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Sherpas have a great reputation as the world's best climbers. "Sherpa" is not some sort of honorific or title; it's the name of an ethnic group — a tiny one. There are around 150,000 of them in Nepal.

While they fight for their lives on treacherous mountain terrain, Sherpas also struggle to keep their community — and its values — alive.

If you are a Sherpa, it's noted right in your name, like Ang Galgen Sherpa, who lives in Queens, N.Y., home to the largest community of Sherpas in the U.S.

Galgen has driven a yellow taxi in New York City for 12 years, but he used to guide people through the Himalayas.

"Every time a customer gets in, they look at my name [they say]... 'Are you a Sherpa? You can't be a Sherpa! Are you really a Sherpa?' " he says. "I say, yeah, I'm really a Sherpa."

The next question is usually about whether or not he has climbed Mount Everest. Galgen has not, but the question makes him feel incredibly proud.

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Ben Pickering can't believe his luck.

"Holy cow," he keeps saying. "Man, that's just incredible. That's just amazing."

Pickering won a drawing for an Ambush rifle, an $1,800 AR-15-style model. Pickering already has a lot of weapons — "I honestly could not count," he says — but he's still excited to be given this new one.

Pickering loves guns, but he's also happy that the National Rifle Association's annual meeting, being held this weekend in Indianapolis, has given him the chance to meet up with family members who live in other states.

The same sort of thing is true for a lot of people. There's plenty of talk about politics and gun laws, with Republican politicians such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal addressing the crowd on Friday.

But for many among the 70,000 in attendance, meeting up with family, friends and like-minded people is more important than talking about this year's elections. It's also a chance for enthusiasts to check out all the latest in guns, custom barrels and binoculars.

"It's kind of like a big window-shopping thing," says Bill Slike, an engineer from neighboring Noblesville, Ind.

Most people — including Pickering — aren't actually going to walk away from the show with new weapons in hand, due to federal licensing requirements.

But, with the exhibit hall being billed as "nine acres of guns and gear," they can certainly do plenty of comparison shopping. The event is a showcase not only for major manufacturers such as Remington and Smith & Wesson, but smaller companies taking advantage of the chance to show off their wares to thousands of potential customers.

"You can handle the guns and make an informed purchase decision," says safety instructor Sig Swanstrom. "I'm from San Antonio and there are 1.4 million people, but there's no way to make this kind of comparison."

It's A Family Affair

The meeting is free for NRA members, who pay anywhere from $10 to join for a year to $500 for a lifetime membership. The crowd is overwhelmingly but not exclusively white, well into middle age or older, with more men than women.

A few men wear suits and ties, but most people are casually dressed in polos or plaids, some wearing t-shirts with slogans such as "Choose wisely: Glock, paper, scissors."

The aisles are so crowded that it can be difficult to move around, but a few parents patiently push their kids around in strollers. One little boy sits cross-legged against a wall, wearing an orange ball cap that says "Gun Auction" and sucking on a lollipop.

Todd Homan, a gun dealer from St. Henry, Ohio, has brought each of his eight children to an NRA meeting at least once. His son, Charlton, is making a return visit this year.

Back in 2001, when he was 5 weeks old, Charlton was held up on stage at the NRA meeting by his namesake, the actor and NRA President Charlton Heston, who died in 2008.

His parents carry around a small photo album, showing off pictures of that moment. Charlton Homan admits he's "kind of" sick of hearing the story.

Todd Homan says all his kids receive hunting safety instruction. Other parents stress the importance of safety, clearly enjoying sharing their interest in shooting sports with their kids.

"It's been something we've been doing for a fairly long time," says Jimmy Trout, a 16-year-old from Carlisle, Ohio, who's such a fan of the Browning Buck Mark line of weapons that he has its logo shaved into the back of his head.

Step Right Up

Trout's design excited the people at the Browning booth and helped get him a picture with Matt Hughes, a mixed martial arts champion who endorses the product. Trout also picked up an autographed poster from race car driver Jessica Barton at the EAA Corporation booth.

With hundreds of booths at the show, exhibitors try all sorts of things to attract attention. One sword company has its staff dressed up like pirates, while an ammunition manufacturer is holding a drawing for a helicopter pig hunt.

MGI Industries is based in Maine, so it's offering to ship two live lobsters with any rifle purchase.

"You try to entice people to see it, touch it," says Steve Henigan, MGI's vice president of sales and marketing. "We do get a lot of interest, and hopefully that interest turns into sales down the road."

In addition to rifles, slings and cleaning equipment, various companies are trying to interest attendees in other products and services. The NRA Wine Club advertises that "every sip supports the NRA" at its booth; the club pays the association 10 percent of its revenues in exchange for access to the group's massive email list.

At Booth 3603, Lucinda Bailey is trying to get passersby interested in her gardening books and heirloom seeds. "After guns and bullets, you gotta eat, right?" she says.

Maybe Next Time

Unlike many people in attendance, Bailey is not interested in what she calls "the boy toys" — the high-caliber weapons on offer, or the vehicles on display with machine guns mounted on top.

Bailey wanted to find a modest weapon that would help rid her garden of pests. "I found a gun I wouldn't be able to get back home," she says. "I'll be able to get anything from squirrels to feral hogs."

It's All Politics

Bloomberg Seeks To Alter Gun Debate With $50 Million, And Moms

Need a good laugh? Try Chicago.

The Humor Research Lab at the Leeds School of Business at University of Colorado Boulder (and doesn't that sound like it was created by The Onion?) concocted an algorithm to rate America's funniest cities.

Humor researchers calculated factors like the number of working comics and comedy clubs per capita, funny local tweeters and visits to funny websites. They asked people to assess what they called their "need for levity."

Adrian Ward, a co-author of the study, says it's not all algorithms. "A city's sense of humor is a living, breathing thing created by everything from coffee shop conversations," he says, "to the laughter that erupts at comedy clubs."

Chicago ranked first, not surprisingly. It's home to great comic institutions like Second City, The Onion, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, and the Chicago City Council.

Boston is No. 2. Boston is a lot like Chicago, but smaller and better educated.

Washington, D.C., is fourth, perhaps because Americans like to watch the antics of official Washington the way they laugh at monkeys in a zoo who fling feces and scratch themselves.

Portland, Ore., is fifth; a nice nod to an engaging place. An unnamed Portlandian told researchers, "We enjoy Darth Vader wearing a kilt riding a unicycle playing the bagpipes."

Make that a line-caught, free-range, shade-grown unicycle in Portland.

New York is sixth. I bet it would be higher if they'd considered just Brooklyn, which, like Chicago, is it's own punch line. But it's too expensive to be funny in Manhattan.

Nothing deflates laughs like algorithms and analysis. But you might notice that all the cities atop this humor survey possess personality. You wouldn't confuse Chicago with Portland; or Portland with Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco, which are also among the top 10. Each of those cities puts a stamp on the people who live there, and humor is an important part of character.

I spent a lot of time last summer with a loved one in the intensive care unit of a Chicago hospital. One middle of the night, I came downstairs to the 24-hour Starbucks. Everyone in line looked wet-eyed and anxious. Spending all night in a hospital didn't seem like a happy occasion for anyone.

A Motown hit came on. And when Martha and the Vandellas sang that summer's here and the time is right, all us strangers joined in to sing a line to make us smile: "They're dancin' in Chicaaago ..."

Ballerina Misty Copeland is one of the greatest dancers performing today; she's a soloist at the American Ballet Theater, and she's accomplished all this despite starting ballet at the age of 13. By that age, most kids who dream of dancing have already given it up and resigned themselves to a career in public radio.

We've invited Copeland to play a game called "Hey Nonny Nonny" — three questions about a form of English folk dancing called Morris dancing, which scholars believe originated one night in the Middle Ages when some guys got really, really drunk.