The Glorious Agony of Defeat....

Been fairly quiet in the little town of Yakima. Speaking of Yak-Town, I was watching a Nickelodeon Channel show called "iCarly" (it's funny- don't knock it.) In this episode, the star, a teenager named Carly, was going to have to move from her home in Seattle, to Yakima. Throughout the show they kept saying "Yakima" like it was a very funny word, then it came to me... it IS a funny sounding word, but the most common mistake is to pronounce it ya-KEY-mah. It is pronounced YAK-i-mah, with the i pronounced as in it.

You can now sound like a native Yakimaniac, Yakimanian, Yakiwhatever.

The excitement this week was found (as it often is) in SWAT training. We went up into the Gifford Pinchot (no idea who he was, I'm surrounded by funny names) National Forest and snuck around, looking for.... ME. Having done this stuff for as long as I have, it's best to give the new guys a chance to go up against me in an ambush situation. Now understand, I don't want to win; I want them to win; it means that all of us old guys did well teaching them.

I took a few pictures of the environment; it's a pretty area:

The problem came when my ambush position was flanked by very accurate return fire from what are deceptively called "Air Soft" guns. They may use "air" as a propellant, but the .22 caliber polymer resin balls are anything but "soft."

After the guys "killed" me, I took this photo and texted it to my wife; only saying, "I got shot."

As you may guess, I got in big trouble for not explaining right away that it was no more than a shaving cut, although I waited until I got home to wash off the trickle of blood (MAJOR sympathy points scored there.)

The following day, the newest guy on the team came up and apologized. He was the one who shot me, but was too afraid of me to tell me on the day it happened. Afraid?!?! My first thought was- "Why would any other cop be afraid of me? I'm harmless!" Plus, I was very impressed with the teamwork and shooting; they did what they were supposed to, and did it quickly. But the second thought I had was, "Cool... the new guys are afraid of me!" Nothing wrong with some respect associated with the old dudes, right?