Ahh, slow as usual, but we always come though. It was a nice change to not be rained on the whole time (in the friggn desert no less). For a new frustration, phones especially sucked on the show floor this year where I would have been better off with smoke signals. We still managed to make a good pile of videos, but always wish there was more time to see all the cool new stuff. If I had to summarize this year's theme into one word, I'd say it would be: ambidextrous. As a high note we managed to be cool enough to make it to the Crye party this year, 80s sitcom zombies on go-carts, how ya gonna get anymore rad than that!? Check out the ol' youtube channel for the video blitz:
http://www.youtube.com/user/milspecmonkey
I'm still trying to milk my old HD camera, but we tried some dual camera action this year.

My ol' buddy Pye came along this time to rock out on the still pics, and Tear helped out again as well:
http://milspecmonkey.com/gallery/shotshow2011/

I've taken a grab bag of Tac classes and pretty much all of them were primarily about putting holes in bad guys, so I got to thinking diversifying a little bit with a medic class would be a good idea. No one really likes to think about themselves or their buddies getting seriously injured, but when the time comes, wishing it away is not going to do a lot of good. Thus getting a least some sort of basic medical education can go a long way which will be helpful outside of tactical situations as well. Having first met up with Lone Star Medics at Shotshow, I jumped at the offer to check out one of their classes this summer. Although I'm decent with a gun, my medical skill didn't go too far past Band-Aids and fortunately the 2 day Medicine-X class fits that skill level quite well.

Recently I had the chance of a lifetime to attend a 7 day basic SWAT class thanks to the good word from a tactical buddy of the DC area. Of course he had to toss a good Blue Falcon my way and his only prep for me was "There are going to be times where it's physically challenging." Coming from what I expect from most training, that merely meant OMG we might actually have to run around with guns a little. I had an idea something might be up since it was the first time I saw PT specifically on the course outline, however as with all the others who attended, we found out this was a class we had to earn and not just show up. Starting the fun in Fredericksburg, VA we met up at the Rappahannock Regional Criminal Justice Academy. Things began easy with a class overview, instructor introductions, and even a quick SWAT history movie to get in the spirit. With a little under 30 students we broke up into 3 teams with a good mix of agencies such as NCIS, local SWAT, and Marine SRT. I was happy to end up in Charlie team which was mostly comprised of the Marines as I knew they wouldn't be messing around, yet had concern at the same time of making sure I wouldn't stick out as a big weak link.