This was the weekend of Doctors and Guns.
Friday, I woke up on Northampton, MA. I drove to an MRI appointment at 7am in Greenfield, MA. Afterwards, I drove to Springfield, MA for a 10:00 AM with my FAA Aviation Medical Examiner. She was running late. I had an appointment in Northampton with an orthpedic surgeon to review the MRI results at 11:30, but I didn't get there until 1:30pm. Luckily, they made time. Looks like I do have a distal meniscus tear in my right knee, but it's a vertical separation with no 'hanging' so while it hurts a bit and the knee is slightly swollen, I'm not getting lock-up in the joint. My ortho surgeon says we can absolutely do surgery, but that he doesn't think it's worth it at this point - if, later, it gets worse and we have to, the procedure will be the same as it is now. I'm not going to 'damage my knee worse' by continuing to wait, and we can try cortisone shots into the joint every 8 or 9 months.
I'm considering bariatric surgery. This would be a major, major undertaking for me. But it would also have implications for the stresses my knees are under, so I'm planning on waiting until I decide whether or not to have the bariatric procedure, whether or not they'll let me after screening, and if I do/can, waiting until after it's been done and I can evaluate how much it changes my knee's situation.
I got my Third Class Special Issuance Airman's Medical, so I can legally fly airplanes for the next year. Woohoo!
Saturday, I visited gun nut and got a chance to finally try out a gun I bought quite some time ago (over a year?!?!) but hadn't had a chance to fire yet. It's a Molot VEPR, in 7.62x54R with a 24" barrel. Basically, it's a civilian semiautomatic version of the RPK machine gun receiver with civilian furniture. It's also hilarious gigglesauce. It make UNGODLY LOUD CAPITALIST SMITING BOOMS when it fires. I went through maybe 120 rounds of 54R and had a blast. Couldn't hit crap because the Belarussian Kalinka Optics POSP 6x24 Simonov-reticle scope on it was out of true, and I couldn't get it into true. I got it pretty close, and then used Kentucky windage for the corrections, so instead of shooting paper I ended up shooting a bunch of clay pigeons that had been left on the berm at my gun club.
I really, really like this gun, and next time plan on spending the time to properly diagnose the scope. Wiser, more experienced heads than I have advised me it's likely not sitting properly in the mount rings. Can't wait to get the scope properly zeroed and see how I can do on paper.
Gun nut and I also, as a favor to a friend of his, cleaned two M1 Garands that belong to the local VFW post. They have been used for years to fire blank salutes, with what appears to be no cleaning. After many many rounds of brass brush and copper solvent (just in case jacket rounds were going through also) and Hoppe's No. 9 and many many many patches, we got the barrels to patch clean. Disassembled, cleaned, greased and reassembled magazine follower, operating rod catch assembly, bullet guide, operating rod, operating rod spring, trigger group and bolt assembly. At the range, they would go into battery and fire but wouldn't cycle. We took them apart at the range on the bench, and found that both oprods are bent, badly enough to see the bend with the naked eye. On a Garand, that almost always means that someone fired commercial bolt gun ammunition - which is loaded to fairly higher pressures than the semiautomatic Garand is specified to take - through them. Educational; I got to see what happens to a gun in that case.