As a child of the jungle, the hardest thing about coming to the States for college was getting use to the rules. I got kicked out of so many trees in parks b/c it was "dangerous" and "immature" to climb them. My brother and I use to climb up in the University campus oak trees and hang our hammocks and sleep there all night. Campus security looked upon us feral MK's (missionary kids - there were about 70 of us on average at this university) with tolerance and let us sleep till about 6am before kicking us out b/f any university professors caught us
) lol.
Fortunately in New Mexico you can register for a hand-gun and carry it around the mall in a holster as long as it isn't concealed. So concealed slings shouldn't be a problem. My martial arts instructor once got pulled over by a cop for speeding and the cop asked him if he had any weapons in the truck. My instructor slowly began passing a couple of Chinese swords out the window followed by a pair of nunchuk's, a fighting staff, an assortment of night sticks, rattan eskrima sticks, a butterfly knife, along with many other unspellable (let alone unpronounceable) Asian weapons, and finally a dummy hand gun along with his real hand gun... After the cop recovered from his shock and discovered that Michael was an instructor he let him go... funny picture to imagine though.
It does pay to be careful however. My brother and I were out at our favorite slinging spot which is a 75 foot cliff overlooking the Farmington reservoir. We were slinging stones out into the lake, and because of the height, altitude, and fairly decent skills, the stones spent a great deal of time in the air before hitting the water several hundred yards out. On this particular day I made a fantastic fling and as the stone left the cradle, a solitary kayaker came paddling innocently from around the cliff bend. It's amazing how many prayers you can utter in 10 seconds as we watched the stone descend in it's arc, at the same time try to figure out how we would explain to the police that the dead kayaker in the lake was really hit by a small meteor and that these were really just Peruvian belts wrapped around our waists. Fortunately God was able to decipher our hastily uttered prayers and the stone landed a good 50 feet off the Kayaker's port bow. I couldn't see the look on his face, but judging the extreme distance, he must have thought that we were NFL quarter backs practicing our end-zone passes. We should have just packed it up and gone home, but since God had thoughtfully assigned a couple of guardian angels to keep us out of trouble, we decided it would be rude not give them something to do. In the spirit of scientific discovery, we next decided to see if we could exceed escape velocity and put the first sling-slung-stone into orbit. After sending a couple dozen rocks 300 feet straight up into the air, Joel's sling hooked his stone backwards over his head and we watched in slow motion horror as it arced up and then plummeted down, missing the one and only car parked on the lake front by about 10 feet. Taking that as a sign from God that He was not amused with our keeping His angels occupied, we packed it up and went home...
Anyway, it’s late at night and I felt the urge to reminisce. No doubt everyone on the forum will be leery of slinging with me should chance ever cross our paths; however I assure you that I have never hit a single soul while slinging (though a strange phenomenon of small meteor showers does seem to follow me which have been known to strike by-standers... But for that I hold mother nature responsible).
Barak - who loves to hammock in trees and can't wait for summer