From zen to bullets

Monday is my Sunday and I usually spend the day holed up on my home. I hit a yoga class in Westwood in the morning and then drive home to Wilmington for the remainder of the day. Laundry, bills, and maybe a car washing follow.

In rare instances I make plans on Monday with require me to stay in L.A. Such was the case yesterday. I did my typical yoga thing, showered and waited to hear from my cousin Adrian, who I was meeting for drinks sometime during the day. I killed time looking online for hotels for our wedding guests. Found some really nice places (B&Bs in Los Felix, Silverlake, Rancho Park) but not big enough to accommodate all of our people.

Adrian calls and says he forgot he was doing his brother a favor and entertaining friends of his from Munich. They were going to go to the shooting range. I've never been to one so I agreed to try it.

The Los Angeles Gun Club is off Alameda in the industrial part of downtown L.A. It's a simple operation with attendants signing people in and renting them equipment. I don't know one gun from the next but our German friend wanted to fire one of the biggest guns they had -- a 50mm Magnum revolver with a super long barrel. I'm not sure what the others were (a baretta?). We donned our safety goggles and headphones and headed in.

The first thing that struck me was the noise. Guns are loud. I ended up buying earplugs to give my ears a little more protection. Then there's the smell of guns and the residue that ends up on your hands and arms.

The other people at the range were young and mostly in groups. The guys next to us had something that the Terminator might use. I thought, "This is perfect training ground for gangbangers."

I had never shot a firearm and I was pretty bad at it. The guns were heavy and I kept anticipating the kickback. Believe it or not, I did my best shooting with that humongous Magnum. It was the last gun we shot and it's so heavy, it doesn't kick back as hard as the other ones.

Our German friends were having a blast. Stefan took pictures of his wife loading the gun, holding the gun; snapshots of our targets before and after; us posing with our shot-up targets. Germans aren't allowed to own firearms so this was a treat. "Better than Disneyland," we said. Stefan even bought a t-shirt!

It was fun but tiring. I didn't want to shot after my first round. My arm/hand strength is so weak that I couldn't even pull back the slide on the Baretta to ready it for firing.

The movies really do glamorize guns. They make it look so easy to point and shoot and actually hit your target. I was scared around the guns, to tell the truth. They are dangerous. One false move and that's it.

I don't think it was an "only in L.A." day to go from yoga to the pistol range but the two activities are definitely in different worlds. The uniting factor is exhaling. In yoga, you exhale when exerting yourself. At the range, you exhale to steady your trigger pull.