Sun, Jul 6 2008 - To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (View Original Event Details)
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Everyone found the Archers of Caledon easily and arrived with plenty of time to spare for our 10 o'clock lesson. Everyone, except for the coordinator and the people in her car. Because everyone else followed the directions given by google maps and I followed Andrew R.
He seemed so confident and so sure that he knew what he was talking about. "Do you trust me?" he asked. Of course, I didn't trust him, but I decided to go along with his directions because if we got lost, then I would have a really great write-up. We ended up nowhere NEAR the archery place and I received calls from the participants periodically who were wondering where their leader had gone. This experience just confirmed my longstanding belief that women should NEVER listen to men, especially men who claim that they know what they're doing. It turned out that we were way too far north. Isn't it just like a man to overshoot the mark, to miss the spot, (insert other jokes here)?
We arrived there about soon enough (thanks to Perkin and the Partridge family). Our instructors had us begin by first figuring out whether we were right-eye or left-eye dominant. Some of us learned that even though we're right-handed, we're left-eye dominant! Next we learned how to stand, and how to hold the bow. After practicing a little with rubber tubing, they gave us real bows and arrows and we aimed for the target.
After we released our first arrow and got a rush of adrenaline, we all realized something that Americans have known for a long long time: SHOOTING STUFF IS FUN!!!! Many of us became addicted and soon friendly competition broke out.
After practicing for a couple hours, we had a lovely bbq lunch outside (thanks to Dave and his awesome skillz). Then we went back in for more practice. They moved us up, so at the end of the afternoon, we were doing archery from 18 meters. Many of us were quite pleased with the progress that we had made through the day.
Archery is a really fun sport and a few people inquired about taking more lessons. Bruce, the head instructor, told us that we, the TOC, were welcome to come back anytime.
A good time was had by all.
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