Rendezvous!

Rendezvous!

You've probably noticed this over on the left sidebar:



Yes, the Fourth Annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous is fast approaching.

What is the Rendezvous, you ask? It's a gathering of bloggers, readers, and a few industry people for a weekend of eating, talking, shooting, drinking, eating, talking, a little gambling, and damned little sleeping. Mr. Completely and the lovely and gracious KeeWee host the GBR each fall, and each Rendezvous has been bigger than the one previous. This one will run from September 10 through September 13 (Thursday through Sunday). The first three Rendezvous were held at the Circus Circus hotel and casino in Reno NV, but since we did most of our eating at the attached Silver Legacy, this year we'll be staying there instead. Room reservation information is available here. You don't have to be there all four days (I'll be showing up Friday afternoon, I think), but you can if you want!

Mr. Completely tries to schedule some activities for us each year. Last year we took a guided tour of the Reno Cabela's (free fudge!), on Friday night we do a "what did you bring" get-together, and on Saturday we always go to the very nice Washoe County Parks Department Public Shooting Range where we throw a lot of lead downrange with the stuff we showed around the night before. But the primary attraction of the Rondy is the people. Each year the hotel provides a hospitality room where all weekend we can sit around and imbibe adult beverages and talk until the wee hours of the morning.

On Saturday after the range trip, we will be having a pizza dinner and raffle for the benefit of Project Valour IT, Maj. Chuck Zeigenfuss' project to provide laptops with voice recognition software and Wii game systems (and other technology) to wounded veterans to help speed their recovery. Maj. Zeigenfuss attended the second GBR and on that Saturday evening he told his story of getting blow up by an IED and his recovery process. The Major was a blogger before he deployed, and when he arrived back in the States he had only one unbandaged finger with which to punch a keyboard. Soldier's Angels set him up with a laptop, a reader gifted him with voice-recognition software, and he was back online. Instead of sitting in his hospital bed punching the morphine button while watching Wheel of Fortune, he was traveling the Matrix, chatting with his friends, dictating blog posts, and leaving comments.

We adopted his ass right then and there. (How can you not love a man, seriously wounded, who after being dragged out of the stinking ditch the IED blew him into, pops up and asks "Am I still pretty?")

We also raised about $600 for his cause. The next year we did without a speaker, and raised $2,030. I hope we top that this year by a fair margin.

And did I mention the raffle? Mr. Completely has lined up sponsors for the Rendezvous each year, and the list keeps getting longer. Brownell's has been a sponsor from the beginning, and I have a damned nice range bag thanks to Larry Weeks and Mr. Completely, and Larry brings a lot more swag than that each year. Last year's sponsors included Hi Point Firearms, Dillon, ParaUSA, Remington and Nosler. This year Glock, excuse me, GLOCK is added to the list. Trust me, everyone goes home with something. the registration form for the dinner and raffle can be found here.

So make plans. I'll be reminding you from time to time in blog posts, and that countdown clock will remain on the sidebar until the Rondy starts.

See you there!

UPDATE: USCitizen RAWKS! And if he pulls this off, I will literally prostrate myself before him and worship at his feet! I will not be worthy!