Chlorine or gunpowder: An easy choice for me

GalwayGuy arrived home via Amtrak late Saturday night after a rigorous semester at grad school in St Louis. The last time he had tipped over his Capella was in the brisk waters of Lake Superior off the Keweenaw peninsula in late August. This meant that I would likely be inhaling the fetid, chlorine saturated air of the Brooklyn Park community pool during Sunday's rolling session. I discovered however (perhaps a Freudian slip?) that I had double booked myself.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher had invited a number of folks to shoot with him for charity at the county indoor range. Foreclosures in Ramsey County, MN are up significantly and one of the little publicized effects of this increase is on renters. If a property owner is in foreclosure they have no legal obligation to inform their renters. This means honest folks who have been paying their rent can be thrown out of their homes with zero notice when the property is foreclosed. The sheriff, who's department 'gets to' execute these foreclosures I would imagine, decided that something needed to be done and came up with the first annual "I Shot with the Sheriff" pistol shoot. For a modest donation to one of five charities that serve people that are vicitimized by this practice, a person could shoot 50 rounds at increasingly longer distances with the sheriff's department personnel, including the sheriff himself. If you managed to beat him, you were awarded an "I Out-shot the Sheriff"certificate.

I failed to outshoot the sheriff. I learned from one of the SWAT team guys that the sheriff is a ringer, one of the top 5% of marksmen out of roughly 400 people in the department. I was a bit rusty and the first couple of rounds got away from me but it was a very nice afternoon and for a great cause. I had dropped GG off at the pool, holding my breath to avoid chlorine poisoning, and then picked him up so we could head down to Grumpys Bar to watch the end of the football game. He needed to wash the foul taste of all that St Louis Budweiser from his palate with a bit of Surly Bender and I need to help drink up the Summit Kolsch to make room in the tap lineup for the Summit Winter Ale.

It was a pretty good Sunday. All of the mornings goals for both of us,with the glaring exception of beating the sheriff , were accomplished by about 4pm that afternoon. Summit Winter Ale is still not on tap at Grumpy's so we went down there last night and continued to chip away at the Kolsch but everything is moving in the right direction. GG's stick roll came back, my tight groups returned on about the third five round series, and Catholic Charities, the Union Gospel Misson, and the other three charities have several thousand bucks that they didn't have before Sheriff Fletchers fundraiser. A great start to the holiday season.