With no Badger football this weekend, my residence hall figured what better way to spend a lazy Saturday shooting each other in the face with hard paint chunks moving at incredible speeds? Unable to think of one, we set out for a day of paintball fun.
But not just any person can go paintballing. No, each of these people had to fit certain special criteria. They had to be fearless, cool in combat and be able to pony up the 50 bucks needed for gun rental and paint.
We gathered 10 of the roughest, toughest men and women to ever hold a paintball gun. There was me, Mike \D.B."" Bol, Ryan ""King of Pain"" Wallace, Curtis ""Weapon of Death"" Ryals, Justin ""Sharpshooter"" Mack, Tanya ""I Make the Boys Cry"" Treptow, Can ""Death Bringer"" Chaidaisuk, Mike ""Terminator"" DelSignore, Ini ""Bum Rush"" Afia and Todd ""The Bus Driver,"" who was so named because he was our bus driver.
What a time we had! What games we played! We played Capture the Flag where the highlight was seeing Bol, out of ammo, dash across the entire length of the field, paintballs whizzing past his arms and legs as he ran to drop the flag off in the enemy bunker.
We played straight up team-versus-team on a field called Hyperball. Now, to imagine how large the Hyperball field was, go to a dorm room and look around. Welcome to Hyperball! Now imagine you're in there with nine other people, five of whom are shooting at you with guns that can fire paintballs at least 60 yards. Needless to say, none of the Hyperball games lasted very long.
We played on a field that had a giant 30-foot tower in the middle of it, surrounded by pillboxes and trenches. Not to say that people who go paintballing can be a less-than-intelligent group, but we were reminded before heading out NOT to jump off this 30-foot-tall tower to the hard brush-covered ground below. This field saw such highlights as Can and Tanya both being shot in the face, Todd taking five consecutive shots dangerously close to his groinal region and myself getting shot before I'd even had time to take the safety off my gun.
But perhaps the greatest adventure of the day was on our way back home. For some reason we had to park the bus down this narrow dirt path, and in order to turn around, we almost took out'in order'a fence, a dog, the fence again and a Jeep. Finally, to clear the last series of cars, we had to physically lift and move a Ford Taurus that was parked too far out onto the road.
The second time we lifted the back end, we almost sent it sliding down the shoulder of the path. It was at that moment I knew I had to write about this day. As I told Justin, any time you go paintballing AND move a parked car, it is column-worthy. At least in my world.
And speaking of my world, you're probably wondering how I did on our outing. Well, despite some early setbacks, in the last match I not only caught a man completely by surprise when I circled around on him, but I also shot Bol in the arm while he was on the run. Yeah baby, yeah! 2-0!
Unstoppable!
Of course, by that time I had already been shot 14 times, but who keeps track of those things anyway?
OUT!
