Confirmation Proclamation

I have always looked on in wonder about how pointless the Judiciary Confirmation process is, considering that Supreme Court nominees get confirmed pretty much regardless of what they say.

Howevaaaaah, it seems that they do sometimes catch these judicial creatures making statements that they soon violate; in this case the wise Latina doublespeak between DC vs Heller and McDonald vs Chicago.

Not that that changes anything; it's all one gigantic fiction that we keep on watching for some reason, like we expect a drastically different outcome despite knowing damn well what's gonna happen. Old Yeller doesn't live in the end, and judges are human and have opinions.

Weird.

Gun rights in sheep's clothing

The old policy prohibited town employees, except police officers, from bringing firearms into town buildings or properties during working hours. The new policy bans weapons on town property unless they're legally permitted. It will allow employees to carry weapons in places where other residents could.

There is a whole lot in that paragraph to address.

First, the old "policy" exempted cops, of course, but more importantly barred town employees. Policy is not law; thus it was not unlawful for town employees to carry, but getting caught meant potentially getting fired. Citizens however, were not held accountable by this policy as they do not risk losing their job.

The new "policy" is where the meat is. Again, it's policy, not law. As the article describes it, this policy now allows everyone to carry as long as it's legally permitted. To be contentious, there is a big difference between legal and lawful; the latter meaning true law, and the former meaning color of law, or basically fiction.

In my opinion, this new policy under the guise of freedom and 2nd Amendment rights is really a dangerous way of making people think that they have more, when in fact it seems written to control people under color of law. A wolf in sheep's clothing, if you will. What it boils down to is that town employees want to carry without the worry of losing their job, which is understandable to say the least, but the method towards this end is to give up more of their rights - keeping in mind that the employees rights were not threatened before this new policy - in exchange for being "allowed" by the local government to carry.

In short, they're offering the same entity that discriminates against them more control in exchange for not discriminating. It's the same as telling the bully that steals your lunch money that you will clean his room every week if he doesn't steal your money. And I am sure that this is being haled as a gun owner's victory.

On the flip side, there is the typical resistance from the scared senseless folks that can't bear to see anyone armed and capable of protecting themselves, and they offer to the local news man the predictable "guns near kids" sacrifice. Also, do not miss the NRA, Pro-Gun spokesman mouthpiece giving his burnt offering of "this is going too far." Sometimes the Redcoats are dressed in Mossy Oak.

My point is to be careful of what you wish for. Everyone wants to be able to carry where they want; just be sure that you don't give away a right for a promise to be left alone.

Little beauties

Last night I got done with my first full batch of 45 ACP.



Putting each one together is like watching a child grow.

I'm so proud!!!

I am going to mass produce ammo like never before. Just the thought of being able to shoot my 1911 lifts my spirits.

.380 ACP is next; the mold should be here today. Now I just need some time.

Something someone mentioned to me the other day though when I said that five gallon buckets of dirt hung from trees make awesome animated targets, he said that that was a "green" way to shoot, as I wouldn't be putting lead into the environment. I guess so! I'm goin greeeeeen man!!

It's also a good way to save lead. Not that I'm that stingy; wheel weights cost very little, and the amount of bullets that can be made from one bucket of them is amazing. However, it sure would be easier to re-melt lead bullets than to melt wheel weights with the metal clips. I'm gonna make this lead last.

Guns incorporated

The Second Amendment applies to cities and states too? Not just the federal government?

Who knew?

This news is making the rounds, and it's sickening to see how many journalists still think that the Constitution "grants" rights. What exactly do those folks learn in college again?

Range report

Saturday I went out to see how my rifle likes the 168 grain Federal Gold Medal Match. I went back out to the old pond; only this time I took a weed eater to clear the vegetation, as I learned my lesson well from last time. Still, I ran the weed eater out of string and bent my machete in the two hours it took to cut a shooting lane.



I got there right at 1000, and the temperature was already above 90. After clearing a lane and setting up targets, I was soaked with sweat down to my knees. The humidity was at 48%.

A week ago I bought a 4 foot plastic folding table to shoot off of. I've eyed them for a long time, but all the folding tables I've come across are too rickety for range work, but not this one. It's good to go. It sure makes things easier than shooting off the hood of the truck, and it was nice to be able to drive down to the targets with A/C instead of walking.



With the table set up, I laid out the rifle and commenced to setting up the chronograph. I also walked down and set up a target at 100 yards to get these rounds zeroed. In that ten minutes time my rifle was almost too hot to touch just from being out in the sun. As for my target, I used a piece of thin cardboard from a pack of orange dots as it was field expedient, and also because I could measure it with the range finding reticle on my scope. I paced the distance off to start with, and between my well calibrated eye and the scope reticle, I'm convinced I was at 100 yards. Some teenage scumbags stole my rangefinder, so I'm learning to use other methods.

As it turns out I couldn't see my shot holes on the little six inch piece of cardboard, so I went back out and put up a piece of drywall that I had brought along to shoot my new 45 ACP handloads at. I got dialed in pretty nice, right after I shot a half inch three shot group just outside of the top right dot.



I wasn't there though to shoot groups at 100; I was there to dial the rounds in at 285 yards - as close to 300 as I could get on Saturday. My first three rounds I used .7 MILs hold over instead of the 1 MIL that I was supposed to use, which put me just under the bottom black dot. Despite that, they were tight, which made me happy:



I then fired off a five round group at the bottom black dot, which I pulled the first round high and to the left, and marked it so in my book before clicking off the next four rounds. That group made me happy too, discounting the first shot.

At that point, the gun was blistering hot. Normally it takes between ten and twenty rounds to get this gun to warm up a bit before it will shoot tight. It likes to run hot. Saturday was the exception, as there was no hiding from the sun, and I had to wrap the barrel with a wet T-shirt and stuff the whole gun in the case for twenty minutes just to be able to fire off another three round group. I would alternate shooting it and my little AR15 to keep from sitting around - notice the three little shot holes near the top black dot. Apparently the drop compensation chart that came with the Burris Fulfield II scope is off: those rounds were aimed at the bottom dot. Not a bad group though.

The mirage was terrible, and worse with each shot fired and minute passed. I have little to no experience shooting with mirage, and combining that with my sweat soaked face not getting a cheekweld, and you have a recipe for some piss poor shooting.



That would be my last group fired, this time at 256 yards, measuring 2.831". The three shots on the right are from the AR15. At least they're minute-of-groundhog.

As usual, here's some through-the-scope pictures. First, the Horus Hawk:



And the Burris on seven power:



Last but not least, I shot almost twenty rounds of my wheel weight handloads of 45 ACP to see how they did. I intended to shoot a lot of them that day, but I had had enough of the bugs and the heat.



Powered by six grains of Unique, they averaged in at 858 fps, which is dead on as a substitute for ball ammo. I'm happy as can be about that. I was shooting off hand at fifteen yards, not shooting for groups, and they all stayed within the front sight post. Can't do better than that for target fodder.

I am now going to mass produce some more 230 grain LRN ammo so that I can actually shoot my 1911, instead of just dreaming about it. I haven't shot the thing in many months due to ammo not being readily available or affordable. I am also going to stock up on the FGMM as it seems to shoot well in my gun, and JBM Ballistics says it will make it close to 950 yards or so. One day I hope to test it out.

Obviously she should be stripped of her gun rights

And all others as well. We wouldn't want "individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism" from exercising their rights now would we?

Hopefully the FBI will give her a special redress number.

Come to think of it, terrorists have long used kids as weapon delivery vehicles. Why not ban kids in general from flying? Perhaps that's too extreme. Maybe every child should be physically searched, just in case, ya know? It's not like they're going to resist or anything.

It kind of reminds me of this.

A utopia free from fear

Isn't that why DC gunlaws are so restrictive? To make sure that Citizens feeeeeeeel safe? To make them free from fear?

Well now, that ship has sailed. DC folk are no longer feeling safe these days, and who can blame them?

As the rest of the wholesale community got back to work Thursday, vendors worried that the escalating crime in the area will soon put them out of business.

“Yesterday, about 10 or 15 customers told us that they’re afraid, even during the day time to walk around this area,” said Shaikh.

“I’m still scared. I couldn’t sleep all night,” said Suleman Hussain, who owns a nearby business. “We’ve been here for only a year and a half, and I don’t know, I don’t want to be here anymore. It’s too scary.”

But but but, there's cops and stuff; many of them with super high tech equipment that will warn them at the precise moment a scumbag ends your life. Look, there's even a big brawny cop standing next to some crime tape, diligently writing important stuff in a little notebook. All is well in hand.

And a harsh notice to all you vile crooks out there that feed on the soft underbelly of society: crime will not be permitted! It simply won't be allowed! "We can't have people out preying on the community like this."

See how easy that was? Chief Lanier is now going to commence "getting them." She's now going to round up the murdering hooligans, or have a stern face-to-face talk with them to find out what reason and cause they have to rob and kill.

Please Citizens, there's no reason to arm yourself for your own safety! The cops will be by with their notebook shortly. Peace be still!

You know, these incompetent goons insist on disarming everyone because nobody but the po-po can be trusted to provide for their own safety, as they may all go berserk and shoot up presidential motorcades with their sub compact Glocks, so I'm thinking that the community may have a claim against the DC police here for failure to make them feel safe.

Canadians: the new terrorist menace

I casually read the headline to this article, and knew it was a load of bullshit before I even clicked.

Police arrest driver of weapons-laden car near G20.

Tell me the first thing that comes to mind is that the guy has like an SKS or something in his trunk, and the cops and the press are making mountains out of it? Or perhaps a .25 auto and some fireworks? Maybe a couple of shotguns, a Beretta 92F, and a old Marlin .22 to make it an "arsenal?"

Nope. So what did this crazed, lunatic terroristic fellow have in his car to make it "weapons laden?"

Canadian police Thursday arrested the driver of a car laden with five fuel canisters, a chain-saw and a home-made crossbow close to the Toronto center where G20 leaders will meet.

Man, was that car laden! It was like so totally laden, that it could have easily been called Bin laden! Actually, now it can be called BEEN laden!! Get it! Been laden?!?!

I should be a counter terrorist, because my wit and humor would no doubt be helpful on long stakeouts, watching black hearted men surreptitiously planning the next massive bombing while innocently filling their lawn mower with highly explosive elixir of Allah.

Hell, everyone is potentially a terrorist these days, or even practically a terrorist. Who knows how many unregistered gas cans are within the Canadian border. And this guy had a fucking half empty soft drink, and you know what those can be used for. . . . .

Inside the car they found five blue and red fuel canisters, some only partially full, a half-empty soft drink bottle, a bundle of arrows with red and yellow tips, as well as a large chainsaw, the homemade orange steel crossbow and a baseball bat.

Everyone knows that a crazed madman with a baseball bat can take out an entire little league team!

Three medium-sized suitcases were found to be stuffed with batteries, scribbled notebooks, and a copy of "100 ways to Make Money on the Internet."

There was also a tall, oversized wooden paddle, a bottle of cleaning fluid, and a dirty sleeping bag stuffed in the trunk.

Is it me, or does the anonymous reporter that wrote this garbage remind you here of the janitor from Billy Madison, at that scene where he's in Eric's office with a list of all the petty childish things he witnessed Billy doing? "Billy likes to drink soda. Miss Lippy's car. . . is green." Connection, no?

Anyways, the day is now saved, thanks to the daring bravery of 20,000 the most courageous and under worked mall ninjas on the planet. Good save guys.

Allegedly, the terroristic book "100 ways to make money on the internet" is subversive fodder for the violent and easily manipulated mind, written by none other than the ghosts of Attila the Hun, Hitler, and Glen Beck's great great grandfather. The cover is even made of the skin from a thousand slaughtered Jack Russell puppies!!

So just how close did the madman get to the G20? A thousand feet? A hundred feet? Ten feet?

Nope. Less than half a mile.

That's what you call danger close!

Meanwhile, as this nutcase Canadian was getting aggressively interrogated for endangering the lives of countless Canadian babies and interrupting the peaceful utopia of Toronto, what were those 20,000 brave cops doing to maintain the tranquility?

A swath of downtown Toronto has been ringed with steel barricades, schools and businesses have been closed, and one level of the main Union Station has been shut, leaving only local trains able to ferry passengers.

Just so we're clear, guy driving through town with some gas cans, a bottle of mineral spirits, and a sleeping bag = the most dangerous threat in the world; ten battalions of doogooders with body armor, automatic weapons, and tear gas turning downtown Toronto into FOB G20 and arresting people with gas cans = necessary keepers of world peace.

Some more keepers from this shit article:

"We are not up north, or deer hunting so these weapons were a matter of concern."

I would say that the stupidity, reckless endangerment, and needless violence by Canadian law enforcement is a matter of concern too. And is he suggesting that people hunt with gas cans and a chainsaw? Don't think so? Well, how about this gem:

"This is an ongoing investigation," he said, adding the car was "filled with weapons of opportunity."

If this moron had a clue, he would know that every human being that lives in a modern residential structure has access to countless weapons of opportunity that are far more powerful than a chainsaw or crossbow. Why don't you just lock up everybody then?

He said the hazardous materials team would be analyzing the contents of the fluid containers to see what they were, and the arrested man had not yet given any clear explanation of what he was doing.

I gather that the guy can't give a clear explanation because he's bound and gagged, and probably has some big federal goon's arm and eight-cell Mag light up his ass, looking to "anal-yze the contents of his fluids." Get it? Anal-yze?!?!

I'm so funny.

This is what you get when you give Big Brother the keys to protect you from everything.

Actually, don't even waste the minute and a half of your life reading that article. It's rubbish. It's kinda telling though that during a meeting of the world's most powerful bankers, and during the coordination of an army of cops of this size, that we would hear about something like this to justify the whole mess. It seems like nobody really gives a damn about a bunch of rich bankers, so something has to be made up and perpetuated by the press to make the masses of sheep think that the efforts of their taxed labor is going to a good cause.

Yay world peace!!

On warranties

Use them if you can. A sign of a good manufacturer is if they both include a decent warranty, and if they honor that warranty. It has to be both, or the warranty is crap.

Car manufacturers are the perfect example of what not to do.

They may advertise a good warranty, but they try as hard as possible to not honor it. I've had every type of warranty known to man from car manufacturers, and at the end of the day they are going to screw you, so don't bother. They make their money on repair work, not the car itself. I've had car manufacturers consult with lawyers; take apart pieces of my engine and take pictures of it to send to HQ for an opinion; send experts to the dealership to look at the repair, all in the name of doing whatever it takes to make money.

There are companies that make other products that do whatever it takes to make their customer happy, and thus spend more money on buying more of their products. T.A.D. Gear is a good example of this: remember the jacket that I bitched about this past winter? They sent a pre-paid shipping label to my house so that I could send the jacket back to them. Turnaround time was about a week, and I had the jacket back, good as new. That's good service. I can't wait to buy more of their stuff, comfortable knowing that when I break it, they will stand behind their gear.

I'm going to test the customer service of another company that I have thus far held in high regard: Suunto.

Waaay back at the beginning of 2006, I bought one of their Vector watches for my all expenses paid vacation to beautiful Ramadi, in sunny Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Good times. Good times.

Since then I have replaced a couple of batteries, and one wrist strap. This is one tough watch, and I love it dearly, but yesterday the pin hole for the wrist strap broke, which leaves me checking my wrist for the time. I feel like I lost my hand.

It's out of warranty, and I don't have the fundage at the moment to buy a new watch, so I've been kinda bummed. Checking out the comments on the Suunto website, the company responded to a customer who had some negative things to say about a broken watch out of warranty; they said that for a nominal fee, the watch could be sent in for a facelift where they replace the housing and band and basically give you a new watch. That's fantastic service right there! Other commenters speak highly of this non warranty warranty, so I gave Suunto a call and they confirmed it.

Using their handy dandy website, I got a FedEx label printed up, the watch boxed up, and the whole shootin' match in the mail. The friendly lady on the phone also informed me that there was no wait time at the moment, so my watch should be back in a jiffy. I'm happy cos' it saves me several hundred dollars to replace an expensive watch.

Here is a pic of my watch shortly after I got it:


Notice the temperature reading on it says 122 degrees F.

Here is a picture of it before going into the FedEx package:



It's pretty beat up. This watch has been through hell for sure, and it's lasted this long. A facelift will be nice. I'll give an update with details when I find out how much it's gonna cost, and what they're going to do.

Wyatt Earp's gunfight testimony

Super bad-ass! Click on over to Hajisplace for a look at a sworn affidavit of the events up to and including the gunfight at the OK Corral.

That's sure to stop crime

DC is imposing another curfew on residents who are 17 and younger.

Personally, I wouldn't let my kid stay out after midnight anyways, but it sure as hell wouldn't be because of some silly statute. I have to wonder though if anyone actually believes the gun toting gang bangers will follow the letter of the law.

Something tells me that they won't, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Predators in the wild

When wandering the great outdoors, be advised that there may be dangerous predators afoot, such as this nutjobby gollum like creature.

Frickin' weird!

I love the fact that the victim decided not to "give him what he wants" and provide police a sketch later, but instead pounded the creature's face in and ended the attack. If only they all ended that way.

But what about the NyQuil?

I thought that taking away everyone's cough syrup made it impossible for the crazies to make meth in their kid's room?

I feel flim-flammed!

So does that mean I can buy NyQuil again without providing a hair and urine sample?

Firearm training in Mexico!

It looks like Mexican businessmen need meat puppets to protect them from the cartels. I can't blame them.

Of interest is that there is only one day of live fire. Also note the part about Mexican Special Operations Soldiers, as well as SWAT cops, changing sides and joining the cartels.

You don't reckon that they bothered to take their issued automatic weapons with them, do you?

Ammo giveaway at The Survivalist Blog

M.D. Creekmore at The Survivalist Blog – a survival blog dedicated to helping others prepare for and survive disaster – with articles on bug out bag contents, survival knife choices and a wealth of other survival information is giving away a 1,000 round case of 9mm – 124 Grain FMJ (a $200 value – donated by LuckyGunner)! To enter, you just have to post about it on your blog. This is my entry. Visit The Survivalist Blog for the details.

What are you waiting for? If you don't have a blogger account, you can make one here.

Rule number four!!!

Yikes!

That's some good fortune that that family has. Firing rounds up into the air is a big no no.

Drive-bys and Go-Gos

The DC mentality never fails to impress.

In response to a drive by shooting of nine people earlier this year, some of the families of the victims want to ensure that no one else in DC has the means to protect themselves from the rampant violence. Their means is to lobby congress to prevent the pro-gun bill that gets attached annually to the DC voting rights bill from ever seeing the light of day again.

These people no doubt just want the violence to stop, so I don't cast any stones at their end result, only the means.

At the first link, notice how all three of the men who carried out the shooting had extensive criminal histories. This happens again and again and again all throughout America: some scumbags that have made a career out of hurting people decide to elevate their crimes to murder, and the first thing the community and bureaucrats do is try to make things safer by taking away weapons from everybody, instead of focusing on the real problem of keeping these scumbags locked up in the first place. Or, sometimes when the bureaucrats go at it alone, without the help of grieving families, you end up with efforts to ban Go-Go joints, or pizza shops, or dead end streets, or high school football; anything but an attempt to strike the root of the issue.

The opportunity to prevent violence like this drive-by in question occurred years ago, but sadly was lost by the same people who are now trying to stop it by trampling the rights of everyone else. Again, I don't question the heart of these families, or the politicians who are listening to them, but I have to say that if they are not looking at fixing the revolving door policy of DCs criminal justice system, than they are only helping the next murderous teenager in carrying out his crime.

It's not the guns; it's the criminals. When the criminals show a pattern of violence, then put them away for good and you will have your remedy. Why aren't the outraged families screaming about the violent criminal history of the three scumbags? There will never be any shortage of weapons for criminals, but there can definitely be a shortage of scumbags if they are kept in a cage.

Feel good legislation will only take an opportunity away from the good citizens, and aid the DC scumbag in achieving their crimes.

Happy Fathers Day!!

What did you get for Father's Day?

I got stitches!! I should have listened to my wife, who told me not to do any work today. Instead, I had to defy her orders and work outside under the deck for awhile; at one point I thought that maybe some Vicotin and a smashing headache would enhance my afternoon, so I jumped up and banged the top of my noggin on the edge of a beam.

I knew it was bad when I took my hand off my head and it was dripping with blood and pieces of meat. Head wounds apparently bleed profusely. All I could smell was blood.

After I got some stitches, I noticed how dry the weather was, so I broke out my casting equipment for an innaugural day of making bullets. Freakin awesome!



The learning curve was rather quick, and I noticed that it takes a very long time to get a 5 lb. pot heated up and broken in. With that out of the way, I was kicking out 230 grain round nose bullets like a champion. Discounting the 30 or 40 bullets that I screwed up, I ended up with 205 serviceable rounds that I can load, and eight 1 lb. ingots for another day. I didn't even put a dent in the bucket of wheel weights that I have, and it is one of four.



I still have to prep my brass and size these bullets before I can get to loading them. About two hours including cleanup is what I had for the day, and that's huge in my world.

I'm pretty thrilled.

I'll let you know how they shoot when I get them loaded and to the range.

A sorry excuse

"And despite having more than 300,000 graves at the site, the cemetery does not have a computer database to keep track of those buried there. Records are still kept on paper."

P-p-p-p-p-p-pooooooooor meeeeeeeee. I don't have a computer!!! It's not my fault!!!

Burying a veteran on top of another veteran shows that there's more to this than "we don't have enough technology." These two incompetent morons deserve some jail time, not taxpayer funded retirement. How exactly is that punishment?

They were "forced" to retire, see?

As for the technology part - how in the world did General George Washington kick so much ass without so much as one lousy laptop? Hannibal bitched about Windows crashing all the time, making the task of personnel tracking a real pain in the ass, but he still managed to give the Romans hell for 17 years. And King Leonidas, I hear that his abacus malfunctioned, and that there were only 298 Spartans at Thermopylae.

Reams of paper and stone seemed to work just fine for the better part of ten thousand years, and two government jackasses can't even account for the dead for less than twenty.

Crazy Times

I've been on travel again; this time to Texas. I would like to take this opportunity to say that the people who design the roads in Texas must be so high on crack that they contaminate every one around them with their toxic stupidity.

When navigating a Texas highway where you are not intimately familiar, you can count on the fact that by the time you see the sign that you are looking for in order to find your way about, if the county even bothered to put one up in the first place, it will be either too small to see until you are ten feet from it, or it will be so perplexed with little road maps and such that you won't be able to read it. Also, it will probably be white instead of the traditional green, as Texas loves to distinguish itself from the rest of the union, and just as surely as the sun rises in the East, the damn thing will not reflect the light from your headlights, so as to make it impossible to see in the dark. There is also the matter of the sign being on the opposite side of the road where you need to turn. Every time.

And while I'm on the subject of street signs, I would like to give a shout out to Sea World to perhaps install a few so that people not from the area may actually find this establishment without driving around in the middle of nowhere looking for the place. You would think that this all common sense, but I can assure you that once you get off the highway, the only way you will find Sea World is if you happen upon it by accident. The shark display is fantastic, by the way.

A couple years back, I was traveling so much that I spent a good third of every month on the road somewhere, or in the air. I'll tell ya, I'd rather drive ten hours in a rental car than go through one security checkpoint at an airport. The whole process is designed to be as humiliating as possible, and I can't see at all where it provides any security whatsoever. TSA is too busy feeling up grandmas and soccer moms to catch Al-Qaeda, or their laughing at the ding-dongs that they get to see with their fancy new scanners. I have to be on a list somewhere as I have to go through one of those "random" machines every time I fly.

If you haven't flown in awhile, it doesn't matter one bit if you have the metal detector friendly shoes or belt any more. Your shoes have to come off, period. I decided this time to use one of 5.11's tactical belts with the polymer buckle, thinking that I could spare myself the part of removing my belt, but pretty boy TSA man with his $90 shiny thing on his shoulder though it best to go ahead and make me remove it anyways so he could give me a fondling, even after I went through the peeping tom machine so the voyeurs could get a good look at my junk.

As far as they have gone with this theater security in airports, I consider those checkpoint people to be less than human, to the point where I would sooner feed my sandwich to a fat puppy than a starving TSA agent. And that goes for the customs people too. If you want to get strip searched by those perverts several times, just go through customs in uniform. Seriously, they will strip search you every time. I guess enforcing their will on the low hanging fruit is much easier than risking a law suit for stripping the guy in the dishdash.

Since I generally frequent military bases when I travel, I do not take a pistol with me as it would be pointless. This time though, it would have given me peace to have it with me. San Antonio is a rough place; while wandering around on foot, the natives instantly took note of my presence, and I could feel their eyes sizing me up. In every major city in America, there are rough parts of town; the trick is to identify that they are not the place for you to wander through flashing your camera, and skirt around them. Sometimes I blunder into them by accident, and it's never fun.

The one that sticks out the most is when I was circled by teenagers in a car while out on foot in Saint Louis. Ten more minutes and it would have been dark, and my ass would have ended up a bad smell in a dumpster.

These days, I advise travelers to drive to their destination. Get a rental car if you have to. If I travel anywhere on the East coast, it is so much cheaper and faster to get a rental car and drive across four states instead of burning up a day at airports. I haven't had a straight through flight in years, and by the time you get done fiddling with shuttle buses and luggage carousels, you will have burned up most of the day anyways. If you drive though, you miss out on all that "special attention" that TSA loves to give you.