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Of Schlitz and Blasers
Aug. 7th, 2009 09:45 pmI'm back from the Grand, and more on that in a bit. But first, a word about beer. My dad was a fan of Schlitz beer back in the 1960s. However, a series of "improvements" in the 1960s and 1970s changed the taste, and he quit drinking the beer.
Well, somebody at Schlitz (actually, Pabst now owns the brand) decided to bring back the original formula. Dad heard about that, and asked me to bring a sample back. I did, and am in fact enjoying a bottle of the stuff now. It's pretty good, actually. Now, don't get me wrong - it's no German doublebock, but compared to the weak mass market stuff, it's pretty nice.
As I said yesterday, I attended the Grand American Trap Shoot today. It was held on the World Shooting Center just north of town. Unlike Vandalia, Ohio, the location has tons of room. There is enough camping space for literally an Army division, and they have a three-mile-long trap range. Parking is plentiful, and you can drive to the various shooting locations.
The only problem, and it's a big one, is that there is no easy way to get to Sparta. The town is 20 miles from the nearest interstate on 2-lane roads, and our GPS system kept wanting to send us down county highways. (Thanks to Garmin, we got a scenic tour of Oakdale, Il, population 213. If the only way to get there is via 10 miles of county highways, you might be off the beaten path.
At any rate, we found the shoot. After getting our two "free" boxes of shells for renewing our NRA memberships, we decided to go shopping. After a while, we decided to shoot a pair of demo shotguns from Blaser. It's a German company, pronounced "blah-ser" and they were encouraging folks to shot a prototype of their new guns. I first shot a double (very similar to this number). It shot pretty much where I wanted it to, which meant I broke a decent amount of targets. It was my first shotgun with a raised rib, and I could get used to the concept. My only gripe was that, even though it was a double barrel, you couldn't select barrels - the bottom barrel always went off first.
Well, much fun was had, and now I'm back at my parent's house for the evening.
Well, somebody at Schlitz (actually, Pabst now owns the brand) decided to bring back the original formula. Dad heard about that, and asked me to bring a sample back. I did, and am in fact enjoying a bottle of the stuff now. It's pretty good, actually. Now, don't get me wrong - it's no German doublebock, but compared to the weak mass market stuff, it's pretty nice.
As I said yesterday, I attended the Grand American Trap Shoot today. It was held on the World Shooting Center just north of town. Unlike Vandalia, Ohio, the location has tons of room. There is enough camping space for literally an Army division, and they have a three-mile-long trap range. Parking is plentiful, and you can drive to the various shooting locations.
The only problem, and it's a big one, is that there is no easy way to get to Sparta. The town is 20 miles from the nearest interstate on 2-lane roads, and our GPS system kept wanting to send us down county highways. (Thanks to Garmin, we got a scenic tour of Oakdale, Il, population 213. If the only way to get there is via 10 miles of county highways, you might be off the beaten path.
At any rate, we found the shoot. After getting our two "free" boxes of shells for renewing our NRA memberships, we decided to go shopping. After a while, we decided to shoot a pair of demo shotguns from Blaser. It's a German company, pronounced "blah-ser" and they were encouraging folks to shot a prototype of their new guns. I first shot a double (very similar to this number). It shot pretty much where I wanted it to, which meant I broke a decent amount of targets. It was my first shotgun with a raised rib, and I could get used to the concept. My only gripe was that, even though it was a double barrel, you couldn't select barrels - the bottom barrel always went off first.
Well, much fun was had, and now I'm back at my parent's house for the evening.
