Yeah, we're still here, but we don't have our home computers set up and no cable modem yet. We have to get out of the old apartment by July 24 (we made a deal that saved us rent and enabled the apartment manager to fill the apartment that much faster). We took off work yesterday and moved guns and ammo--not the famous magazine, but literal, hard, heavy, bulky, ungainly guns and ammo.
Moving is when our gun nuttery is literally a pain in the back, legs, and arms. Let me give you an idea about our grief without getting so specific as to bore you.
Our two reloading machines don't fit into any conventional-sized boxes. You can't just go to a moving/storage store and find their handy-dandy reloader box complete with little compartments for powder measures, priming trays, and a scale. Plus, you have to empty the priming trays, the powder measures and all that fun stuff. Still we got them moved.
Oh a word to the wise, when we took our handgun loader off the bench we found a lot of dead primers all clustered around the hole that they’re supposed to fall out of. When you pick it up, dead primers go all over the place. Our vacuum cleaner doesn’t like picking them up so it was hands and knees time.
Then, there's lead shot. How can such small bags weigh so much? Oh wait, it is lead stupid. Of course, we have small boxes of bullets that have to go too. You can't just pack this stuff in a book box and think you’re going to carry it all to the pickup truck. Maybe if you’re Hercules and the box is made out of titanium. For the rest of us, it means a bunch of time consuming trips. Also, one does feel funny carrying two small bags at a time and breaking into a sweat. Powder containers fit nicely in boxes though.
Now, of course there’s the loaded ammo. Again, you have to deal with weight and the many small trip problem, but we loaded it all into shallow boxes and managed to get it on the hand truck and out the door.
Finally, we turned to guns. All the handguns fit in our handgun boxes. We made a tower of boxes and moved them on the hand truck all at once. Yeah, we caught a break there.
We faced a different problem with the rifles. We don’t have enough rifle cases for all of them. Those that were cased went out on a dolly. But, we really didn’t want to hand carry our rifles through the apartment complex—who knows how many Gun Fearing Wussies could faint at the sight (besides, it’s a bad security idea to show people just what you own).
That meant the longest ones like an Enfield Martini-Henry (Zulu) rifle and a Trapdoor Springfield had to be rolled in rugs. Our shortest ones like AR-15 clones, M-1 Carbine, and similar fit inside a rolling garbage can (it’s clean since we bag all of our trash) that we padded with plastic-bagged newspapers and blankets. Other rifles went out the door however we could protect them including rolled in a blanket and carried over the shoulder.
I won’t get into the safe and gun cabinet, moving those is just grunt labor. Accessories are similar—at least AR, and M-1 Carbine mags are light when empty.
When we had a pickup truck load we headed to our new home and got them secured before going back for the rest of it. What a chore all around.
So, moving is one of the few drawbacks of collecting and shooting guns. My back still hurts and I hope my co-workers enjoy the smell of Ben-Gay today.
No comments:
Post a Comment