Yep,“good stuff” RR, the Raconteur. Made me smile…again.
Only if the ladies left the range…unsatisfied with their “lessons”. I’m quite confident there would be no need for lawyers. 
Captain Chaos
No, I meant defense lawyer because of all the balls you hit onto the highway over de back fense, of course.
You can never see this one too many times:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qyYH7sLWDc[/youtube]
Had an incident of sorts that I was not proud of and thought I’d share.
Yesterday at the range a friend of mine was doing his usual morning routine, which is hitting wedges into a 90 yard green. It’s not actually a green, just a blue flag stuck in the ground in which I use the zero-turn mower to cut a large circle simulating a green surface. The diameter is about 20 yards or so. Every morning he will work on hitting it close. The ground is real bumpy out there and you can’t really work on anything other than distance control as the first bounce could take the ball anywhere in any direction.
In come a squadron of Canadian geese- about 20 of them- which landed and laid down on the green surface. He didn’t want to fly the ball directly at the pin anymore fearing he would hit one, so he started bouncing the ball in there hoping a fortunate bounce into the group of geese would frighten them away. After about 20 attempts he stopped as he was hitting it about the right distance, allowing for a bounce, but the bounces were all over the place.
In steps Rat intriqued by the event. I said “Sam, I can get them in 2 shots. How about it for a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee and a maple frosted donut?” Game on!
Now the geese looked a little past the flag, but I wasn’t sure by how much as my depth perception is getting poorer the older I get. That’s why I said two shots. I was figuring to hit something a little lower and hotter with one pure bounce into the squadron. So I grabbed a 9 iron for a nice pitch shot and was thinking if I can hit to about 86 yards a good bounce might carry it the remainder needed.
Shot one: Not long enough and had a fair first bounce, but a poor second bounce and missed. But I could tell by then that the geese were actually past the blue flag by maybe 3 or 4 yards. Need some more juice to it…need to pitch it about 90 yards and get once good bounce.
Next shot- damn as soon as I hit it I knew it was longer than 90 yards. Oh man…this is not going to be good…PLUNK…direct hit on the pitch which went about 94 yards I’m thinking.
The goose hit jumped up startled but laid back down on the ground. I thought I was lucky not hurting it, but it didn’t move much.
As it was laying there, the rest of the geese got up, formed like a semi-circle around the afftected goose and they all stood there motionless for about 1-2 minutes just looking at their wounded friend. It looked like a choir of geese just standing there in front of a wounded conductor. After a couple minutes the rest of the geese flew away to another part of the range. I felt horrible, the goose didn’t look like it was moving anymore…maybe I killed it.
Sam and I watched for a while and it didn’t move at all when suddenly it lifted its head. A good sign.
It stayed in that position for nearly four hours. During that time we were directing all range shots away from the green area. It finally got up and walked about 20 yards and laid back down for a very long time. I called another friend of mine who is an avid hunter and asked for advice. He said it’s probably just bruised a little and needs some time to recover. I asked him if I could go out there and carry it to a safer place. He advised against that as the wings could cause some injuries to me. He said just walk out there and it should skimmer away gradually. That’s what I did.
Upon approaching the goose he got up and started walking slowly away from me. As I got closer, he walked faster. So I thought if I jog a little he might run faster or maybe make an attempt to fly…he did fly…but like the Wright Brothers- very close to the ground. Got a first hand look at the wing span and it is substantial. He flew to the rest of the squadron near the back part of the range and no choir posing this time. Instead they walked single file toward their friend and milled around him.
It got to the point in their milling around that I couldn’t tell which one it was anymore. Back to normal.
Could have been a disasterous day…but turned out OK.
Have to work on distance control I guess…or maybe just let the geese have their turn on the green also. 
One of our less frequent regulars is former stock car racing professional Tracy Leslie. I don’t think he has been at our place for about the same amount of time it’s been since I found ABS. When I saw him pull into the parking lot tons of questions started appearing in my small rat brain- since I am confident he is familiar with CF, CP, weighting, dynamic ground ( tire ) pressures…all kinds of possible interconnected stuff.
What an amazing discussion we had. In fact, I have arranged with him to meet once a week this winter over lunch so I can ask him a bunch of different things that have been stewing in my head for a while. I’m buying lunch, and will help him with his swing, in exchange for some information.
An example: I asked him ( all things being equal ) which two cars each accelerating identically would be more susceptible to being pulled outward from a tight curve on a flat track- one weighing 5000 pounds versus one weighing 3000 pounds. Without hesitation he said the heavier car would want to leave the curve quicker and head to the top of the track…and the lighter car would tend to hold the circle better. Now that is all things being equal.
Also said that a car front loaded by a heavier weight % ( 50% front and 48% back ) would travel more in a circle, versus the opposite set up ( 48% front and 50 % back ) which would have the rear end kick out through the curve…
…he was saying that how the springs are loaded to handle the curves is what gets the static weight of the car ( although not changing the static weight ) to handle differently through curves by changing the % of tension. I think he called it “wedging the car”.
We also talked about tire ( feet ) pressures…it was all great stuff. Can’t wait to set up some meetings with him.
May have to start a thread this winter called NASCAR and ABS!