Richard, Abby and I outside of Papa Gjorgjo’s in Ada, OK.

I had one of the best weekends.

Memory serves me hard to find one this good in a long time. I traveled to Byng, OK on Friday after work to visit my good friend Richard Barron.  Richard and I were close friends during college at OU and for a time thereafter.  However, due to my negligence, our active engagement all but stopped for almost 20 years.

Well, we rectified that this weekend.  He invited me to come to his house, meet his wife and to shoot his guns.  Like he mentioned in his blog post about this same visit, it was like we never had that huge gap of time in our contact.  We literally picked right back up where we left off.  We reminisced, built new memories, and I hope, have paved the way for us to have a vibrant and ongoing friendship.

Richard and I met at the University of Oklahoma (where they have a school that the football team can be proud of). He was a photographer for the yearbook and I think maybe the school paper.  When Robert Stinson and I started getting into photography, we came across Richard. I basically learned my photographic foundation from him.  I don’t say this lightly, but I believe he is one of the world’s best.  

I was able to meet his lovely wife Abby for the first time.  She was very sweet.  I loved watching the caring dynamics between the two of them.

We had a nice Italian dinner Friday night in downtown Ada. Then I had the immense pleasure of spending the night in their RV.  It was a dream come true for me as it is one of my fantasies to travel in an RV. I slept like a baby.

That morning, after Richard and I grabbed a bite to eat along with 50 of Ada’s most elderly men, we had some fun shooting.  He has a terrific range on his property which we named the “Barron Wasteland Range of Fury.”

I am not going to attempt to name all the weapons we fired, but suffice it to say, we were safe if we were attacked by a small army.  Two weapons stand out: the S&P M&P 15/22 rifle and the big fat revolver that fires shot gun shells.  I restored my confidence in my aim as I was very pleasantly surprised that I was able to hit targets with consistency.

We had a blast recording our exploits using GoPros and our Nikon SLRs. Some pix can be found below.  I am working on the video and it will likely take a few days to have the first one ready.  Even when ready, the videos will only serve as a brief and shallow look into the wonderful time I had with Richard.

I now looking forward to the next chapter(s) in our friendship.

***Update 5-31-14 Here is a video the Richard made from the footage.  It is terrific!

Here is my first video from the event.  I am currently working on a 4 camera simultaneous shot video that will take some time due to massive processing requirements.