One man, a whole load of (paint)balls

Well today started a lot earlier than most days (in that I had to awake before midday), so after my usual zombified groans and general grumpiness when I’m awoken in the mystical ‘morning’ time, Chris successfully woke me up to go paintballing. Being as it wasn’t my first time paintballing, I knew what to expect and packed a few essentials: water, gloves and food.

The first time I went paintballing a couple of years ago I enjoyed throughout and was pleasantly surprised with the lack of pain from being hit quite a few times until the final game. It was a free for all, which sounds bad enough with the amount of people playing, especially since you can stay in if you wish after you get hit, normally you’re out of the round once you get hit. Even worse, I realised that on the last game EVERYONE is trigger happy as they’re not rationing paintballs any more. Anyway, amongst other places I got hit on the hand, being one of the very few small unprotected areas of bare skin. That hurt. The pain barrier was breached and I surrendered.

Back to today, after successfully managing to get ready in my sleep induced state, I bumbled into Chris’ car, which is fitted with the most neato GPRS system. After getting the postcode of the paintball centre, it instantly calculated the route and provided us with a pleasant female australian accent voice giving step by step directions. Much to my amusement, on the occasion that we took a wrong turn, it gave us a stern warning in a most worried, but very proper Australian-English speaking tone, exclaiming “You’re lost!” We arrived at our destination, instantly realising that the postcode given to us was, in fact, a carrot farm. (although in my still sleepy state I thought the carrots being dropped into crates, resembled frankfurters, yes I know, no logic at all-try having a conversation with me in the morning!!) Upon getting the correct route and arriving at the paintball centre, the games included destroy the radar (get into enemy base and shoot a sattelite dish), speedball (very small arena, but lots of barricades to hide behind, capture the flag in the middle and risk death to deliver it to the enemy base, yup suicide!) and the traditional capture the flag. The last game had a little twist though, but that made it my favourite. For the purposes of the game we were told that a predator would be entered. He looks like the predator from the films, has body armour and a paintball gun that you can but dream of, but fear the emenating balls, although he can only detect motion, meaning that to not get utterly busted by him you’ve got to stay deadly still. Oh and he doesn’t understand the surrender rule; when you’re hit, you put your hands up and walk to the safe area. Oh yeah and for the purposes of the game you can’t kill him too. Sounded pretty neat. In the game, upon seeing the predator with the unmistakable dreads and suit, I proceeded to lay prone behind my trusty barrel barricade, to prevent enemy shots taking advantage of my lack of motion. This predator guy was a git, he stood behind me with that cocky predator growl and fired a whole load of high calibre paintballs next to my head, on the barrel obviously trying to get me to flinch. Not being a sucker for pain, I lay there still, until another barrage came. No movement, until a heard a slightly frustrated predator growl behind me and footsteps leading away. He came back to torment me again at the end of the game which was a nuisance, but provided much suspense. Didn’t give way to the nemesis of the quoting legend that is Arnie. Through the day I got a kill to death ratio of about 1 or 2:1.

So in summary, In my opinion paintballing is fun, until the day after when you can’t walk up or down stairs at normal speed. It was good today, but in my opinion, not as good as airsoft (using plastic bb’s instead of paintballs), but in that you get to choose real life weapons as opposed to flimsy metallic…things, I had an M16 when I went to airsoft at home a year back. You get bb grenades in it too.

Above all, my enjoyment today would’ve been a lot higher if everyone from my house went. Don’t care about shooting at them, but we play enough BV/BF2 to have some kind of team play and tactics. Never mind though, at least perhaps I’ve pained them into reading at least part of what must be the most humongous blog entry I’ve ever encountered! According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Blogging I must have a swollen ego to think that someone must be remotely interested in this! Good thing, as I don’t want my major intestine to leap up through my neck and throttle my brain in an attempt to preserve civilisation!

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