L’s Jeep hates me. Also, new yard target!

I don’t know why it hates me, I was always nice to it. Okay, I left it out in the weather for a couple of months that time my Jeep was getting its transmission ignored, and it’s used to being garaged. And there’s that time Tobie ate the parking brake handle…

Okay, upon review maybe L’s Jeep has reason to hate me. But I’m really trying to do it good, and all it gives me is frozen bolts in awkward places.

I spent a full hour replacing a single front shock absorber. I should have been able to finish the job and also drink a couple of beers in a hour. And by the time I was done with the left shock I was so bent I just soaked the right side bolts in WD-40 and promised to come back tomorrow. Supposed to be nicer weather tomorrow anyway.

Then on the way home Tobie and I went past Ian’s where yesterday I had cemented a 2X4 into a concrete block…

…for something fun.

I have a whole bunch of hanging metal targets at the rifle range, but that’s a long way to go just to empty a quick magazine to keep my hand in. Closer to the cabin, as shown in a couple of ancient Forgotten Weapons videos, I have my old yard target…

…which I made – oh, god, eighteen years ago when I still worked at the saw shop in town. And it works fine as long as you only use pistols, which is all I practice with in the yard. But I wanted something more reactive; at 25 yards I can’t always tell when I hit it. So after a lot of procrastination and “you don’t need to spend money on that” I indulged in this little dueling tree. Clearly I have to plant it deeper, but I leveled it with some flat rocks just to see if it would work with my dinky 9mm. And it does, so now it’ll be worth going to the effort of planting it more deeply.