{"id":3026,"date":"2019-02-28T07:39:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T15:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=3026"},"modified":"2019-02-28T07:45:31","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T15:45:31","slug":"no-refunds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/02\/28\/no-refunds\/","title":{"rendered":"No Refunds!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3027\" src=\"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/No-Refunds-600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/No-Refunds-600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/No-Refunds-600-300x123.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/>Some days you just have to pick up your marbles and go home.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve had a lot of rain out here this winter, and I\u2019ve been suffering from cabin fever. Big time. I\u2019m headed to Baja next week and it\u2019s supposed to start raining again, but hey, it is what it is. What I really wanted to do this morning was get to the range to shoot my .45. The range I belong to (the West End Gun Club) is private, it\u2019s tucked behind the hills in the San Gabriel Mountains, and getting there literally involves driving across a stream. Usually there\u2019s only a couple of inches of water in the stream and getting across is no problem. But all that changed with the recent rains. The little stream became a torrent, it\u2019s still a torrent, and it\u2019s moved huge boulders downstream. It\u2019s been that way for a couple of weeks now. I was hoping the water level had gone down and I would be able to get across this morning, so I loaded up the Subie and headed up in the mountains.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7I9z2Q-XDe4\" width=\"716\" height=\"403\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When I got to the stream, I could see there was no way I was going to get across short of renting a helicopter. Our little stream was deep and fast a couple of weeks ago when I made the video above, and it\u2019s stayed that way, with the addition now of the aforementioned boulders.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, there\u2019s a commercial range open to the public deeper into the mountains. I\u2019d have to pay to shoot there, and I hadn\u2019t done that in years, but like I said, I had cabin fever and I wanted to shoot. So I rolled another 15 miles or so deeper into the mountains.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s $20,\u201d Grizzly Adams (the guy behind the counter) told me (that\u2019s not his real name, and I\u2019m probably insulting folks named Grizzly Adams everywhere by assigning the moniker, but you get the idea). &#8220;It\u2019s another 6 bucks for a target stand,&#8221; Grizzly continued, &#8220;and more if you need targets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nah, I\u2019ve got my own stand, I told him, and I brought my own targets with me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDrive through that gate and turn left,\u201d he told me. I did.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as I parked, another Grizzly Adams type came up and asked me, \u201cDo you see what\u2019s different between your car and every other car parked here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hmmm.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t know.\u00a0 I looked. I thought about it briefly.\u00a0 My car had no primer spots and missing body panels?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said, \u201cand I really didn\u2019t drive out here to take a quiz. Make it easy and just tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re supposed to back in,\u201d Grizzly No. 2 said. Sure enough, I was the only one who had parked like a normal person. Go figure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, I\u2019ll turn my car around,&#8221; I said. It\u2019s better to just do things sometimes than to try to argue or comprehend the reasons why. But we were on a line break, people were downrange changing their targets, and I asked if I could set up my target stand first, and then turn my car around.<\/p>\n<p>Just then one of the shooters ran up. \u201cHey, my gun\u2019s still loaded,\u201d he said to Grizzly No. 2, who as it turns out was also the rangemaster. \u00a0 Wow, I thought.\u00a0 This is a big deal.\u00a0 The rangemaster\u00a0 (and I\u2019m using the term very loosely; the only thing this guy had evidently mastered was controlling which way parked cars faced) had failed to do his most important job:\u00a0 Making sure all weapons were clear before he allowed folks to go out in front of the firing line.\u00a0 I mean, wow, there were folks downrange with a loaded rifle on one of the shooting benches.\u00a0 Pointing downrange.\u00a0 In the Army, best case, that would get you a lifetime of KP duty and maybe a couple thousand punitive pushups.<\/p>\n<p>Then he compounded the felony.<\/p>\n<p>He didn&#8217;t tell the people downrange to move aside and return to safety behind the firing line.\u00a0 &#8220;Just leave it alone,&#8221; the rangemaster quietly told the guy who owned the loaded rifle, which was pointed downrange, while people were out in front of said loaded rifle changing their targets.\u00a0 He allowed the folks who were downrange, in front of the loaded weapon, to continue their activities.\u00a0 I&#8217;d never seen anything like this on any range, and I&#8217;ve been doing this a long time.\u00a0 I was shocked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know,\u201d I said, \u201cI think I\u2019ve seen enough,\u201d and with that I got back in my car and headed back to the little building at the entrance. I went inside and told Grizzly No. 1 what had just happened. \u201cYou\u2019re running an unsafe range,\u201d I told him, and I explained I didn\u2019t feel safe being there.\u00a0 &#8220;I\u2019d like my $20 back,&#8221; I added. \u00a0 All of this (from the time I drove in, paid my $20, went to the line, and returned to this guy&#8217;s counter) happened in the space of maybe 3 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan\u2019t do that,\u201d Grizzly No. 1 said.\u00a0 And with that, he smiled a gap-toothed, maybe-my-parents-were-related-before-they-got-married smile, and pointed to a small sign on the wall.<\/p>\n<p>No refunds.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at him. Then I looked at the sign again. Then I looked at him. He was still smiling.\u00a0 I smiled too.\u00a0 Sometimes I wonder what I\u2019m going to put on the blog the next day, and I had been wondering about that as I drove out to the range.\u00a0 Problem solved, I thought.\u00a0 I still had a touch of cabin fever, but I had no new bullet holes in me and I knew what the 28 February ExNotes blog would be all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some days you just have to pick up your marbles and go home. We\u2019ve had a lot of rain out here this winter, and I\u2019ve been suffering from cabin fever. Big time. I\u2019m headed to Baja next week and it\u2019s supposed to start raining again, but hey, it is what it is. What I really &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/02\/28\/no-refunds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;No Refunds!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[235,84],"tags":[574],"class_list":["post-3026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-guns","tag-range-safety"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3026"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3040,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026\/revisions\/3040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}