Today was the day. I was up at 1:30, had a quick coffee vitamins and nuts, and was out the door a little after 11.
For some reason I could not find Bird Avenue from Park Avenue, and ended up at Meridian. The plan had been to ride from Park to Bird to Minnesota which is a lovely street, to Meridian. Instead I went through the big scary freeway interchange but it wasn't bad since there wasn't much traffic. I got to Bullseye Bishop a half-hour early and I had to use the bathroom. Joke's on me, no one in that strip mall had a bathroom I could use so I just held it.
I took my little handgun safety test and filled out other papers besides, got to look at the gun I'm buying, which is very nice, it's new, comes with two magazines and is in a nice box, and is made in Austria - I was not sure if Glock was cheaping out and making some of their guns in the US.
There was one hitch: The papers I had were not enough. They weren't the acceptable kind, and not owning a motor vehicle and thus having a motor vehicle registration, I was told the best thing to do is go get a fishing license. I paid out my $875 and left, then thought of something and went back in. "What if I brought in my DD-214?" "Nope, just get a fishing license", I was told. OK then.
The ride back was nice enough, and I worked out why I'd missed Bird Avenue. I needed to go down to San Carlos to find it for sure, and it's the street that runs along the front of the old OSH. So now I can find it.
I rode back and right to the SoFa food court downtown here because they've got a nice bathroom, which I used. Then I ordered a dragon roll from the sushi place and ate that at one of the tables out front.
I decided to wander down to the Big-5 that's by the Wal-Mart on Monterey, because at the gun shop they'd told me Wal-Mart sells fishing licenses. On the Google map, that Big-5 shows up as closed, but if they were, I could always try Wal-Mart.
But they were open. The fishing license involves a background check of some type, for which I was charged a dollar, and the license itself was about $48 so it was just about $50. And I got a box of 9mm ammunition; they had cheapo PMC stuff and some fancy Norma (European brand) defense type stuff, which I got. All together it was about $83.
Having to get a fishing license to buy a gun is weird, but on the bright side, the gun comes with two magazines as was customary for a long time but I was under the impression they were only coming with one these days and I'd want to buy another for $40 or so And they made no attempt to sell me a $40-odd cheesy trigger lock. And who knows, maybe I'll find a way to get out to the coast and collect some sort of sea life before the year's out.
I got back to the shop, relaxed with a couple of glasses of ice water, then packed up a big oscilloscope and took that up to FedEx and a few small packages to the post office, and on the way back got the shrimp appetizer from "Ono Hawaiian Barbecue" and ate and drank some cold water I'd brought with me over in Lumentum's parking lot. This time they put 8 shrimp in so it was quite a meal.
I did some reading around about this fancy-schmancy ammo I got and from the sound of it I made a fairly good pick. I'm going to get a few different kinds. Also, much to the dismay of my finances, I see that Umarex, the parent company of Walther, makes a BB pistol that's a replica of the Glock 19, and according to reviews, the same weight and action etc. I can see myself setting up a backstop here in the office and having fun BB'ing pill bottles and things like that. It's about $100 list but I think it's more like $80 from Big-5. It runs on CO2 and I'm pretty sure I know what kind of action it has, it's used in a lot of CO2 repeaters - it works like a double action revolver inside and I and a few others call it a "shootemupski".
No comments:
Post a Comment