Well last week was one for the books. Not only was it Shaun’s last weekend as a boy but it was his first as a man. Mike had organized a site up near Valleyview on the Waskahigan Provincial Rec Area. It rained most of the way there but that was all good. Apparently there was a nice cook shack and a wood burning stove if it really started raining.
Fortunately there was no fire ban this weekend and we were able to have a fire in both the great outdoors and the great indoors. The down side of the site was there was no designated firewood bin. There was some available but by the time we got there most of it was wet. We had planned to bring wood as well which was a total pain in the ass. I drove up alone with a few boxes of logs; Eric brought some as well as Logan. We pretty much burned through that the first night.
That first night was a doozy. I don’t know what we were drinking or if its just all getting older but I was in pretty rough shape the next day. I woke up at around 9:30 and went down to the cook shack to make some breakfast. When I looked at the state of affairs and what I had to do and set up I turned around and went back to bed. About 11am Logan was driving around beeping his horn to wake us all up. So I went to make breakfast and was told were leaving in about 10 minutes. There goes breakfast. Good thing I brought a cup of soup. I boiled some water made some soup and some coffee then hit the road with Eric and Mike.
It was a long haul to the paintball place. Originally we were supposed to go to a place in Valleyview but it never opened for the season so we went to plan B and headed to the next closest one which was near Grand Prairie.
So after a long haul for the old Jetta we arrived and got to it. I’ve had my own gun and equipment for some time and brought that along which was pretty sweet. It didn’t necessarily mean I did very well though. The field we were playing at was called “Splatter Paintball” and was roughly 12 kms from the main highway. We had a group of about 16 and divided the teams according to mask color provided. The field was pretty good and had a speedball course, a town, a barrel and tire course and one with two opposing forts and a mirrored town. The other field was a bush ball field in the woods with a few man made obstacles and bunkers.
The refs were pretty great as well. We had all played before and after a safety talk and after they established we had all played before they left us to do as we pleased. The first two games we split for the win and then I lost track of who was winning or losing. I got hit a few times but didn’t really have any zingers till I took a head shot right above my mask during a match on the barrel course. After a few more structured games we played on the bush ball course for three or four games. I got lit up on the first one and have some nice welts on my kidney because of it; the second game I played on that one was pretty good. I got a few people out but the most memorable kill was getting Logan as he was sneaking up behind me.
The gauntlet was what killed me. We had planned to have just Shaun run the gauntlet on the speedball course but after Justin shot him in the neck while he wasn’t paying attention we decided that to get Shaun to run the gauntlet the rest of us would have to go too. We took turns running in pairs and it was a riot. I paired up with Eric and the dick pushed me over and I didn’t get up cause my mask slipped. So there I lay and everyone just unloaded on me. This affirmed to me that I have some of the best friends in the world.
I wasn’t to jazzed after that, I had taken a few too many shots and after a few more games I called it quits. The others played a few games to get rid of the rest of their paint and then we hit the dirt road for and went back to the site for one hell of a night.
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