The Smoke Creek Yacht Club, Guarding the mountain passes to Tashkent.
It happened again. Yesterday, while enjoying an outbreak of sun and warmth in the pines, and throwing the magic tennis ball for the Special Forces team, I leaned over stupidly and was immediately attacked by the savages who live in my lower back. This was no hit and run engagement, which I enjoy almost daily, but rather a dastardly and sustained combined arms attack, an attempt to overrun the fort entirely. Given that I am a long-time fan of Maj. Jim Gant, have repeatedly deployed my tribal engagement teams to win some hearts and minds down in the lower vertebrae regions, and have for several months been lulled into mistakes by the apparent ceasefire; it’s my own damn fault. They are a fickle bunch, these Tribesmen of the Lumbago, never to be trusted.
The worst part of all of this, naturally, is that I lost an absolutely perfect February day to a handful of muscle relaxers and ibuprofen–my own kind of airstrike–Flexeril as an on-call A-10 Warthog, if you will. That’s the only course in this terminal pain management issue. Some day it will come to surgery, I suppose, but that’s the nuclear option I’d rather avoid. And hey, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier with two broken ribs. What am I complaining about?
There is always good news, folks. And here is some of it: I was able to find, while hacking my way through the internet elephant grass, a copy of Papa Hemingway’s recipe for an excellent burger, typed by Ernie himself, with handwritten notes. I absolutely must share:
I haven’t tried it yet, but most certainly will, for as we are told in the preface to this masterpiece “There is no reason why a fried hamburger has to turn out gray, greasy, paper-thin and tasteless.” Indeed.
That’s all for the moment. I need to keep moving. The tribesmen are acting up this morning, taking potshots from beyond the wire. But I will leave you with this short video, a magnificent and somewhat dreamy vision of Lightning storms as seen from space. It’s 25 seconds of magic, folks, and I swear you’re gonna love it.
Bunkhouse Chronicle 
Nice looking bunch of guys! Great to see the M-1 and M-14 (M1A1?)
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Yes–we had a notion to see what WW2 might have sounded like, bombed out to northern Nevada, and let it rip. It was fantastic. A LOT of shooting. The Yacht Club knows how to have a good time! We also did some long range shooting at steel, and learned some interesting ballistic things about the M1A1–it isn’t to be trifled with.
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Ok got to try this now, can almost taste it!
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I’m gonna try it too. Papa was likely too bombed to even enjoy his own recipe, but hey, it’s worth a try.
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When I was working for Pachmayr I acquired from an estate sale a Camp Perry-stamped M1 Garand with several ammo cans of full clips. Lordy, that rifle shot well! (Yes, I experienced Garand thumb. Nothing like 10 lbs. of rifle hanging from your bear-trapped thumb). I shot up all the ammo and then some, then sold it for twice what I paid for it and thought I was smart. I wish I still had it.
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Yes. I’ve had a few I sent down the road that I would like to have back now. It’s hard to know at the time.
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Tramadol
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I’m starting to think this was just a severe spasm…not the disc problems I’ve had in the past, where I dragged my leg around behind me like a zombie for weeks on end.
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