It started out very innocently, really. A few of the poker buddies decided to go out to the suburbs of Kyiv to go go-carting. The go-cart place is within a new shopping center/complex. The go-cart place is very high-tech, and also fairly expensive. You get to ride for about 10 minutes, but that is about all of us could take. You have to really hold on tight to get cleanly and quickly around the corners. Before you head out to race, you are given helmets. The assistant took one look at my huge noggin and pointed to the "L" section, which, of course, was too little. The "XL" barely did the job. My crash at the bottom of the first hill earned me a warning from the "green meanies", the young dudes regulating the track. I came in last among our group, both in overall time and fastest lap. While analyzing our 10-minute race for the next 30 minutes, one of our group suggested that we go out to a nearby shooting range and shoot some skeet. I had heard about this range before and had always wanted to try it, and I had nothing to do for the rest of an overcast Sunday afternoon, and my ride wanted to go, so out we went.
We started out at the range with skeet-shooting. Two shotguns, both double-barrelled, and about 60 shells between four guys. I was among the second pair to shoot. During the first 15 pulls, exactly zero skeet had been successfully blown from the air. I combined with my friend to hit the first skeet. I finished with 3 successfully-destroyed skeet, including one "rabbit", in which the skeet is sent rolling along the ground. 3 skeet proved to be the winning tally. Having smelled a bit of gunpowder, we decided to spend some more money on the rifle range. We were given the option of shooting from 100 or 50 meters, and chose 100 meters. We decided to shoot ten bullets from the AK-47, 5 bullets from a WWII, Soviet-made rifle, and 5 bullets from a Remington sniper rifle. You pay by the bullet, about 50 cents to $1 per bullet. And let me say this right off the bat....shooting an AK-47 is immensely satisfying. And very easy actually, which why it was so popular. The WWII rifle definitely had the biggest kick, and was the most challenging. The small Remington rifle, which we shot at the end, almost seemed like cheating, especially given the scope on the top of the rifle. After having completed a thrilling round of firing at paper targets, we walked out to the targets and saw how we did. Further adding to my day's accolades, I had struck the bullseye more times than anyone else. Next time around we plan to shoot the handguns and the automatic weapons.
