We had high hopes for Spy Month. We had lots of plans that actually ended up falling through which was a big bummer. First of all we decided that Archery, which is a hobby that both of us enjoy, would sort of fit into Spy month. So the first thing we did was show up to Bill's Gun Range. https://www.billsgs.com/
The Archery Range
When we first walked into the shop, there were guns everywhere which makes sense for a gun shop, but I was surprisingly overwhelmed. The employees saw us carrying our Archery gear and sent us downstairs to the Archery range. The first thing we saw when we walked down the stairs was a large desk that was meant to get people set up for the gun shooting range. We glanced over at the desk and could see the shooting range through a long window behind the desk. Although it peaked our curiosity, we continued over to the Archery range. There was one woman there shooting with a compound bow. Chris and I both had re-curve bows.
After she collected her arrows we were able to start shooting. I don't know if you've ever shot a re-curve bow before, but there is no real way to aim. I was told by the person that I bought mine from that you basically have to practice a ton and it's a lot of trial and error. It made me wonder how people got good at Archery before there were compound bows.
Anyways, Chris and I shot for a good while, often missing the target, but sometimes hitting it. The woman next to us decided to try and help us out and tried to tell us that maybe we have the wrong kind of bows due to whichever eye is dominant. She decided that I am left eye dominant, meaning that I have the wrong kind of bow. I'm not sure that she was right or wrong, but it was an interesting concept. We shot arrows until our hands and arms hurt and left feeling satisfied with our trip to the Archery Range.
Burn Notice
For those of you that have never seen or heard of the show Burn Notice. It is a show about a burned Spy named Michael who ends up doing random jobs to help people out and in order to make some money. He mostly acts as a hero for those that can't fight for themselves. Chris and I had stopped watching the show a while back and decided that this would be a good time to get caught up. We spent a good amount of Spy Month watching this show, and I would occasionally throw in a few episodes of Chuck, even thought we had long since finished that series.
Burn Notice is great because they always talk about real Spy techniques. They did this more in the first and second season, but there is always some interesting stuff to learn. Most recently we learned how to make a Traffic block with a semi truck and some fire, not that we would ever need to or want to do that. We also learned that you can make bombs out of beer cans and that Bacon fat can be a very useful tool. As we continue to watch this show, we plan on taking note of more interesting Spy tricks, just in case we ever need to use them.
Shooting Range
Okay, so maybe you didn't know this about me, but I have never even touched a gun before. I've never been around one and never really wanted to be around one. So I was a bit nervous about my first time holding and shooting a gun. We showed up at the Gun Range and the guy behind the counter told us that the easier Guns for a beginner did not have any ammo, so we had to go with the next best thing a 9 millimeter. I don't even know what that means, since it's the first gun I've ever touched, but he hands it to me and asks me if I'd be comfortable shooting it, I picked it up for two seconds, and said "Sure, that's fine" and set it back down. The guy behind the counter gave a little chuckle, probably seeing that I was a bit nervous, and got our stuff ready for us. He handed us Safety glasses, ear protecting things. I don't even know what to call them.
He handed Chris the case with the gun and the box of Ammo. We put our ear protectors on and walked into the gun range. It was crazy overwhelming. The guns were really loud and people were really letting them loose into their targets. We got to our stall and Chris opened up the case and started loading the bullets in. He went first and then called me up to the stall to try and load the gun. I tried pushing the first bullet down into the magazine and had trouble getting it in. I handed it to Chris and shook my head, so he smiled and put the bullets in for me.
After he got the gun all set up he handed it to me and started giving me some directions, unfortunately, I missed most of them, as the hearing protectors make it very difficult to hear anything besides the loud gun shots. I took my first shot into the target and the gun kicked back quite a bit and a shell came flying at me. I had no idea the gun would have so much kick back nor did I know that the shell would come flying back at me as I shot. I was a little taken a back, but I continued to shoot at the target and went through all of my bullets.
I now knew why you needed safety glasses and that all of the movies and shows that I have seen with guns make it look a whole lot easier than it actually is, because they probably are note even using real guns. We took turns and went through 2 boxes of ammo, and I got better and better at loading the magazine, but never managed to get it completely full.
After we were done, we took our target home as a momento, and we realized that had we been in a zombie apocalypse, we'd be zombies by now because we were only able to get one brain shot in our target, so the rest of the zombies would be coming after us. When we got back home we decided to catch up on the series Walking Dead and we noticed that when 4 characters lined up to shoot zombies not one of their guns kicked back and I'm pretty sure I didn't see any shells fly out of them either. They are definitely using fakes which is why they make it look so darn easy.
Well, even though we achieved a few interesting Spy Month Events, we had a few things like Paint Ball, and some fake identities that we never got to try out, so we are extending Spy Month Through April as well. Look for my next Spy Month Blog at the end of April!
