This year the Firefighters Summer Olympics were sponsored by the San Diego Fire Department. The trap and skeet venue was Triple B gun Club located in Rosemead just a few miles east of downtown on July 31st and August 1st & 2nd.
The man responsible for keeping things running smoothly and on time was Jon Rich of the Sycuan Tribal Fire Department. Jon did a great job and he deserves a lot more credit than he will get. All of us who shot this year thank you, especially for all of the hours that you put in to make the three day event run smoothly.
This year the usual suspects showed up to shoot but we added a new and much younger shooter, Dave Liske from the Arson Unit. Not only is Dave many years younger than the rest of us, but he is also the only one still working for a living. Some of the other guys remember when the Santa Monica Mountains were small piles of sand.
The rest of the team are Larry, “Pilot of The Mothership” Bickly, Steve, “Man vs. Food” Dodge, Harry “The Radish” Gradi, Bill Green retired from the Carpinteria Fire Department, Rick “Co-pilot of the Mothership” Kay, Don Majors, Steve Ryder and Art Sorrentino.
There are three main events in the shotgun shooting sports: trap, skeet and sporting clays. Trap and skeet are broken down into several sub-events: single handicap and doubles for trap, and single and doubles for skeet.
Trap is shot on the first day, skeet on the second and sporting clays on the third and final day of competition. There are six hundred targets thrown during the three days.
Single trap calls for shooting at a 4 1/4 inch disk launched from 16 yards in front of and away from the shooter. All trap targets are shot from five different locations. These targets are typically hit at 30-35 yards from the shooter. Handicap trap, this year, was shot from a distance of 24 yards from the shooter. These targets are typically hit at 40-45 yards. Doubles trap is two targets, launched simultaneously from 16 yards, 45 degrees apart. Single skeet is a mixture of single and double targets shot from eight different locations. Imagine standing on the face of a clock. You begin shooting at the 9 o’clock position and move around to the 3 o’clock position, ending up standing in the center of the dial between the 3 and 9 o’clock positions.
Doubles skeet is the same as single with the following differences. Two targets are thrown simultaneously from the shooters left and right and you do not shoot from the center of the clock face. The distance between the launch point of both targets is 42 yards and the targets are traveling at about 40 MPH.
Sporting clays is intended to simulate bird hunting and is shot from ten different locations scattered over several acres. The targets vary in distance and location, some shooting straight up in the air, others coming from behind bushes and trees from your left and right, with some curving towards you or going away from you at different distances heights and angles. This game was designed by the same diabolical minds who used to devise the games that were played after meals in some stations to see who would have to do the dishes. Evil, vicious and just plain mean.
We fielded two teams this year: LAFD Silver and LAFD Red. The teams were selected by the scientific method of putting five silver and five red shotgun shells in a cardboard box and drawing them out one at a time. Those of you studying for your PhD in Nuclear Physics are probably familiar with this method so no additional comments need to be made. More about this later.
When all was said and done, the teams were: SILVER, Rick Kay, Steve Ryder, Dave Liske and Art Sorrentino. RED, Larry Bickly, Steve Dodge, Harry Gradi, Bill Green, and Don Majors.
Larry Bickly won the individual Gold Medal in single trap with a score of 98/100 and the Silver Medal in Handicap with 90/100 and Doubles trap 84/100. Art Sorrentino won the individual Bronze Medal in single trap with a score of 94/100. Don Majors won the individual Bronze Medal in handicap trap with a score of 73/100.
In the team competition, the Silver team won, appropriately, the Silver Medal in singles, handicap and doubles trap. The Red team won the Bronze Medal in the singles, handicap and doubles trap.
In single skeet Steve Dodge won the individual Silver Medal with a score of 94/100, missing the gold by one target in a shoot-off to break a tie. In team single skeet the Silver team won the Gold Medal and the Red team took the Bronze medal.
In double skeet Steve Dodge won the individual Silver Medal. Also in double skeet the Silver team won the Silver Medal and the Red Team won the Bronze Medal.
In sporting clays Bruce Bickly, the Mothership Pilot, won the Silver Medal and his Co-pilot won the Bronze Medal. But enough of the boring stuff, let’s get to the good stuff.
Because I was the Grapevine writer for Batt. 17 for several years and my mentor was the late, great Tony DiDomenico, and because I am a graduate of one of the major sensitivity training houses of the LAFD – FS 26, before everyone got all touchy feely and huggy poo, I’m sure this won’t offend anyone. If it does, let me know and I will send you a box of Kleenex.
I previously described the high tech scientific method we used to pick the teams. Visualize 7-8 guys sitting around the kitchen table picking the teams. In the middle of the table, holding the box, is Steve Ryder. To his immediate right is Rick Kay.
Now here comes the part where Rick will start calling me Ed Snowden Jr. (If you don’t know who he is, Google him.)
Remember, Rick is seated mere inches away from Steve Ryder during this selection process and was an active participant in the process. The following is a partial quote from an email from Rick, to me and others, in particular, Steve Ryder – “I suggest that to select a fourth member for our Trap Squad only, we employ the box with five shells in it, one of them being another color.”
Because Steve is by nature a gentle and kindly soul, here is Steve’s reply – “Rick you must have been in the restroom or somewhere else when Harry drew the silver shell to be on our trap team. The teams are as follows . . .”
Rick, having been an officer and a gentleman somewhere in his past life and obviously having taken part in some self-assessment class replied: “I guess brain dead is an appropriate description.”
Rick, honesty is always the best policy. I doubt that anyone would contradict your statement.
Let¹s move on to Harry “The Radish” Gradi. How did he get that name? During the skeet doubles part of the competition Steve Dodge said that he was a plant for the other team because Harry was not having a stellar day. If you are not familiar with the term “plant” it is someone from one team who was placed on the other team to cause problems. Harry, being a mobbed up Italian guy, has to have a middle name that starts with the letter “The.” You know, Louie “The Leg Breaker,” Vinnie “The Weasel,” Rick, “The . . . never mind I think you got it. It could have been an eggplant or a carrot instead but radish was the first thing that came up.
Moving on to Steve “Man vs. Food” Dodge. The guy on Man vs. Food is Steve’s idol. In fact, whenever Steve goes on a trip he checks his computer to see if the MvF guy has eaten anywhere near him so he can go there too. He is also the only guy in the history of the LAFD who has had his name put on the garbage disposal switch plate, and have the switch plate follow him to his next and final assignment. The man is a professional eater. If you ask him for directions to Ole’s Steak House in Paxton, Nebraska, it rolls off his tongue like butter. Like butter. I better stop because I’m making him hungry.
Thursday, August 1st, Rosemead, California, The Hat, serving some of the best pastrami sandwiches in L.A. After a short three hour single-course dinner, and because of which the restaurant almost had to close early because they were out of food, Steve says something like, and I paraphrase, “Some pie would sure taste good.” So our merry band of eaters sets sail for a Marie Callender’s restaurant using the trusty GPS for guidance. Guidance being loosely defined as “over yonder.”
If you Google Marie Callender¹s and use the intersection of the 60 and 605 freeways as roughly the center of a circle you will have an idea of what General Custer must have seen at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Surrounded by about nine Marie Callender’s. No way to escape. Not one less than a couple of miles from the starting point.
About an hour or so later and after multiple turns, curses in English and Italian, almost throwing the GPS out of the window and checking a variety of paper maps, an eye witness described the journey as similar to following a truck company to a fire. Just keep wandering around aimlessly and you will eventually find it – which they did.
Larry “The Pilot of the Mothership” Bickly decides on a 950 calorie piece of pecan pie. And could I have an iced tea with some Sweet-N-Low please?
During the skeet competition Art Sorrentino was observed trying to stuff something that resembled a Portobello mushroom into the barrel of his gun. Turns out that it wasn’t a mushroom at all, just another one of his high quality, precision fitting reloads.
Finally, congratulations go out to Dave Liske for being the winner of this year’s Pink Hat Award, which as you might imagine is a pink hat mounted on a handmade, lacquered board adorned with small plaques that have the winner’s name and year of underachievement engraved on them. There is also a pink T-shirt with the team logo. This award goes to the team member who had the dubious honor of having the lowest overall score. It is a perpetual trophy that will be passed on to next year’s winner. It is usually kept in a place of honor in the winner’s home – in the bottom of a bird cage, for instance. Previous winners were Steve Ryder and Harry Gradi who shared the prize in 2011, and in 2012 Harry repeated his performance and was the sole recipient. The phone lines to the Vegas bookies were smoking with bets being placed on whether or not Harry could pull off the Hat Trick but it just wasn’t in the cards. Dave’s name is being added to the board and will be presented to him in the near future in accordance with past tradition.
Some of this stuff may not be an exact representation of what occurred during these events but it certainly is close enough and good enough for who it is for. I’m not good enough to make this stuff up. No one is. My motto was and is, in the words of the late great Tony Di, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
If anyone would like to see what it’s like to shoot trap or skeet and you don¹t know much about it, we welcome you to come shoot with us on Friday mornings at ten o’clock at the Oaktree Gun Club. It’s located a 23121 Coltrane Ave. in Newhall between Sylmar and Valencia. Bring your own shotgun or if you don’t have one you can rent one at the range. It’s a fun sport, just like golf but with a little more noise.
If you have any questions call me, Art Sorrentino, at (805) 551-8518. We hope to see some of you out there soon.
By Art Sorrentino, LAFD retired