Added to arsenal, 900 at night, weekend plans

Yesterday a new addition to my backyard predator deterrent arsenal arrived, an Airsoft gun.  I already have a conventional pump action air rifle which delivers bb’s at a high velocity but inflicts a physical toll on the shooter.  Pumping the gun for the recommended 8-10 times gets tiring pretty quickly.

The CO2 cartridge powered BB hand gun I bought Cindy doesn’t require pumping but the cartridges seem to get depleted pretty quickly and gave inconsistent accuracy.  One of the disadvantages of both guns in this situation is a metal BB shot at high velocity could potentially injure or even kill a smaller animal which is not my goal at all.

A couple people recommended the Airsoft guns as a good choice for this role.  It shoots larger, plastic bb’s at a lower velocity that may sting and annoy an animal but should not cause any permanent harm.  It’s spring loaded firing mechanism is a nice compromise between pump action and the Co2 cartridges.  You pull back a handle that cocks the spring once and you are ready to fire.  This morning before work I set the gun up and did a few test fires and showed Cindy the basics.  I think the Airsoft gun may be the exclamation point we need to convince chicken predators that they need to move elsewhere.

I left work early yesterday to get on site for race set up.  I came into an issue early on when I realized the cord that is used to connect the mic to the portable PA system we use for the start line was broken.  I racked my brain for a quick solution and realized I could use the wireless mic I had in the box if I could find a fresh set of batteries.  Luckily there was an Advance Auto a few doors down that I scored a pack of AA’s from, problem solved.

I spent over an hour and a half creating team packets for the event.  In each packet was the bibs for each team, the pins needed to attach them and a team roster list which had team member names and their assigned bib number.  Well before the race we had a bunch of people coming up with some issues.  Despite my work, more often than not these people were not wearing the bib number that was assigned to them, illustrating exactly why we stopped making this race chip timed.

In total there were over 900 people that signed up for the race, smashing the old record of around 650.  The layout was not ideal for that amount of people, especially before the race where you just had mobs of people blocking any direction you wanted to travel.  Since the race wasn’t chip timed, after we got done with the hectic pre-race scene things calmed down.  My main responsibility shifted to just producing a report of the the three largest team rosters and taping the finishers on my GoPro.

I even was able to enjoy a tofu burrito late in the festivities thanks to Cindy scoring us a couple.  More often than not in years past the food would be all gone by the time I got a chance to look for it.  We got off site a little after 8 o’clock which wasn’t bad.  I felt disgusting after sweating non-stop while the sun was out and not being able to wash my hands at all after handling tons of dirty race equipment.  A shower was very welcomed.

This weekend we have normal yard maintenance to handle but I have some ancillary side projects that I would like to get checked off the list, including hopefully install the LED projector on the SSR.  We also will be picking up the dogs on Saturday to hang for the rest of the weekend which is always a good way to add some smiles.  Exercise-wise I have an ambitious plan of running on Saturday and biking on Sunday.