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Harborfest for Lee Greenwood

sikboy

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Me and some of the guys at work are planning on going to Harborfest On Saturday to see Lee Greenwood. We are meeting Between Waterside and Town Point park by the flag poles at 7pm. Anyone else interested?
 

MSC 45ACP

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I'll be the FMWAG... (Fat Man with a gun); salt & pepper hair.

Usually in shorts & white tennis shoes. Haven't decided on shirt yet. Probably a dark blue NRA t-shirt with "2A Original Homeland Security". Carrying an H&K USP 45 in a SouthPaw (left-handed) black Bianchi ballistic nylon snap-retention holster.

Sound like some sort of armed fashion show, don't we? :lol:

Mike
 

MSC 45ACP

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Since it IS Norfolk and the crime rate there is rather high, I will probably carry my mag pouch, too. I usually just carry a full 12-round mag in my USP 45, but me thinks I may add the double-mag pouch to my right side to evenly distribute the weight.

That .45 gets heavy after a few hours on the hip. Sometimes (not very often) I wish I was carrying something smaller that a full size .45:D

Looking forward to seeing you folks down there. So... the flag poles next to Waterside at 1900. We'll be there!

I'll actually be there several hours earlier visiting old friends. I'm an "Original Harborfest" kid from the 70's before the city got hold of it and screwed it up for the sailors.

It started around 1975 as an all-night sailboat race that started Thursday evening at Thimble Shoals Lighthouse, went to the Cape Charles side of the bay (Old Plantation Flats Light), Spinnakerboats continued NW to Wolf Trap Light while the Non-Spinnaker boats went West to York Spit Light and the finish line was at a fishing pier at Ft. Monroe where the finishers had to sail close enough to the pier for the race committee to hand you your HarborFest Flag (your ticket to a "parking spot" downtown) with a long-handled crab net. The Parade of Sail started around 10AM and consisted of the boats in the race along with a few local "character boats" and some Tall Ships whenever they could get them to stop here. The race boats tied up at the floating Dunmore Docks (where Nauticus and the USS Winsconsin currently reside) and had a continuous party that lasted until Sunday around noon when most had recovered from their hangovers enough to sail home. Sometimes they got some local bands to play Friday night and Saturday night and they had workboat races (docking races, actually)so the watermen didn't feel left out. Its quite impressive to watch a 50' work boat run full speed into a confined area and "parallel park" in a space less that 60' long.

Then the city got hold of it. Judge for yourself the results, but it definitely got away from the reason for the "festival". The race was a lot of fun. Sometimes it was a drifting contest and sometimes it turned into a survival contest. either way, it was an accomplishement to finish before sunrise and get a couple hours nap at anchor on Hampton Flats before the Parade of Sail.

Thus endeth the lesson...
 

NavyVA

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I just came back tonight from Harborfest. My XD and I rocked out with Collective Soul. There quite a few people out there, but not shoulder to shoulder. I know that several LEO's noticed me, but didn't have any issues all night. Seemed that everyone, at least around me were well behaved. Those of you going out tomorrow, enjoy!!! I have a pool party that I'll be attending.
 

MSC 45ACP

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I WAITED AROUND THE FLAGPOLES FROM 1830 TO 1915 AND NONE OF YOU BUMS SHOWED UP!

<rant off>

Second daughter and I walked around Harborfest from around 1600 until waiting for the concert. Saw LOTS of local LEO's and none gave me a second look except one very chunky female sheriff's deputy in a brown uniform gave me the "Stinkeye". Her uniform was very unflatteringly skintight in all the wrong places. It seems every person I saw in a brown uniform was as overweight as I am. very sad.

While sitting in my chair waiting for Lee Greenwood to start, I looked around at the sea of people and the surroundings. I didn't see ANY LEO's walking near us, they must have been elsewhere. I DID notice severalpeople on the roof of the nearest building. There were families in brightly colored clothes on the balconies of the offices on the lower floors of the building, but the guys on the roof were all in indentical uniforms and well-muscled (my daughter noticed their well-toned bodies :uhoh:)

While I was observing these young, well-toned "gentlemen" in identical uniforms, my scalp started to itch under mytinfoil hat. I noticed two "pairs" of people, one person in each "pair" had binoculars and was scanning the crowd below. Imagine that! Two 2-man teams on the roof of a building, and one guy in each team had a pair of binoculars looking around at the crowd of thousands from 10 stories up.

I wonder what the other guy's purpose was? :what:
 

sikboy

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We were there! Me (Sikboy) and my girl Shannon (who was carrying myRuger LCP) Muddytires, and my friend Payton and his better half Kat :) We waited until 1920 by the poles. Guess just too many people there :-( How did all of us not see each other? Hope to meet next time!
 

MSC 45ACP

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Sorry we missed you. I was sitting on my folding chair beside the cannon (of course) between the flagpoles until it seemed like a lot of people going by that we needed to go find a place to sit for the concert. Ended up not staying very long because there were some rude people polluting my atmosphere very near me.

I decided I didn't want to say anything because the way I was feeling, whateverI said was going to be nasty. I had been walking around quite a bit and was pretty sore. Normally, I politely ask them to smoke downwind or put on their space suits and enjoy the whole thing rather than share it with me. :)
 

MuddyTires07

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yeah we waited and walked around the flag pole looking for you. got alot of double takes from the leos. one sarg pasted us and did a triple take and he went about 30 feet away from us stopped and got on the phone as we passed and said "yeah there is 2 of them no make that 3 of them." it was funny. we did have some people asking about OC.
 

sikboy

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Other than that how was the night? I had two positive nods from NPD officers who noticed my 45 and said they liked my shirt. I had on my shirt with a quote from Thomas Jefferson that says "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have" Had a couple conversations with people especially at the concert that said they were going to stand next to us because we were armed, of course they were drinking, but they said if S**T went down they wanted to be next to us :D
 

Grapeshot

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Sounds like Norfolk gave you all a free pass - that is good and the way it should be.

Thanks for the reports.

Yata hey
 

MSC 45ACP

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No Problem, Brother Thundar. Sorry to hear about your baggage woes. Sorry you couldn't make it, but this year's Harborfest wasn't as nice as some years. I was really disappointed in what I saw. I remember when Waterside first opened and it was a pretty cool place. Now it looks like a parking garage on the first floor and I didn't bother looking around the second floor.

On the note about the drunks being glad to be near the guy with a gun: They would have been much better off FAR away from you had the "feces hit the rotating oscillator". Remember my earlier post about guys on rooftops? ONE member of each two-member team had binoculars. The other member was undoubtedly the recipeient of the "observer's" observations such as a descriptions of certain people along withlocation and distance provided by the laser rangefinder located in the binoculars. The observer would also be looking at flags, banners, trees and other things in the area to determine "windage" information. I'm quite sure the number of LEOs at this year's Harborfest included those with a bit of experience with long guns equipped with optics. I am quite sure they were in nice, padded cases within arm's reach of the fellows that weren't looking through binoculars...
 
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