So it’s back to court as a prospective juror today. Since they were taking six and an alternate and each side was allowed to strike three, my number 18 wasn’t even a contender. It was nice to be asked though.

Confessional: I use Edge Pro Gel, “sensitive skin” formula and, to the best of my knowledge, my skin isn’t particularly sensitive. I don’t have a doctor’s recommendation that I use “sensitive skin” labeled products or anything of that sort, and since I started using the Gillette MACH3Turbo I notice that I really don’t even need to use water if I don’t feel like it. I think Mrs. Bumper buys it because of the added aloe and patented blend of lubricants and extra moisturizers. Truth be known, if I could pick from the entire array of Edge products I would try “extra refreshing“.

Got SWAT Competition pictures from Face today. Better resolution than the others. Also you might notice that Face’s pictures have a certain artistic quality about them. Even the “(Huge)” pictures are half-size, so if you want to make a poster or steganographically conceal your new favorite cd, ‘mail me and I’ll check with the Face.
New pictures have been pushed to the top, and are not in particularly good order.

So I’m just checking out what you get when you type “go to hell” in the google search box, and one thing leads to another and I find this. I’d seen these on Conan, but I never would have guessed that they were real.

Jury duty today. I made the first cut and get to go back for more next week. The competition is really going to be fierce next week with the twenty qualifiers battling it out for the top spots. Even if I don’t get on, I have to say, it is quite an honor to have gone this far.

Supa sent me some pictures from the SWAT Competition and I’m throwing them up here. Not that I want to discourage anyone, but if you have any problem with violent or suggestive images, or images that depict animal cruelty or ill-advised tatoos; don’t click here!

Speaking of pictures, does anyone have a decent copy of this? Since I saw Terry Sayther’s ’72 CSL yesterday, I’ve been feeling the need to see Hans Stuck flying the batmobile across my desktop.

So I’ve been looking for the new Mobil1 0W-40 for baby and finally gave up and checked the Mobile1 site and determined that AutoDrone should have it if anyone does. So, stubbing out any remaining bit of self respect I may have retained over these many years I dragged into “The Zone” to search out the elusive Mobile1 0W-40 with SuperSyn™ Technology.
I headed to the back, passing the neon shifter handles and gold-plated chain license plate frames and other assorted bling bling without looking up. Lo and Behold! There it was, in all its reformulated glory: Mobile1 0W-40 with SuperSyn™ Technology.
The only catch is that they had a bunch of bottles, but no cases. I wanted to buy in bulk, I didn’t want to have to do this again soon. And this is where I made the fateful decision: I would talk to the clerk, I would ask him if they had a few cases in the back.

<Me>: Hello. I wish to purchase several cases of the Mobile1 0W-40 with patented SuperSyn™ Technology. I see that you have the product I seek, but I do not see any full cases.
<Drone>: Uh. What kind of car is it?
<Me>:(My stock answer) McLaren F1.
<Drone>: Uh. What year?
<Me>:(“What year?”!) ’55.
<Drone>: Uh. I think that uses 10W-30.

So I jumped over the counter and began thrashing and beating the clerk with a huge Borla exhaust tip I pulled off the wall display. When I got tired of beating him I walked back to the back, made a basket out of my shirt and loaded it with 17 bottles of 0W-40 Full-Synthetic Texas Tea (with SuperSyn™ Technology), grabbed a bottle of Red Line WaterWetter, crumpled up a $100.00 bill and threw it at the manager on my way out the door.
When I got back to the car I remembered that I wanted to see if they had those squeegee things, but after the big scene I decided to try somewhere else.

Obstacle Course: Abilene’s O-course, “The Beast” is really a challenging course, but I have to say spending almost all of a day watching teams disappear into the cacti forest and re-emerge 23 minutes to an hour later is just plain boring.
Give me a day at the Houston or Dallas facilities any day. In Houston and Dallas the whole obstacle course is within easy view of the stands and pits and it just makes for a more enjoyable day. My ever-so-humble opinion of course.
Our fabulous crew of tactical medics, Hockey-Puck and P², had Face taped up and ready to rumble so I took up a support role (Okay, I was the water-boy).
This might be a good time to thank the Austin/Travis County Tactical Medics for all their support. Those guys were great. They were a joy to have around and helped us and a bunch of other teams immensely. It’s hard to start a tactical medic program, it takes a lot of time and money to train and equip a team of medics for something that might never happen. But I think now that people have seen how helpful they can be at competitions we’ll be seeing programs spring up all over. Our guys are breaking ground for tactical medics of the future and I’m proud of them. Even Hockey-Puck.
Our game plan was for two of our speedsters, Face and Lou Can-do, to support each other with two-man lifts/pulls and get out of the way of the other guys. The other three used their cumulative strengths to get around, Big Bad with his experience and mastery of the vertical, Slamma’s monster strength and Supa’s ability to speed ahead to the next obstacle and be set up to assist the other two. Oh, did I mention I carried the water?
Well, it went smooth and fast, no real problems for team APD. Except, of course, Team San Antonio. They saw that we were calling Face up from the injured list and knew the heat was getting turned up. Mark was along for the trip, but had been on injured reserve all week due to something with his foot (sorry, I can’t understand a word that dude says). Seeing that Face was in the game, Mark stubbed out his cigarette (I’m not kidding, that guy is my hero) and laced up his koala-skin boots to run. Well to make a long story a little shorter, those S.A. guys ran off into the woods and made it back in record time. I find it a little hard to believe that they actually completed the obstacles, but no one disputed it so another trophy was added to San Antonio’s big box of trophies.
So for one full week I will be sporting my San Antonio SWAT hat, and when people ask me why I’ll say it’s because those guys are my heros.

Hostage Rescue: I was elected for the pole position due to my mad rapelling skillz. Also the fact that there would be a bunch of big guys to throw me up the rappel tower was a contributing factor. <g>
It turns out that the only guy that has to really race to the front door of the shoot house is the first guy. Everyone else just has to wait in line until the guy in front of him gets out. So the pressure is on the bumpster. No need to mention my colossal screwup of the day previous, but this was my chance to really, totally blow the whole week for everyone.
It was not to be though, the stage went like clockwork for Team APD; Big Bad and Slamma threw me to the first deck in a rush of seamless acceleration, Supa was up on Lou Can-do’s propulsion right behind me and gave me the quick boost to the next deck. I neglected to notice the ladder to the third deck, but it was a fairly easy reach once I pulled off a Jackie Chan corner climb. One fathom of slack and jump. quickly to the house and in. Clean run for everyone in the house. The only thing that didn’t go right was a pistol malfunction for Big Bad (you tell him he’s limp-wristing it). being saddled with the anal-retentive rules allowing only the exact number of rounds necessary to compete the event, Big Bad had to recover a round that popped loose during the malfunction clearing. It wasn’t a party-killer, but it didn’t speed us up any.
The 150 lb. dummy that I’d seen the other teams struggle with; last man out of the house dragging it out by the neck, came out snuggled securely in the generously oversized arms of Slamma and into our waiting backboard in a blinding rush.
We got bumped out of third -by one second, later in the day, so I’ve spent the evening thinking about the multitudinous places I could’ve saved a second. Bah.

Grenadier’s Challenge: Sage Control Ordinance, Inc. ran this event; supplying the launchers, ammo, and coordinator (Pat McGilton). Here’s a little tip for those of you who may find yourselves running a competition of some sort: Never, ever supply anything that can go wrong, or be said to go wrong unless you have the chutzpah to stand up to the heat. This ain’t IROC.
Back to the story; Our team smoked. Slamma and Supa were wondrously smooth and composed. And fast. All business, baby. A score to drive us right back into the money and into striking range of the Clones from the Alamo City.
However, it was not to be. There were a few complaints (mostly justified I guess) that the reloaded rounds degenerated throughout the event and there were a few people that just didn’t really know how the launchers worked and contested their scores so the organizers piped another set of scores to /dev/null.
The state of the less-lethal art is at a point that is barely suitable for police work. It’s by no means ready for competition. If one feels strongly about putting on a competition involving less-lethal it really should focus on the equipment. That way it would still be unfair and boring, but at least it would contribute to advancing the sorry state of affairs in less-lethal technology.
Or maybe I’m just bitter. I feel compelled to mention here that our fearless leader, Lou Can-do, has been nothing but composed and professional dealing with the organization and his team.

Face says he’ll be ready to run the obstacle course tomorrow, so I’ll be relegated to carrying a backpack full of water around “The Beast”. Have I mentioned “The Beast”? It’s thirty-something obstacles, about half of which could kill you, arranged along a one-and-a-half mile long cactus path. Not much for spectators, but it is impressive.

Started raining tonight, looks like it may continue into the morning increasing the chances of an obstacle-related death exponentially I’d say.

Sniper Initiated Assault: We had a really good run, came out about 3rd. The thing that was really cool was watching our boy Slamma do his thing. Almost every team had to hit the door multiple times before they could enter the house. Slamma never broke stride, baby. That was the coolest, most beautiful feat of human achievement I’ve seen in quite some time.

Sniper Challenge: This should have been our event but I screwed it up for everyone. Yes, oh yes I did. By the time we were getting ready to go light was getting scarce. The judge told us they were getting ready to call it and asked if we wanted to wait until tomorrow. Actually, he asked me that a couple of times. I was fired up and I could sense that Big Bad was too. I told the judge we wanted to go. Big Bad asked me if I was sure we wanted to go. I said I was. There was then another delay while they cadre fixed the target box and two other teams went.
We were smoking. A full blast 150 yard sprint to a screeching halt in the shooting box. bolts cycled, in position. I then noticed that I couldn’t see a durn thing through my JP target rear peep. Bad decision Bumper.
I adjusted as well as I could and could just make out the formerly vibrant-orange plates, I held hard and hoped the front sight was where I thought it was. Big Bad told me which of my plates not to shoot and I squeezed and heard the ‘tink’ of lead to steel in the distance, I shifted fired, shifted fired and transitioned to the next box. As I transitioned I noticed that I hadn’t been hitting. I remembered the other aperture I never thought I would use because it’s just a bit larger than the one I was using. I still couldn’t make out the front post right so I just held and squeezed at the targets I wanted to hit.
All told I hit a whopping two out of six for a total of a minute added to our time. Big Bad had a glitch with his borrowed sandbag and missed the egg shot, but our raw time was fast enough that we came out about mid-pack. Still it should have been the event that rocketed us up into the money, and I blew it. Big.

Well, it turns out there’s no connectivity in this hotel, so This will all be old news by the time you get it. There is a “web-tv” deal here, but I’ll go ahead and just assume that it doesn’t have vim and ssh, so it wouldn’t do me much good anyway. I have sampled a web-tv at a hotel previously and it’s really irritating, so I’ll save my $10 US/night and have shrimp with my steak.

Open Air Assault: Well here’s a rep’s nightmare: Federal donated a bunch of frangible ammo for the pistol portion of the event and it was complete trash. The .40s had a little problem wherein the bullets broke into two pieces at the case mouth, and the .357 Sigs were apparently coming out of the barrels in a bunch of little pieces. Even my pistol, lovingly hand built by Todd Jarret and my gunsmith that will feed empty cases or Remington ammo without a hitch broke one. My last round fed, but felt wrong. Before I noticed what I was doing (and remembered that I only had exactly as many rounds as I needed) I had smacked the magazine up into the well smartly and started racking the slide. I remembered where I was and slowed down to see a case come out and then half a bullet. I could not process properly what I had just seen and spent several seconds looking around for my last good round I needed (60 second penalty for a miss, bleh) before I gave up and left my shooting position.
Anyway, seeing as the organizers had mandated that the competitors use the evil ammo they had a scoring nightmare on their hands. The teams that used all .40 S&Ws and .357 Sigs and had several missing rounds were up n arms about the multiple 60-second penalties, the teams that were shooting nine mike-mikes weren’t so sure that the bad rounds would have been hits anyway. After what I suppose was some amount of iberation the Powers That Be decided to scrap the whole event. Our übermensch friends from San io expended a lot of energy rolling, smoking and stubbing out the butts of everyone else for

Super SWAT Cop: The scoring for the day came down to the results of the Super SWAT Cop. Our boy “Supa” had a blazing run but due to an unhappy miscoincidence between bullet and plate and the Draconian penalty scheme, came out a bit behind the freakiest of the freaky: Frank from S.A.
I guess the water and salad scam is paying off for those guys.

The really big news is that Face ran the Super SWAT cop event just for grins (he wasn’t our designated points-earner) and dislocated his knee on the first obstacle. He still finished third overall(!), but his knee looks like he’s hiding a football. I’m going to stand in for him and we’re going to hope he’s well enough by Thursday to run the Obstacle Course.

-Abilene, Texas

Arrived today for the SWAT Competition, checked into the hotel formerly known as the Embassy Suites. Not a bad hotel really. Unlike typical SWAT trips, we somehow have a 1:1 man/bed ratio. Being serious about competition we go to the Outback Steakhouse -conveniently located next door, and order like we mean it. I give the San Antonio guys a look of disdain as I notice the dinner salads and water glasses scattered across their table. San Antonio’s android-SWAT cops stop by on their way out just as the second round of 22 oz. drafts arrives and they have a nice laugh. Well, what would pass for a laugh in a human anyway.
A bit later we come dragging back to the hotel and I can see the lights in room 360 (our robot friends) are already out. I ask the clerk for the location of the ice machine.

<Clerk Lady>: What room you in hon’?
<Me>: 360
<Clerk Lady>(pointing): Just up to the left and down that hall.
<Me>: Thank you very much ma’am.
<Me>: Oh, can I get a wake-up call?
<Clerk Lady>: Of course, room 360, what time hon’?
<Me>: 3:45… No, 4:00.
<Clerk Lady>(writing): Gothca, hon’.

I had to figure out where the ice machine on the second floor was myself, but it wasn’t that hard.

So, I’m on mandatory vacation again today. No not the kind you get when you get in trouble, just the kind where your sergeant realizes that you have several weeks of vacation to burn and if it doesn’t get burned… Well, no one really knows what happens if it doesn’t get burned, but it’s bad.
I hate working half the day because the hard part is getting out of bed, and that’s already done.

Anyway, I did get to drive my / / /M3 to and fro without having to work all day, so I’m not too upset. I could wax philosophical about my commute being the high point of my day recently, but I guess I won’t. I will say that I’ve had a lot of cars that I enjoyed having, but this is the first one I’ve really enjoyed driving. Nugget invited me on a nice drive through the scenic hill country tomorrow, but he steadfastly refuses to get out of bed before noon. I, of course, will be hitting our one, and only, training day for the T.T.P.O.A SWAT Competition by that time. I know Dallas’ team of knuckle-dragging cash-cows has been training all year, and I know the Florida hand-picked all-star team will have been sweating it out, but I think we have this on our side: “Freshness”. (And a positive attitude helps too, right?)