discarded and abused canoe, West Warwick, Rhode Island

Our archery range is located in downtown West Warwick, in the very large basement of a building on Main Street.

the backside of a building that is not Tangy’s Archery, on Main Street

Mr Speed has temporarily solved my continuing inability to wink my right eye — and therefore my ability to aim — by popping out the left lens on a pair of reading glasses, and gluing black felt over the right. They work quite well, far better than the pathetic band-aid I desperately tried using last week (much to the amusement of all archers present), and more comfortable and less dramatic than the eye patch I attempted wearing. What a difference focus makes!

Mr. Dean gave us a few stabilizers — a weighted rod that sticks out off the front of a bow — to try out, and I was very pleased that the one I liked best was the one with the coolest design (at least in our price range): a 30-inch, multi-rod Cartel Balkan Al/Carbon. And, they both fit in our case, on the arrows side.

Then we were told that we need bowstring wax, to keep our strings… waxed (and “clean and healthy”). Later, I learned

“Waxing the bowstring is necessary for a number of reasons. First, under high magnification, the fiber make-up of the string is visually different from what you may think. Millions of extremely fine fibers going in many directions make up a single strand. The general flow is unidirectional lengthwise with a clockwise twist. All those millions of fibers need a lubricant between each other in order to not create friction or any other force to compromise their integrity. The more unidirectional fiber flow, the better the string.”

I never, ever want to compromise the integrity of my bowstring, and I totally seek unidirectional fiber flow, so we got some special bowstring wax, too. Actually, Mr. Dean gave us a tube.

Case is getting heavy!