Shooting + The Drive Back

During our last day in Silver, I thought it would be fun to practice with my rifle. Since I live so close to Central Avenue in Albuquerque, it is imperative that I have some sort of self defense skills. My friend Oleg is considering the purchase of an AK-47 for similar reasons.

Here is Oleg firing from the prone position.

Oleg looks disapprovingly at the jammed clip, "Никогда с Калашниковым..." (Russian : "Never with a Kalashnikov...")

Still jammed

Oleg has the most steady shot out of everyone

Death to all targets

Me shooting - Not too many of these shots (reminder : don't practice with guns while wearing a trench coat look-alike)

Kate Practicing her shot

Some of the landscape around the target zone

The front of my parents house

After shooting, Oleg wanted to drive the four wheeler around a while. Kate and I were a bit worried, since Oleg tries to go as fast as possible on every vehicle I have ever seen him drive. However, Oleg drove the four wheeler with two passengers without any fatal incidents.

Once we finished our shooting and 4 wheeling, we left to go back to Albuquerque. On the way home, we drive right next to the Santa Rita mine, which is pretty cool.

Past the mine, we stopped at a number of scenic overlooks.

The Stinar Cousins


Me and my wonderful girlfriend!

After the long drive, we made it safely back to Albuquerque! Most photos were taken by Oleg, and are available here.

Saturday in Silver City

We began our day with some lumber jacking. My dad always makes sure to keep the land around the house fire-safe, which involves clearing a lot of underbrush and some full grown trees. In order to (hopefully) keep fires from reaching our house, the land very close needs to be basically free from underbrush and fairly thinned out of trees. After cutting the underbrush, we burn it in a CONTROLLED pile. The bigger pieces are cut into firewood size and stacked by our house to be burned inside. Oleg took a few pictures of the landscape before we began our lumber jacking.




After a few hours of serious lumber jacking, we decided to swim some laps at the University pool downtown. Western New Mexico University is located in Silver City, I spent a semester there working towards an MBA, but I decided the school wasn't for me. Dr. John Little was the coolest professor there, and the only one that pushed grad level classes to learn. Linda McGee assigned a number of homeworks that required growth and thought; I had undergrad accounting with her. I always liked talking with her about accounting and business issues.

Oleg, our resident photographer, took some interesting pictures of WNMU and Silver City.




The above images are taken by Oleg from the WNMU parking lot outside the gym.

Oleg, with the blue New Mexican sky in a parking lot.

After the gym, we walked down to the Silver City Brew pub. Kate, Oleg and I decided to take a walk down four or so blocks to the pub. On our way there, Oleg saw a number of buildings he was interested in.

Oleg likes the Southwest style of architecture

No bars on the windows or guard dogs?

After a short walk, we arrived at the brew pub. We didn't order food, but Kate and I tried some of their beers. Unfortunately, Oleg was unable to reinforce any Russian alcoholic stereotypes and choose hot chocolate instead of vodka or another alcoholic beverage.

My eyes shouldn't be shut, I had two beers.

Oleg Semanov

Driving South Towards Silver City

My girlfriend Kate, cousin Brett, friend Oleg and I decided to go to Silver City to visit my family the weekend before the Spring semester began. Oleg is from Kazakhstan, so I wanted to help him learn about the great United States in a similar fashion to the true life documentary "Borat." As I showed Oleg, one important lesson about the United States is that everyone is required to own multiple guns, and Neo from the Matrix can be seen in many different places around major cities. Here is Neo in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Neo, with a uncharacteristically small caliber rifle (.22)

Once we loaded everything up and headed out of Albuquerque, we made sure to stop at Oleg's favorite coffee shop. We stopped at the Starbucks in Los Lunas, about 25 minutes south of Albuquerque.










I really don't like those sunglasses, but they have nice optics.

Oleg Semanov, Starbucks connoisseur

Fifty miles later, we stopped in Socorro to eat at the Mexican restaurant, "El Sombrero." Luckily, I had a few gift certificates left over from when I used to live in Socorro, which needed to be used up. As always, the food was very good.

Side View of El Sombrero

After the last major stop in Socorro, we made it back to the Black Range. The "Black Range" is the name given to the mountains between the towns of Truth or Consequences and Mimbres, and can be crossed in order to get from Albuquerque to Silver City. The alternative route involves driving through Deming, which reminds me very much of an alkaline flats badland. Most of the time, I prefer to drive through the heavily forested mountains. On this trip, we were actually able to see two javelinas running around. It was pretty dark, and they ran away quickly, so no photo evidence. Once we crossed the mountains, the remaining drive went smoothly and we arrived in Silver City.

Silver City Trip

A blog detailing my upcoming trip to Silver City New Mexico.