The Marine Corps taught me how to hit what I'm aiming at 47 years ago and I can hit a dinner plate at 500 yards with iron sights to this day. I taught myself to X-country ski and what I'm best at is picking myself up after a crash. Lotsa practice. Heh.
Amusing article in Slate about a guy who equates skill with a rifle to redneck behavior (most of 'em couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle without a 10x telescopic sight) and has no idea what he's doing trying Biathlon.
A would-be biathlete tries winter's weirdest sport.
[...] It doesn't just combine two different athletic disciplines. It combines two cultures—nature boys and rednecks—that want nothing to do with each other here in America. Ted Nugent has never written a song about cross-country skiing.
He sorta glosses over the whole reason to need to know how to ski and shoot with half a sentence:
Biathlon was invented in the 18th century as a training exercise for Norwegian ski troops but didn't gain a permanent spot in the Olympics until 1960. [...]
Norway. Snow everywhere. Troops. Ski. Shoot. It should perhaps be mentioned here that the Finns beat both the Soviets and the Nazis in two separate wars in WWII because of their knowledge of their own weather and their ability to deal with it.
The trick is to see how fast you can ski and then to control your breathing and heart rate on a moment's notice so you can shoot accurately. Personally, I'd get there ahead of time and set up an ambush and calm down naturally, but that's just me and war's not very sporting anyway.
The writer had some trouble with this:
When I told Steer about my predicament, she suggested an exercise designed for the unarmed urbanite. "Next time you go skiing," she said, "ski hard for six minutes, then try to type a text message without auto-complete."
I tried a text-and-ski on my next practice run, in a forest preserve near my home in Chicago. Heart racing, I tore off my glove and attempted to type "texting and skiing is hard." For those critical 30 or 45 seconds, my thumb kept skipping past the right letter. It took me a full minute to finally settle down and finish the message. This was how I readied myself to handle a loaded weapon in a state of utter exhaustion. Hopefully I wouldn't shoot someone.
No shit!
I'd brought along my long-bladed classic skis—useful for cutting tracks through fresh snow but much slower on groomed trails. I was also dressed in a turtleneck, a heavy Andean sweater, and a pair of nylon ski pants over waffle-iron long johns. I realized, right then, that I probably wasn't going to win this thing.
Gee, ya think? I'll cut to the chase. It's time to eat and take the dogs for a walk:
I couldn't shoot. I'd worn the wrong skis. That's an unfortunate combination in a biathlon race. The winning time was 16:16, by a skate skier in spandex who "shot clean," hitting all five targets. My time was 37:55. There was a bright side. I didn't finish last. (I finished next-to-last.) I also didn't shoot myself or anyone else. And during the Olympics, when I cheer on Tim Burke in his attempt to win a gold medal, I won't just be thinking, Thank God I never have to do that again. I'll also be thinking, Is there any athlete who can bring America together like a cross-country skier carrying a rifle? City boy and country boy. Gun lover and environmentalist. The biathlon's got a little something for all of us.
I find it a little amusing that this guy categorizes people like that. I'm all four - city boy, country boy, gun lover, and environmentalist. And much more.
It's also a little unnerving. Ideology rears its ugly head here, as if you have to be generalized into one camp or the other. You don't.
Stick to texting, city boy.
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