Area 1

[38supPat]

At area 1 match today. Met Erik Warren, nice guy. Met Duane Thomas, first words he said to me were "I thought you'd be bigger"...lol. Second was "where's your laptop, you're falling behind Brian?" Is everyone keeping track but me?

Match is great, Duane looked good on the stage I saw him shoot, haven't seen Erik shoot yet. My gun crashed again on me  Two bad stages (bad disconnector seems to be the prob. as well as one fail to feed.) Shooting on super squad with Max Michel jr. and The great one himself, (cool squad, eh!), wish I hadn't looked like such a dork on the first stage (forgot to push a button to open a door and ran headlong into it....Doh!)

Well, Got a full day ahead tomorrow, see you there race fans!

Pat

[Nik Habicht]

Pat,

And the door didn't fall down when you crashed into it? They must be building some strong props.....LOL

[benos]

Thanks for the report, and especially for the great visual ... lol.

be

[Chriss Grube]

Nik,

Don't be getting any funny ideas about doing that running through walls crap at the MidAtlantic. (unless there is a small port and you shoot before me!) Hell I'll take a big port any way i can get it!

[Duane Thomas]

"Met Duane Thomas, first words he said to me were "I thought you'd be bigger"...lol."

Erle Stanley Gardner, the author of the Perry Mason books, started out as a lawyer. After he became a world famous writer, he used to teach classes to cops on the tricks lawyers would use to discredit their testimony - having used them all himself, natch. One of the things he said was that eyewitness testimony was next to worthless. One reason was that if someone the eyewitness was watching impressed them as having a very strong personality, a lot of presence, they would invariably describe that person as being much larger physically than was actually the case.

I've found the same thing with people you only meet over the e-waves, or the telephone. Only having "met" Pat over the Enosverse forums board, and basing my mental image of him on his personality, his energy, his depth of knowledge, I pictured this virtual giant of a man, gray-haired, 6'5" at least with a huge gut. Kind of a combination Moses, Santa Claus and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then he introduced himself and there, standing in front of me, was this reasonably athletic looking, average sized guy with coal black hair, a mustache and goatee....honest to God, I think when he told me his name my eyes actually flicked up to where I would've thought his head would be. All I could think was, "He's so much smaller than I thought he'd be. He's, like, my size." (Well actually he's a bit taller than me, but then most people are.) And since my verbal crap filter was temporarily on the fritz, I actually said it, "Wow, I thought you'd be bigger."

It's funny how you can have this mental image of someone you've never met. I have the same thing with my editor at The Blue Press, Mark Pixler. Talk to him regularly on the phone, have for years, I've never met him face-to-face. And based on the sound of his voice, the sense of his personality, I've always pictured Mark as having really pale skin, black hair, slightly rounded features. Now, I know that's not true because I've seen a photo of him, and I know that in reality he's this good lookin', square-jawed guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a handlebar mustachue. But still the mental image of him persists every time he's on the other end of the phone line.

On the other hand, I met icer out at Area One, and he looks just like I pictured him. So sometimes the system works. (He also, if I remember correctly, won A class in Production.)

(Edited by Duane Thomas at 7:11 pm on July 16, 2001)

[Duane Thomas]

"Second was "where's your laptop, you're falling behind Brian?" Is everyone keeping track but me?"

Apparently.

[bonedaddy]

Duane, just in case we ever meet.  I'm about 5-2, pot belly, balding, olive complection.   You'll know me by my grass pants,  bare chest, lions tooth necklace, and large femur bone scepter.  I'm usually surrounded by several tall, gorgeous, babes in grass skirts.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot, my voice has the ominous sound of rolling thunder.

[Duane Thomas]

Hah! I already knew that. Another triumph for the mental-imaging-based-on-personality system!

[icer]

Duane---

Nice meeting you at Area 1......sorry we didn't get a chance to talk more but I was mentally exhausted and trying to keep up with my shooting partners who were looking to get their gear packed.

Hope you had a good match......it was quite an eye opener for me as it was my first big USPSA pistol match. I actually ended up with a 2nd in A class in Limited. Trying to give the big boys a run for their money with my piece of plastic.

Hey Pat----

Was that the second door on Outland you assaulted? I was watching the super squad and it must have been you I heard inside the "teleporter" bulling his way through. The super squad really attacked those doors.......

[38supPat]

I almost made it too.....

Pat

[ErikW]

Myself, I thought Pat would be older.

Failing to press the buttons and banging against the doors has got to be a Canadian thing I just don't understand. Randy Fisher on our squad tried that method. I heard RO Dave Thomas gave somebody a procedural for being too rough with a door.

Every Canadian I saw shoot (and I saw a bunch of em) pulled the trigger really quick. Serious hosers.

I had an inconsistent match. Took a stage win but had some stages down in the 20s, for eighth Limited. Swingers gave me trouble again. Had a Miss into tomato hardcover on the A line I should have appealed to the Range Master. Shot quite a few stages where I dropped only 1, 2, or 3 points, but off the pace.

That match had a 7-8% DQ rate... 20 shooters sent packing! Legit DQs like dropped guns, plus some muzzle violations in the many 180 traps.

[Duane Thomas]

"I almost made it too....."

LOL! Literally.