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Nothing gets your blood racing and adrenaline pumping like a marble-sized ball of paint zooming by your ear at 270 ft per second. Unfortunately, nothing gets your blood rushing to a swollen and bruised portion of your body than actually getting hit by that paintball... haha.
My first paintball experience was a lot of fun. After waking up bright and early Saturday morning, we made our way to The Adventure Game in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After parking, we came upon a little enclave with canvas tarps on poles overhanging a bunch of picnic tables where what looked like the entire Michigan militia gearing up. Seriously, us "city boys" were walking in kind of intimidated amongst all the tall, tough-looking guys polishing custom rifles and loading up spare clips with red paintballs... well, maybe Mike and Phuoc weren't cowed, but I know I was!
After gearing up, we (all of the renters) got split into two teams and brought to one of the several playing fields. Basic rules - "kill" everyone on the other team within the time limit (where a "kill" was a paintball that exploded on the other person's body). Admittedly, the games would have been more fun if the teams were more equitably chosen - I was on the team with most of the rookies that I came with, and the other team had a bunch of friends who paintball for fun in the woods. Needless to say, we got crushed... lost probably about 80% of the matches. I took hits in just about every round. On the bright side (I suppose), most of my hits were at range, so I didn't get much more than a stinging sensation... other folks on my team were genuinely bruised up. I took one shot in the left shoulder while trying to twist back around into cover, and also got shot in the hand a couple of times. Also got shot a few times in the facemask visor, which is ironically one of the better places to get shot because you barely even feel it.
There was one more evenly-matched and fun series of games - one of the fields, known as the "Jungle", was like being in the wilderness with hills, brush, spikey grass, and other natural obstacles to navigate as well as dodging paintballs. I got switched onto the "ringer" team for these games, and was quite impressed with the fact that they used military style hand signals to indicate when they had sighted opponents, to coordinate movements, etc. While I typically died quickly in the free-for-all obstacle course fields, the Jungle I actually had the chance to run, dive, slide down hills, etc... got scraped up a bit, but 'twas hecka fun.
Lessons learned:
- rent a camouflage jacket - not only do you look more like you fit in with all the "pros", but it means you don't have to wash it after you're done!
- wear a kneepad on the right knee - there's a lot of kneeling and it'll save you from losing some skin
- get on a good team
I'd definitely go again.
After shooting each other, we went to dinner at Buca di Beppo in Palo Alto where we stuffed ourselves and reminisced about the legendary Mike Y tales like taping bugs to the wall and giving names to both the bugs and the mold in the apartment. I also had the chance to catch up with my old AACF staffer Dave F and Brian C, where we had some good discussions about corporate worship.
Hoops
Now is just about the best time of the year as a sports fan... there's nothing quite like having an intense NBA playoff game on TV just about every night.
Go Spurs!
Hm, I haven't writen anything of real substance in a while. I have a couple of topics tumbling around in the back of my head... I'll see if I can get some writing done this week before taking off for Manhattan on Wednesday.
Nothing gets your blood racing and adrenaline pumping like a marble-sized ball of paint zooming by your ear at 270 ft per second. Unfortunately, nothing gets your blood rushing to a swollen and bruised portion of your body than actually getting hit by that paintball... haha.
My first paintball experience was a lot of fun. After waking up bright and early Saturday morning, we made our way to The Adventure Game in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After parking, we came upon a little enclave with canvas tarps on poles overhanging a bunch of picnic tables where what looked like the entire Michigan militia gearing up. Seriously, us "city boys" were walking in kind of intimidated amongst all the tall, tough-looking guys polishing custom rifles and loading up spare clips with red paintballs... well, maybe Mike and Phuoc weren't cowed, but I know I was!
After gearing up, we (all of the renters) got split into two teams and brought to one of the several playing fields. Basic rules - "kill" everyone on the other team within the time limit (where a "kill" was a paintball that exploded on the other person's body). Admittedly, the games would have been more fun if the teams were more equitably chosen - I was on the team with most of the rookies that I came with, and the other team had a bunch of friends who paintball for fun in the woods. Needless to say, we got crushed... lost probably about 80% of the matches. I took hits in just about every round. On the bright side (I suppose), most of my hits were at range, so I didn't get much more than a stinging sensation... other folks on my team were genuinely bruised up. I took one shot in the left shoulder while trying to twist back around into cover, and also got shot in the hand a couple of times. Also got shot a few times in the facemask visor, which is ironically one of the better places to get shot because you barely even feel it.
There was one more evenly-matched and fun series of games - one of the fields, known as the "Jungle", was like being in the wilderness with hills, brush, spikey grass, and other natural obstacles to navigate as well as dodging paintballs. I got switched onto the "ringer" team for these games, and was quite impressed with the fact that they used military style hand signals to indicate when they had sighted opponents, to coordinate movements, etc. While I typically died quickly in the free-for-all obstacle course fields, the Jungle I actually had the chance to run, dive, slide down hills, etc... got scraped up a bit, but 'twas hecka fun.
Lessons learned:
- rent a camouflage jacket - not only do you look more like you fit in with all the "pros", but it means you don't have to wash it after you're done!
- wear a kneepad on the right knee - there's a lot of kneeling and it'll save you from losing some skin
- get on a good team
I'd definitely go again.
After shooting each other, we went to dinner at Buca di Beppo in Palo Alto where we stuffed ourselves and reminisced about the legendary Mike Y tales like taping bugs to the wall and giving names to both the bugs and the mold in the apartment. I also had the chance to catch up with my old AACF staffer Dave F and Brian C, where we had some good discussions about corporate worship.
Hoops
Now is just about the best time of the year as a sports fan... there's nothing quite like having an intense NBA playoff game on TV just about every night.
Go Spurs!
Hm, I haven't writen anything of real substance in a while. I have a couple of topics tumbling around in the back of my head... I'll see if I can get some writing done this week before taking off for Manhattan on Wednesday.
posted by Bob at
10:24 PM
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