Las Vegas Day 2

Load and lock! Wait... let me try that again. Screw it. My mate Fubo wanted to goto a gun store and shoot a real firearm for an authentic American experience. Being Las Vegas is a place where you can do a lot of stuff it was VERY easy to find a rifle range, it even offered discounts. If I haven't made it apparent to people in the past guns make me very nervous, I don't think anyone deserves to have a gun because human beings just haven't proven to me they are responsible enough at all times to own one. I will not deny that people are of course attracted to the feeling of security and power that a gun can provide. Of course I base all these feelings off my own readings on guns, warfare and human psychology, I have never even held a gun. Being I had the opportunity to try I thought it might be prudent to try.

I selected an M4 Carbine (special operations assault rifle) and a Desert Eagle (large calibre sidearm). I would have used a P90 submachine-gun but that was not available to use. The weapons were heavy as I expected they would be and the Desert Eagle had a very large kickback, again as I expected but still there was no way to really prepare for how much power is there. I put 7 shots into a target at a range of 5 metres, 6 of them on target. The M4 had more of a kick than I was expecting, they wouldn't let me use single shot mode so I fired 25 rounds in 3 shot bursts. The M4 however has a very handy red dot sight making the shooting at the target at 10 metres a lot easier. About 22 of my shots landed in the areas I wanted them with one burst going astray on the target in which all up was apparently pretty good for someone who never fired a weapon in their life. I also have the targets to prove it.

After that experience I have gathered a bit of a new insight into the use of weaponry and appreciation for the training of marksmen to actually hit anything, especially something that is moving. I never thought it was going to be easy but actually experiencing it gives you a better appreciation for the activity. In case you are wondering it didn't awaken any specific bloodlust in me either, I was very happy to hand the weapons back once I finished. My feelings for the weapons haven't changed at all but that doesn't mean I can't be interested in weapons of war but it is the appreciation of the weapon or machine, not its application. However I acknowledge that unless there was a need or desire for it the weapon wouldn't exist which makes me hypocritical on a certain level but if I had to choose I would
rather there be no weapons than having cool things to look at and read about.

From there we went to one of the great engineering feats of the last century, the Boulder Dam (although officially renamed Hoover Dam in 1937 I don't like Hoover so it will always be Boulder Dam to me). Of course there are Dam's much larger in size, grander in scale and importance but this one has something that captures the imagination of people and I am hard pressed to describe it (not just because it was in Transformers but that is also awesome). It is only one in a long series of Dams and reservoirs that channel the Colorado river to provide constant irrigation water and as a side effect a mass amount of hydroelectric power as side benefit.

The Dam was constructed by a combined team of over 3000 workers in some extremely harsh climactic conditions. The Dam was actually finished ahead of schedule and under budget but this was rather synonymous with great depression construction where things were done cheaply at the cost of safety. Officially over 70 people died, unofficially it was more like 700. Their sacrifices created a monumental human achievement in harnessing a out of control river and providing food and power to a growing nation. If I had to guess at the worth of the Dam it would be that testament too humankind's ability to harness nature effectively and efficiently while also preserving as much as possible. Also that it look pretty cool too.

I spent the rest of the day there just exploring every inch that I could. I am not an engineer or an architect but I can greatly appreciate human construction achievements. The Earth shifts and chances imperceptibly all the time and eventually all of our structures will be gone. It sounds like a futile gesture at best but the fact that we keep building, creating and improving means that humankind has a future, we aren't meant to be static and our construction should be like this as well. The Boulder Dam will be gone one day but replaced by something else if we are still around and I don't think that is futile at all.

That evening we decided to try eating at a Denny's and it was an experience in itself. I still haven't learned the lesson that large in American equals massive. I ordered an appetiser that turned out to be the size of a main meal in Australia and my main... well I didn't finish it. The waitress would also keep coming over an topping up your drinks, I love to drink more than eating so I think I put away over a liter of soft drink. It's a good thing I am doing a lot of walking otherwise I would be gaining weight instead of losing it. I honestly started to feel sick at the end and had to stop despite my principles of cleaning my plate. Now I know why the doggie bag was invented by these guys. Lesson learned.