Foothills, but with her on oxygen it couldn’t happened. Yesterday was their anniversary. I miss them a whole bunch.
Now my friend Kevin is having a rough go of things, and against his will his daughter has set-up a page. The last couple years of the Rendezvous as things wound-down, his attendance was my magnet to go.
Damn.
At least the air has gotten better here (for now), sorry we sent the smoke over across to all y’all…

Rendezvous Eleven – Med Class

After checking-in and unloading and unpacking, I took the down-elevator and in the lobby ran-into Mike and Kiwi and Bill and Lucky Gunner’s rep Anthony Welsch, then Aaron showed-up and later Miles. They all piled into Anthony’s rental vehicle while I drove solo in the F-150, and we headed out to Reno Guns & Range for our Emergency Medical Range Training class.
The class was lead by a well-experienced former EMT and former Flight-EMT and former Reno motor officer and EMT Trainer and former multi-deployment overseas warrior-EMT – all just one guy named Derek.
He made an important distinction between the “Medical Kit” and its components of: a Compression bandage, wound Dressings, Hemostatic agents, and a Tourniquet – versus a “First-Aid Kit” with band-aids, tape, gauze and eye-wash, etc. for minor wound care.
From my recent RSO class I also appreciated his re-iteration of the need for assigning or designating different people to certain specific tasks when an emergency-event occurs — and the importance of a short Range Safety Briefing when training activities are taking place, where you identify the Medical Kit, put it in a convenient place, BY ITSELF, and show everyone the location of the Kit so they won’t be sprinting around the range like a chicken when something Unpleasantly Medical happens.
2.) To designate a medic person you grab someone and say, “You are the Medic!” From the Briefing you should have already identified this potential medic-person, and they are not the one having the accident.
3.) Designate a phone-caller you grab someone else and say, “You call 911!” AND have a ready-scripted dialog for the EMS dispatcher to respond-to, so they don’t send police first and cordon off the area before allowing the EMS van on-scene. Say: “We have had a training accident.” They ask, “What kind of training accident?” Say: “We have a person with a bullet injury…” Also that phone-person must have the coordinates or a good description of your location. ALSO FYI if a patient has a penetrating wound to the: Head, Neck, Chest, Abdomen – then they are UNSTABLE and it would be good to include that information.
4.) AND designate an escort-person, someone to go to the location-entrance, meet the EMS van, and guide them to the medical-site.
And there were some more designations I forget.
Following that he discussed (and we Q&A’d) about wound treatment itself, the order of priorities and application of care. FIRST you must protect yourself. You must have barrier safety-equipment: nitrile gloves and an air-way shield. Then the application of pressure to control bleeding. With gloves-on comes direct pressure, then a sterile DRESSING directly onto wound, then another dressing as necessary if bleeding continues, and then a pressure BANDAGE such as the “Israeli Bandage” that wraps the dressing IN PLACE and ALSO applies pressure – and if bleeding still continues, then the TOURNIQUET…
It was a really good class, and obviously I could take it again in order to remember everything better.
But enough for now.

Rendezvous Eleven – Getting there

The drive up to was surprisingly quick and relaxing, and I attribute that to taking back-country roads nearly the entire way or as much as I could. Fueled-up at 8:40 AM in Diamond Springs, and went up Pleasant Valley Road to the Sly Park cutoff where the Mormon Immigrant Trail leads out to Hwy 88 in the direction of Kirkwood.

Only saw about four vehicles headed in the other direction. Being out of the freeway insanity-mix was a breath of fresh air, and the High Country always has unparalleled vistas to appreciate that cleanse the mind and soul. Rolling over Carson pass at 8,000 feet down past Silver Lake, Caples Lake, and Woods lake into Hope Valley on a beautiful fall morning was magical.

The roll down into Nevada was easy and lead straight to Carson City, and then Reno. Somehow Nevada traffic was minimal and placid (Thursday after all), until I hit Reno and the metal-swarm began again. Oh well easy enough and I hit the Casino about 12:15 with plenty of time to unload and get ready to go to the class on Emergency Medical Range Training lead by multi-tour participant in the GWT, ex-Reno Motor-Office and Detective, experienced EMT and former Flight EMS Derek Cecil — who had many (darkly funny) stories to tell including his own…

GBR XI thoughts: semi-sponsor

The Rendezvous is fast upon us!! There’s always the question of what gun(s) to bring, for show-and-tell, or for cool-factor, or for bragging rights at the 900-yard drum out at the Washoe facility. At the first Rendezvous I attended it seemed like people brought-out an amazing array of all kinds of stuff in mass-quantities, but that trend seems to have diminished in recent years with things getting more specific, and the weight-to-carry more burdensome.
This year I’m bringing the .44-40 Rossi 92 carbine, and the .44-40 Vaquero. I don’t believe/recall seeing a lever-gun at the Rendezvous ever before, but it could just be that I’ve missed something among the plethora of guns.
Also hitching a ride is my new #PewPewLife 9mm Shield. We’ll see how well that does at the steel games, HA!
In other news I’m bring a few contributions to the Raffle Table that may interest people. UPDATE: I have a couple of scope mounts for which I have no scopes: a .S.A.L.T 30mm (with 1-inch inserts) that’s as rugged as a brick, and a 30mm ultra lightweight Aero Precision 30mm mount.
Also I made-up a couple of blow-out kits that contain: a Sof-T Wide tourniquet, two Hyfin chest-seals (you need two), a compressed 4-inch gauze pack, and trauma shears all shoved into a in a nifty HSG molle pouch with malice clips. Included is a velcro First Aid patch. Some lucky persons could take these home.

GBR-IX : Sponsorship and Raffle Prizes!

New with the Gunblogger Rendezvous is sponsorship from Crossroads of the West Gun Shows! Yay!

And besides that there’s another gun, from Osage County Guns – a new sponsor to the Rendezvous.  Who are contributing a SIG Sauer 1911-22 that will look a lot like this:
Yay!  ANOTHER pistol for our fundraising raffle for Honored American Veterans Afield (HAVA)!

And as if that were not enough, Dillon Precision is donating a couple of their Border Shift ammo bags.

But wait, there’s more!
 
A Burris AR-F³ red-dot sight for the AR-15 – that will fit on any Picatinny rail!

7.62 NATO

Came across this interesting and certainly preiswert ammo at the Kaufhaus Der Kapitalismus last Sunday while out gathering a few things in the 100-degree heat. Seems like it would be fine blasting fodder in the NATO Ishapore. My buddy who had The Ishapore apart and re-parked said it might a few fouling shots to clear the chamber of crud…so this would be in keeping with that. At first I thought the “ZQ” designation was some kind of Zombie-appeal, but it turns out that it’s just foreign. MKE = Makina ve Kimya Endustrisi, (of Kurumu, Turkey)…
However the Interwebz chattering-class reports are varied. Some say that this Turkish FMJBT stuff is very good, other reports suggest it’s loaded hot. Interestingly on the box is the claim, “lot tested to assure less than one minute of angle at 100 meters.”
The Ishapore Arsenal actually uses very good steel and the No. 1 Mk III* was re-designed for the Nato 7.62 round – it’s not a conversion from the .303’s already in existence, so I shouldn’t be too worried… And I have another one in .303 that I’ll bring along to the Rendezvous for comparison purposes.