Paintball Badassery

Yesterday, my dad (Dad the Bounty Hunter) and my coworkers found ourselves at Wolverine Paintball battling it out with a rival business.  If you’ve never played paintball before, go!  It’s hilarious and stress-relieving and exercise all at once.  I must give a shoutout to Anthony (funny and patient with the newbies!), John and all the staff at Wolverine for being super friendly and really helpful to everyone in our group.

We played on two different courses: the woods and speedball.  In the woods, it’s an army-style battle, hiding in the brush, scampering from tree to tree in hopes of sniping a member of the enemy team before they get you!  Dressed in camo, I belly crawled, hid in the brush, dove behind trees and shot the hell out of the other team and got the snot shot out of me as well.  Laying in wait in the woods gets to be pretty scary—with your protective face mask on, the sound of your own breath is amplified, and your peripheral vision is limited, so hunkering down in the weeds, waiting for the enemy to pass by, my heart was racing and I was sweating and paranoid that they’d sneak up on me from behind and shoot me in the back…in other words, it was freakin’ awesome!!

The speedball course is where I got all my bruises.  I considered posting photos of the bruises here, but they have all morphed into such giant purple hideousness that I don’t want to gross you out online (but I’ll be happy to show you in person!).  The speedball field has obstacles but is clear of trees and brush, so basically, you know where your enemy is, it’s just a matter of shooting them before they shoot you as you move from obstacle to obstacle.  Where the woods course involves patience, the speedball course involves a mad rush of adrenaline as the paint goes flying every which way!

Everyone had a tremendously good time…how could you not?  You get to run around and play army or A-Team or whatever like you did when you were a kid, you get to blast people with paint and you laugh and yelp and forget about every stupid thing that was stressing you out before you got there.

My birthday is coming up, and I have to say I am truly torn between going roller skating and playing paintball…can I do both?????

(go see the gang at Wolverine and raise hell!)