Old friends

I took a few days off from work this week to deal with some personal business.

Today, personal business involved driving to Fayetteville to hang out with an old friend who's in town for a couple weeks, and his family.  So glad I did.

We had some Guy Time in the morning. 

Breakfast, Thai-style, at a restaurant not far from the Yadkin Road gate to Fort Bragg. The congee and broth we ate for breakfast would make a dying man rise from his bed and walk, if he caught a whiff of it on the breeze, and certainly if he tasted it.  Some patrons were ordering Thai Breakfast like us and some were ordering American Breakfast (pancakes and eggs) and everyone seemed to be digging the food a lot.  (Note - the coffee was okay but only just - food-service grade stuff.  The love at this place is in the kitchen, not in the coffeepot.)

The shooting range at Jim’s opens up at 10 AM. We rented a couple of pistols (he picked a Beretta similar to the one he was issued and trained on in the service; I opted for a compact Springfield Armory 9mm that I’ve had my eye on as a possible purchase) and bought 150 rounds of ammunition. 

Over the course of the next hour we each made 75 little holes roughly a third of an inch in diameter in silhouette targets at 10 and 25 yards. Considering that I hadn't picked up a handgun and fired it since moving to the People's Republic of Manhattan in 1996, I gave a good accounting of myself, but my buddy is a frighteningly good shot and basically humiliated me completely.

It was a good day.