So I'm at my father-in-law's house yesterday and I brought along my favorite sling. There's a guy there named Chad and I will usually hang out with him a bit as we seem to have similar tastes. This time I asked him if he had ever seen a sling before.
I went through the usual conversation of "Slingshot?...No, Sling. Oh you mean the kind you twirl around your head? Yea...sort of... " And once he figured out what I was talking about his eyes lit up and he wanted to go see what this thing could do.
Well, so we are walking around on his farm land and I'm thinking to myself...I have never seen an area in my life so devoid of anything even remotely sling stone worthy. But to Chad's credit he finds some good ones. The first one I was just trying to throw it into the next county. I really got it out there. He was pretty impressed. I don't have the best arm in the world but I think just as impressive as the distance was the fact that the wind-up and pitch is as smooth as butter. Very unlike anything Hollywood portrays. Well as we are walking we end up broadside of their old barn.
This thing is really worn down. It's like owls live in the rafters and weeds are growing up through the floor, and it's just really old. So I'm thinking... hey I bet he'd be pretty impressed with the noise a rock makes when hitting the side of that barn. So of course I wind up and of course, I miss.... I missed the broadside of a barn... How does that happen? I have no idea. I have plenty of excuses but they all sound pretty hollow at this point. This is after all...a pretty large target. I'm thinking to myself, "Isn't the whole idea of the broadside of a barn scenario is that it's too big to miss? Or does it mean you would have to suck to miss it? That sounds about right."
I usually practice at home from 15-20 yards on a fairly small target and I've nailed it many a time, but this barn apparently wasn't having any of it.
Anyways, the rock instead opted to just skim the top of the metal roof and left a pretty cool trail of sparks. Something I've never seen before. I made up for my utter failure by hitting it several times afterward like I had some sort of personal vendetta against it. But I don't think the barn cared too much.
Even worse then missing the barn, I failed to convince Chad to try out the sling. I think he thought it just looked too hard. Oh well... I will keep trying.