We done got ourselves bows and arrows!

Patrick and I did our taxes on Saturday and discovered we had a lovely refund in the making, so we decided to go ahead and treat ourselves to two new bows and all the fixin's! I'm tickled to death. I can already tell it's going to be one of my favorite activities.

We headed down to Lacey (near Olympia) after a leisurely brunch on Alki, in West Seattle, and I tell you, I'd forgotten how far away Tacoma really is. Takes forever to get there! Anyway, once we got out of Tacoma the buildings started dwindling, and where the shop was located looked basically like undeveloped wilderness with a road going through it. And goodness gracious, was that shop ever amazing! The Bloggess, with her fondness for taxidermied animals, would've LOVED it.

Nom nom nom, I love sticks!

RAWR!

I was such a complete tourist going into this store. I just wandered in and stopped dead, staring at the giant animal-covered mountain in the middle of it, my mouth hanging open. "Wow..."

After circling the mountain and going inside the base to look at fish swimming around (they have an aquarium too!), we went up to the archery section. The first guy who came over seemed a bit useless as far as help went, since he didn't really seem to know how to select a bow for someone else and just kept telling us what his own draw length was and pointing out where to find the draw weight written on the bow.

The second guy actually knew his business and was immensely more helpful. We explained that we were complete beginners and needed to figure out how to select a bow. He had us try a couple, and we got sort of an impromptu lesson out of it. General stance, how to use your arms, where to pull the string back to, how to nock an arrow, etc.

IT WAS SUPREMELY FUN, Y'ALL!

I had a massive amount of fun doing it. At one point it was really surreal. I just lowered the bow for a second and reflected on me, standing in a range, shooting arrows with a bow at a target. CRAZY. I hit the target every time, but a lot of the shots were a bit high. I was consistent, though, so even though they were high they were all in the same general area. After a while I learned to point the bow down a bit from where I thought I should shoot, and I ended up with a total of three bullseyes. Quite a few ended up in the vicinity of the X, but only three hit directly in the middle. Not bad for an absolute beginner!

One of the most common beginner mistakes is locking your left arm when drawing the bow. Normally this will get you string-slapped on your forearm, which is where the guy had me put the arm guard, but I have a slightly modified problem: I'm double-jointed. When I lock my arm, my elbow joint turns over and sticks straight out to the side, presenting a wonderful speedbump for the string to hit when released. The guard not being up there, the string slap was pretty intense. It only happened three or four times, but that was enough. Once was on my forearm, where the guard was, so that didn't leave much of a mark, but my elbow sure looks like it's been through a war or two.

Still in the store, this was right after we'd finished shooting.

At home last night, after it had had a chance to wallow in self-pity and really bloom. That bag at the bottom of the picture is my frozen corn pack. It helped a little bit.

The bruise is even bigger today, but I figured you'd had enough bruise pictures for one day. At any rate, I loved it (pain notwithstanding, I will learn), and we got ourselves each a bow! Patrick's has a 45-lb draw and mine has a 30. I could draw the 45, but not very well and I'd have sacrificed form for it. I need to build muscle first. Also, the 45 was responsible for most of the string slap because I had to lock my left arm in order to hold it out there.

I have a lot of pulling muscle in my back, but almost no pushing muscle. It's a weird problem. The only things I can think of that might increase this without shooting a bow (like something you could do in a gym) are pushups. But I'm not sure about those either. It's a really weird, specific thing that you need your muscles to do. I think hours of practice with the bow will take care of it, but in the meantime I have a lighter draw bow that I can use.

I think Patrick had a really good time, too. It's incredibly satisfying to pull back that weight and then feel it zoom away from you into the target. All the arrows I shot flew straight, none were weird or did that oscillating curve thing when you snap the string (pull your fingers away from the string horizontally instead of straight back). I think I will get the hang of this pretty quickly. It's interesting. With the lack of a let-off (where the bow has things on it to make the weight lighter as you approach full draw, I saw military guys doing this, holding compound bows drawn for a while before firing, and that's because they're only holding back 15lbs, not 30!), I can only hold it at full draw for a little while right now before my muscles start fatiguing, so I have to aim, draw and fire in quick succession. It got smoother as I went along, but it'll definitely take hours of practice.

Mine's on the left, Patrick's is on the right.

I can't wait!