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.