Fuck that place is haunted. I refused to stay there. I don't like driving by it when I go through Tonopah.

Page Two ownage.

HAHAHA Awesome.  coincidentally, I just read an article on that place!

Just wait until you see the pictures of the room.

It does not disappoint

Had a great time, miss the rugged chugged wasteland and all the peeps terribly.

Thanks to everyone who made it happen. P2 and wife were great and gracious hosts. SigChef made great food all day and night. Basically wrapped one meal up just in time to start another. So many people did so much - thank you!

Everyone really came together and pitched in. When something needed done people would jump in and help out - awesome.

Thanks to the sponsors. It blows me away every time seeing the piles on tables and boxes full of goodness they bestow upon us. If you haven't, go hit them on facebook, instagram, twitter, in their industry sections with reviews and feedback on their product. Let them hear how much we, the cola warriors, appreciate their support!

Can't wait to see you all next year, and hopefully sooner at mini get togethers and other CWs this year.

How'd you end up in 3rd?  I figured with all the training, you'd have top spot for sure.

12:52 + 1 penalty (pistol 100y target)

Fired, missed by a foot - slide lock.

I psyop'd the champion Alex for 2 days threatening a rerun but decided not to. He was a good sport about it. I got to hand him and high woman their champion uppers. Passing the torch was bitter sweet but fulfilling. More warriors into the fold.

Always learn at the C Wars. Will be tightening up pistol in the next couple months.

NopeNopeNope.gif--> peer pressure--> shame --> reluctance-->more peer pressure --> existential crisis --> death --> endorphins -->   --> rebirth--> privilege

I hereby pledge to buy any and all gun stuff (that is available) from the companies listed below.  From this day until the end of days:


Geissele Automatics
ALG Defense
Esstac
SKD Tactical
MOA Targets
AIM Surplus
Olympic Cerakote
ADW Custom Knives
Twisted Tees
Gemtech
Bobro Engineering
Arson Machine Co
Pace Launcher Casings
Forward Controls
CherryBalmz
American Defense Manufacturing
Gun Goddess

Who's with me?

Absofreakinlutely.

I'm already planning on orders from Cherrybalmz, ALG, Geissele, Esstac, MOA, SKD, Forward Controls, and even though I don't have wingnut's 40mm launcher, I do have a 37mm launcher and Pace makes casings and parts for that, too.

Those are just what's already planned, the other sponsors are going to get some love, too.

Finally got a chance to wash and look at my car...
Attached File


That crumpled and rolled up piece of steel is my front subframe. Oh well, it was worth it.

Meh, that's what a subframe is for!

Yep.  I bought a six second mount after CWT.

Guess now I need a flared magwell.

Then maybe an actual Glock to put them on...

I bought one after CWSE.

Someone hit a rock that was partially sticking out of the ground and flipped it up and out sometime Saturday, was that you?  I saw it driving out and was like... ouch, that hurt whomever hit it.

I did that once in one of my old 4x4's hauling down a farm road, compressed my suspention on a dip and hit it with one of my front a-arms, it flipped up and hit my transmission cross member support and bent it up, pushing my transmission up pulling my shift cable tight breaking the connector to the shifter.  I was stuck in second gear.  Luckily i realized it and was able to drive all the way home in second gear before shutting it off.

Aye.  Without them we'd just be lobbing bullets with tapco fucked rifles and Taurus judges.

Is that not what we were supposed to do?

Sorry I haven't got my photos up yet. I destroyed a tractor tire prepping for the Cola Wars, then on the way home yesterday I lost a tire on my travel trailer and cooked the transfer case on my Bronco. The shittyness has to end, right? No. On the way to dump the shitter on the trailer I blew another fucking tire on it. I think I should stay in the basement!

Well shit man. CW needs a tire sponsor.

That ain't no shit!

It's fine.

Just call Al at PartsHeaven in Hayward.

He should only have a few hundred of them.

I had to get 4 new tires to go to southeast. And then my battery and alternator went out before I went to prepare for classic last week.

Well, another Cola Warrior and another 5th place finish. As Tweeter would say, I’m seeing a pattern here. Hopefully, I won’t make it a habit and can improve next year.

When we arrived, I was constantly reminded that the desert, in addition to the competition itself, was trying to kill you. Found a ton of these things throughout the weekend attached to my boots, pants legs, gloves, and, in this case, in the tent:



And this little bastard made it all the way back to my home, hundreds of miles away:



As usual, the first thing I like to do after beating the first obstacle is to check out the others. This is the result of testing out the tire flip:



After an impromptu wardrobe change, I headed up to the range to find out what insanity NVGeologist had concocted. Before the runner arrived, I chatted with some fellow competitors, one of whom received what could only have been A VERY IMPORTANT CALL:



The next couple of days afforded me the opportunity to witness folks questioning every decision that had led them to this place:



And if the chug didn’t suck enough by itself, there were plenty of people willing to offer many “tips and tricks” to try to help you get past your insane decision to bring a sixer of Creme Soda to chug:

Back at the range, I was blessed with the opportunity to see the end result of a combat class run:



Followed by a nail-biting finish between the two-time West Champion (drinking) versus the dark horse newcomer:



The eventual women’s champion even needed to be goaded into tossing some friendly taunts at the reigning champion, so clearly she still has lots to learn before next year’s event.

After eating better food than I get at home, and getting to hang out with the best bunch of miscreants one could ever hope to meet, it was time to head home and reflect on everything that makes Cola Warrior so awesome and, of course, to pinpoint all of the areas that need improvement.

Once home, I was finally able to marvel at the insane generosity of the Cola Warrior sponsors (which included this time American Defense Manufacturing, ADW Custom Knives, AIM Surplus, ALG Defense, Arson Machine Co, Bobro Engineering, CherryBalmz, Esstac, Forward Controls, Geissele Automatics, Gemtech, Gun Goddess, MOA Targets, Olympic Cerakote, Pace Launcher Casings, SKD Tactical, and Twisted Tees):



MOA Targets will get a special mention in a different post, for reasons that will be readily obvious.

The plaques were freaking awesome:



My two boys especially loved the medals,





along with the wooby, the prize I received for placing 5th.

I have some great high res photographs I took with my real camera, and will post those tonight or tomorrow.

So driving home Saturday evening on 93 south of Kingman I got a nice show from Big Sandy MG Shoot doing their night shoot.  Went to it back on 2003 when it was in a different location, it is pretty awesome the firepower that is there.



Parachute flares, tracers, dynamite, pyrotechnics... I <3 Arizona.

Four-time 5th place champion here. We should hang out.

Holy shit, I had no idea you had that many 5th place finishes!

By the way, my liver hates you for introducing me to the Private Reserve.

none of this will ever make sense to me

31. Obo2 59:14 cww
30. Obo2 77:19 cww2
48. Obo2 52:05 cww3

the slower i am the higher i place

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

I swear I saw you train for this.

I'm just gonna go for it and chug red bull next year. It's the only thing I can drink quickly. My lack of ability to throw up is also going to have to change because I'm sure that's a heart attack waiting to happen.

For future chuggers, don't go with cream soda, it's a bitch

i think i just need to sit on my ass and throw my guns down the driveway till next year and then do a night run with no wizard eyes shooting an ak over my head and a liberator pistol or some shit and i will win.

Don't forget the life vest

You should have kept yours on...rookie mistake.

I feel like the peep station should have the peeps in a wheel barrow and require the runner to wear a life vest.

West 2... 135:01, placed 61

West 3... 62:31, placed 55


I should be knocking on top 10 by West 14 or so.  

Glad to see the results up and pics posted . Looks like fun was had .

Daggy privilege
Attached File

Any vids of the dags running the course?

HUGE thanks to all our sponsors, event organizers, volunteers, cooperative spouses, and most of all, participants.  Cola Bros are best bros.

Awesome. No step on snek though

You made me curious, so:

CWW       34.  shade_1313 64:03    
CWW II    23.  shade_1313 67:05
CWW III   19.  shade_1313 28:23

It gets a little more interesting when you look at the numbers of runners in each year.

CWW had 45, so I was in the top 75.56%
CWW II had 76, putting me in the top 30.26%
CWW III had 88, and I'm in the top 21.59%


You, when the numbers are run, went from in the top 68.89% to 39.47% to 54.55%.  Your CWW III sstanding is almost a perfect average between I and II. 

Meanwhile, the competition is just getting tougher, and while I might be able to speed up my chug a small bit, I really do need to work on general obstacling, stress shooting, and running at stupid altitudes uphill.

First off, I love that the first structure built at this site was a flag pole.  It tells you a lot about the owner and the people he associates with.




I took time off from work, a full week, to drag my ass across the continent and hang out with weirdos from the internet.
Who does that?  







Seriously, who would spend that much money, take time off work, expend that much energy, sleep in the dirt out in the desert... who's dumb enough to do that?

Idiots.  That's who.






But the best kind.  We were wondering while watching and heckling from the sidelines, who's here?
Attorney, Navy Corpsman, a newly-graduated student, a combat medic, a pair of geologists, firefighters, a recently-completed doctoral candidate, a State Trooper, police officer, mechanical engineer, housewife, sheet metal worker, master electrician... but I thought we were all fucking idiots?

No.  No, not really.

Everyone was polite, most... to a fault.  Everyone had a good time, even the new-comers.  If it wasn't their first time, it was amazing reuniting with old friends from a past War.  Trading new stories, catching up, remembering old wagers, paying old debts, and making new bets.

The obstacles this year were pretty standard, not much could be done about making them harder this year.  It's an hour from the nearest piece of pavement and the land-owner had a very small crew.
But the shooting course and terrain more than made up for it.

Synopsis:
1. flip a 250-ish pound tractor tire about 25 feet up a slight incline, pass some flags, then reset it where you found it.   Pretty simple, but it's a gasser.  A few couldn't budge it, but most folks muscled through it.



2. grab an empty 55-gallon dry-storage drum and carry it while you step through tires, then reset it.  Pretty easy, but I was pretty sure someone was gonna bust their face on a can after tripping on a tire bead.  It didn't happen and I came away disappointed as a result.



3. Dagny Taggart; move a legit piece of railroad track.  i.e. a metal section of track, not a fucking wooden tie.  It had to move over a short wooden wall.  Thankfully, it was low enough and strong enough to lever, otherwise... I think maybe one or two people could have actually carried it.  It was pretty heavy



4. traverse a pullup bar, one side to the next.  this one was quick



5. beer keg low crawl.  push an empty beer keg under a web of 550 cord.  sounds easy?  this one killed people.



There were cans suspended from "S" hooks, and staff randomly moved them throughout each day.  it didn't take much movement to bounce a can off a cord.
a lot of people earned penalties from cans.  The beer keg also took part of an incisor, which ended up being spit out on the run route.



AK.  the donated rifle was fucking abused.  straight up.  the rear of the dust cover was beat so bad from previous years, it basically split and refused to seat.  ever.  again.
the trash was an apt home for it

peep.  yeah... how do you describe pure hatred in physical form?



the run.  Most folks just think "oh, it's just a half-mile".  

at elevation.  in the sand.  with an awesome incline at the end.  with a metric fuck-ton of plants that are quite literally spearing you as you run by.  You grab a stuffed animal and run down the dirt road to a cage strapped to a Joshua Tree with a different colored stuffed animal, trade stuffed animals, then run back.  The rest of the run is a gentle upward grade... until it turns into a steep uphill.  uphill sand, with stabby plants.

The shooting is typically straightforward, except it isn't.  An estimated third of the targets were reactive steel.
Yeah, someone brought a Texas Star for pistol at 25 yards, pretty standard.


But they also brought another Texas Star for the 100-yard rifle.  Not very standard.
In fact, it was so not-standard, that it didn't need to get reset very often.



The rifle targets were spread out a little more than last year, and up to 500 yards too.  Our current High Woman actually made her first shot out to 500 during competition.  But she's a little beast in a pony tail.  'nuff said.





Pounding 72 ounces of your favorite non-alcoholic carbonated beverage sounds easy on the internet, but it makes you feel pretty damned uncomfortable.
You reconsider life choices, you wonder if it's too late in life to change religions.





The night vision dudes were hilarious.  You couldn't see them, but you'd hear random talking, cursing, and laughing in different locations in the darkness... and the random rifle or pistol shot... or M203 round hitting a steel target.

After awards, there was the traditional "shooting a sheet cake with a grenade full of sprinkles" and general fun with M203 rounds packed for anti-stripper operations.







You'd never know it at first glance, but this bro was a classically-trained chef before he was a trucker.  No, seriously.  He's also a really cool dude, I love him like a brother, a lot of us do.

Long story short, it's a blast.  You'll find a lost reality, actual people that aren't scared to hang their ass out a little and have fun.  





"But, but, but... it's stupid!"  Yeah, sure you think it's dumb, until you get there and find that it's a seriously good time.
"It's dangerous!"  Not really, it's no more dangerous than what you'd find at a typical Fourth of July celebration.
We're safe, with plenty of emergency personnel either in attendance or ready to call in (not everyone gets drunk at these events).  The coordination looks slip-shod, but it's really not, we don't skip the important stuff, but what you see is the aftereffects of running on donations for years and accepting whatever we can to keep this thing moving down the road.  The land was bought damn-near specifically for the event, all the work and gear is donated, time, energy, money for food, beer, even trash bags... it's all donated.

Yeah, the sponsors are AMAZING and we fucking adore them for their support.  Without them we wouldn't have the voice we have now.  
They get it, they understand us.  And we love them the more for it.



With that aside, the people there are legitimately grass-roots motherfuckers, ridiculous and gritty, really down-to-earth.  Not afraid to make an additional effort to get out there and connect with other good people.  
Like-minded people, willing to travel distances to do it, pay to do it, to get out there and taste and touch and feel as much as a man can before he has to repent.

For those that don't understand why it's there, you're probably the ones that need it the most.
It's a way to fill that hole in yourself, to connect, get yourself better, be good, stay strong, to quit wasting your time on the planet and just fucking be
You weren't meant to spend your life doing small things, to remain static, to be meek, to become food
You are the result of over five billion years of successful evolutionary processes, you're not supposed to meet a weak end
This kinda stuff kills that sickness in a person's soul, that stuff that makes a person placid when they're not supposed to be

Go get it. It's there for you

Damn right, on all counts.

It was also just the "get the hell away from school" that I needed, and all the better for being able to spend my time in the disconnected wasteland with the best freaking people I know.

Nailed it.  Beautiful description.

Hopefully next time my weekend doesn't get screwed up and I can stop by.

Poetic.  Teach me how to words.

Doesn't get better then that. Just weird hearing something besides stop being fat or slow through the megaphone.

Awesome post!

You use your keyboard prettier than a 20 dollar whore.