4 October 2007, 00:14 in Out & About
Paintballing for Tak's bucks
On Sunday it was Tak’s bucks, and we got up early to go paintballing at Paintball Skirmish (the Bibra Lakes one next to Adventure World). I’ve wanted to try paintball for a long time so I was looking forward to it. Apparently I looked like I was still asleep when Sinisha and Jason picked me up; I have been a bit of a night owl recently.
The venue provided protective equipment in the form of camo overalls and masks. It was a mild overcast day but wearing jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt, and a groin guard (extra protection!) and with the adrenaline going it felt damn hot!! Some of the safety rules include always keeping your mask on when outside of the building, keeping your gun pointed down at the ground when not in play, and no shooting anyone from within 3 metres. Interestingly, the rules also state that head shots don’t count; I guess this is to stop people shooting each other in the head excessively. I still had fun with plenty of head shots, as the heads or guns of the opposing team was usually all you could see. :)
Most paintball guns, like the ones we were using, use a cylinder of compressed carbon dioxide (CO2) as a power source, to propel little spherical projectiles made from soft plastic which contain water soluble paint. The guns shoot pretty far but are very inaccurate. I got a bit frustrated when a few times I managed to flank an enemy player without them seeing me, yet when I let off a volley of fire, all the paintballs landed all around them, giving them a wake up call and meaning my efforts were wasted.
I learned that it is really important to tighten the strap on your mask so that the gasket seals around your eyes; if you don’t do this your breath will quickly fog up your visor and you won’t be able to see. This happened to me once, and the stage happened to have a lot of long grass and weeds, and being the start of spring, I got a pretty bad hay fever reaction. I was pretty much useless that stage, spending half the time sneezing or clearing my throat and hardly being able to see through a fogged up visor!
The paintballs don’t hurt much when they hit you and break normally. Occasionally a paintball fails to break upon this impact and this stings quite a bit. Having some form of covering on your skin also helps. Emil, who has very short hair, had a few red marks on his head afterwards!
Despite it just being a game, I found that paintball really got my pulse racing and the adrenaline flowing. It took a bit of guts to actually take the initiative to try to gain ground and complete the objective, rather than just sit back defensively in one spot. I noticed that the adrenaline made me a bit clumsy. It also sometimes got a bit confusing regarding who was on what team once people moved around after a bit of time in the game. Communication between team members was also difficult because the masks and overalls made it pretty much impossible to tell who was who, so referring to people by name was not possible. Really good fun overall! It made me realize how much I would hate to be a soldier in a firefight, where one hit can kill or cripple you. Don’t envy those guys at all!
After playing for a few hours we were all exhausted and thirsty… We went back to Iavor’s parents house and had beer and food, and some sort of strong spirit that Sinisha brought along (good stuff!).
Then later on we went to the Brisbane for more drinks and celebrations. Emil spent some time hugging the toilet later that night. I went on to see Mampi Swift & IC3 play at the Aberdeen, and it was good, but I was too tired to go nuts and really get into it.
Cheers for organising the day Iavor, and congratulations to Tak!!!
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